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Estelle Jussim

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Estelle Jussim
Born(1927-03-18)March 18, 1927
Manhattan, New York, U.S.
DiedMarch 1, 2004(2004-03-01) (aged 76)
Holyoke, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma materQueens College (BA)
Columbia University (MS, PhD)
OccupationsHistorian of photography, writer, professor
EmployerSimmons College
Known forVisual Communication and the Graphic Arts; Landscape as Photograph

Estelle Jussim (March 18, 1927 – March 1, 2004) was an American historian of photography, writer, and professor. She taught at Simmons College in Boston for over two decades and authored several books on photographic history and visual culture, most notably Visual Communication and the Graphic Arts (1974) and Landscape as Photograph (1985).[1][2]

Early life and education

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Jussim was born on March 18, 1927, in Manhattan, New York, the daughter of Boris and Manya (Glusker) Jussim.[1][2] She earned a Bachelor of Arts cum laude from Queens College in 1947.[3] She later earned a Doctorate of Library Service from Columbia University.[2]

Career

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From 1967 to 1972 Jussim taught History of Communications at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 1972 she joined the graduate school of Simmons College in Boston, where she taught History of Photography, History of Rare Books, and graphic arts and communications until her retirement in 1992.[1][2] She served on the International Advisory Board of History of Photography, a peer-reviewed journal based in London, from at least 1978.[4] Her lecture at the Amon Carter Museum formed the basis of her 1983 book Frederic Remington, the Camera, and the Old West.[5] Linköping University in Sweden awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1990.[6]

Scholarship

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Jussim wrote on the history and criticism of photography, drawing on postmodern, deconstructionist, and feminist perspectives.[7]

Books

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Visual Communication and the Graphic Arts (1974) examined the development of photographic technologies and their cultural implications. Scholar Susan O. Thompson described it as "ground-breaking."[8] The book was discussed in Art Journal alongside the work of William M. Ivins Jr. and André Malraux,[9] and was cited as a standard reference in Victorian Periodicals Review.[10]

Slave to Beauty: The Eccentric Life and Controversial Career of F. Holland Day (1981) examined the life and work of F. Holland Day within the cultural and artistic contexts of his time. Reviewing the book in Artforum, Kelly Wise described it as "an appealing biography" and praised Jussim's treatment of the rivalry between Day and Alfred Stieglitz as "mischievous and entertaining."[7]

Landscape as Photograph (1985), co-authored with Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock, examined American landscape photography from the 1840s through the 1980s, arguing that photographs are interpretive constructs shaped by cultural assumptions. Suzanne Muchnic, writing in the Los Angeles Times, noted the authors' argument that "a photograph is as much an act of interpretation as it is an artifact."[11] John Raeburn, in Environmental Review, called it "an essential book for anyone interested in how photographs convey ideas about the natural environment."[12] Kenneth I. Helphand, in Design Book Review, situated the book within contemporary landscape scholarship.[13]

Other scholarship

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Jussim's 1977 article "The Research Uses of Visual Information," published in Library Trends, distinguished between visual information and visual communication, and between "search" and "research" as modes of inquiry.[14] Writing in The American Archivist in 2004, Joan M. Schwartz cited the article as foundational to the field and listed Jussim alongside Victor Burgin, Richard Bolton, and Barbara Maria Stafford as a key figure in visual materials scholarship.[15]

Jussim contributed essays, introductions, and forewords to major exhibition catalogues, monographs, and anthologies published by institutions including the Friends of Photography,[16] the Walker Art Center, the Center for Creative Photography,[17] and Aperture.[18] Her essays appeared alongside those of Beaumont Newhall, Nathan Lyons, Naomi Rosenblum, Alan Trachtenberg, and Van Deren Coke.[19]

In 1984 the Walker Art Center invited Jussim as one of six scholars to participate in the Image and Message lecture series, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and directed by John Schott, held in conjunction with the exhibition The 20th-Century Poster: Design of the Avant-Garde.[20] Her essay "The Self-Reflexive Camera" (1989) was anthologized in Photography: 1900 to the Present (Prentice Hall, 1998).[21] She contributed "Images of Apocalypse," a review essay on survivor drawings of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, to the Boston Review in 1981.[22]

Publications

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Books

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  • Visual Communication and the Graphic Arts: Photographic Technologies in the Nineteenth Century (R.R. Bowker, 1974; reprinted with revised preface, 1983)[23]
  • Slave to Beauty: The Eccentric Life and Controversial Career of F. Holland Day (D.R. Godine, 1981)[24]
  • Frederic Remington, the Camera, and the Old West (Amon Carter Museum, 1983)[5]
  • Landscape as Photograph (Yale University Press, 1985, co-authored with Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock; reprinted UMI Books on Demand, 1998)[25]
  • Stopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton (Harry N. Abrams, 1987)[26]
  • The Eternal Moment: Essays on the Photographic Image (Aperture, 1989)[18]

Edited works

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  • Mothers and Daughters: That Special Quality: An Exploration in Photography (Aperture Foundation, 1989, co-edited with Tillie Olsen and Julie Olsen Edwards)[28]

Selected articles

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  • "The Research Uses of Visual Information," Library Trends 25, no. 4 (1977): 763–778[14]
  • "Images of Apocalypse," Boston Review (1981)[22]
  • "The Self-Reflexive Camera" (1989), anthologized in Photography: 1900 to the Present, ed. Diana Emery Hulick and Joseph Marshall (Prentice Hall, 1998)[21]

Awards and recognition

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References

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  1. ^ a b c "Dr. Estelle Jussim, photography historian". The Boston Globe. March 14, 2004.
  2. ^ a b c d "Estelle Jussim Obituary". The Republican. March 4, 2004.
  3. ^ "Queens College Commencement Exercises 1947 February". Queens, New York: Queens College Special Collections and Archives.
  4. ^ Liebling, Jerome (1978). Jerome Liebling: Photographs 1947–1977. Carmel, California: Friends of Photography. OCLC 4574420.
  5. ^ a b Jussim, Estelle (1983). Frederic Remington, the Camera and the Old West. Fort Worth, Texas: Amon Carter Museum. ISBN 9780883600443. OCLC 9579620.
  6. ^ a b Svensson, Gary (2022). Johansson, Britt-Inger; Qvarnström, Ludwig (eds.). Swedish Art Historiography: Institutionalization, Identity and Practice (PDF). Nordic Academic Press. p. 105.
  7. ^ a b Wise, Kelly (January 1982). "Slave to Beauty". Artforum.
  8. ^ Thompson, Susan O. (1982). "Review of Slave to Beauty". The Library Quarterly. 52 (4): 412–413.
  9. ^ Freitag, Wolfgang M. (1979). "Early Uses of Photography in the History of Art". Art Journal. 39 (2): 117–123. doi:10.2307/776397.
  10. ^ Codell, Julie F. (1991). "The Aura of Mechanical Reproduction: Victorian Art and the Press". Victorian Periodicals Review. 24 (1): 4–10.
  11. ^ Muchnic, Suzanne (August 11, 1985). "Landscape as Photograph: by Estelle Jussim and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock". Los Angeles Times.
  12. ^ Raeburn, John (1986). "Review of Landscape as Photograph". Environmental Review. 10 (2): 137–139. doi:10.2307/3984565.
  13. ^ Helphand, Kenneth I. (Spring 1987). "Landscape Photography". Design Book Review (12): 91.
  14. ^ a b Jussim, Estelle (April 1977). "The Research Uses of Visual Information". Library Trends. 25 (4): 763–778.
  15. ^ Schwartz, Joan M. (2004). "Negotiating the Visual Turn: New Perspectives on Images and Archives". The American Archivist. 67 (1): 107–122.
  16. ^ Featherstone, David, ed. (1984). Observations. Carmel, California: Friends of Photography. ISBN 9780933286399. OCLC 11184003.
  17. ^ Enyeart, James, ed. (1989). Decade by Decade: Twentieth-Century American Photography from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography. Bulfinch Press. ISBN 9780821217214. OCLC 18442076.
  18. ^ a b Jussim, Estelle (1989). The Eternal Moment: Essays on the Photographic Image. New York: Aperture. ISBN 9780893813604. OCLC 20486294.
  19. ^ Collins, Kathleen, ed. (1990). Shadow and Substance: Essays on the History of Photography in Honor of Heinz K. Henisch. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan: Amorphous Institute Press. ISBN 9780910331012. OCLC 23975600.
  20. ^ Walker Art Center (1984). Image and Message: A Conversation Between John Schott and Estelle Jussim. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Walker Art Center.
  21. ^ a b Hulick, Diana Emery; Marshall, Joseph, eds. (1998). Photography: 1900 to the Present. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780132540957. OCLC 36761665.
  22. ^ a b Jussim, Estelle (1981). "Images of Apocalypse". Boston Review.
  23. ^ Jussim, Estelle (1974). Visual Communication and the Graphic Arts: Photographic Technologies in the Nineteenth Century. New York: R.R. Bowker. ISBN 9780835216746. OCLC 8928353.
  24. ^ Jussim, Estelle (1981). Slave to Beauty: The Eccentric Life and Controversial Career of F. Holland Day. Boston: D.R. Godine. ISBN 9780879233464. OCLC 6627484.
  25. ^ Jussim, Estelle; Lindquist-Cock, Elizabeth (1985). Landscape as Photograph. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300032215. OCLC 1184163209.
  26. ^ Jussim, Estelle (1987). Stopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 9780810915145. OCLC 929910476.
  27. ^ Fulton, Marianne; Jussim, Estelle (1988). Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0821216576. OCLC 862996758.
  28. ^ Olsen, Tillie; Edwards, Julie Olsen; Jussim, Estelle (1989). Mothers and Daughters: That Special Quality: An Exploration in Photography. New York: Aperture Foundation. ISBN 9780893813796. OCLC 1223907783.
  29. ^ "Estelle Jussim". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
  30. ^ "Graduate Prizes, Honors, and Awards 2021–2022" (PDF). Simmons University.
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