This talk considers the history of Time-Life Books, begun in 1961, that made its parent company, Time Inc., one of the largest publishers in the United States.  Their serial form, their identical format, their word/image configuration and layout saturated the visual culture of the mid-century American and European information aesthetic of which they were a part. They here offer a key avenue for the reconsideration of the history of the photobook. The book imprint also offers a window into the history of photography’s use, storage, and re-use in the service of illustration, which was the beating heart of Time, Inc.’s knowledge industry orientation. In counter-distinction to the notion of photobooks as repositories of photographic originality and singularity, the TL books imprint and their many series also offer lessons in photography as the “invisible” medium par excellence through which all pictorial information in print would nevertheless pass, ever since the advent of the medium.

6pm: Doors Open

6:30pm – 7:15pm: Lecture followed by Q&A

RSVPs are helpful

About Vanessa R. Schwartz
Vanessa R. Schwartz is Professor of Art History and History at the University of Southern California, where she directs the Visual Studies Research Institute and its graduate certificate program.  Schwartz specializes in 19th and 20th c. European and American visual culture, especially photography, film and design. Her latest monograph Jet Age Aesthetic: The Glamour of Motion in Motion was published by Yale University Press in 2020. She served as a co-curator for “Enfin le cinéma!” which opened at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, September 2021, and co-curator of the related show “City of Cinema: Paris 1850-1907” which opened at LACMA in February 2022. She is currently co-editing a volume about photobooks; is a co-PI on a Swiss National Research Fund project, directed by Jean-François Staszak about globe-trotters and the “tour du monde” (1869-1914).

This conversation is co-presented by the Critical Image Forum, an initiative for Research in Photography and Expanded Documentary at the University of British Columbia.