About this site

The contents of this site are nearly identical to a senior history thesis that I completed at Vassar College on February 20, 1995, and for which I shared Vassar’s Sophia Chen Zen Award for best history thesis. Thanks to Jim Merrell, my thesis advisor, for his guidance.

I reformatted the site in 2024 using the wonderful Tufte CSS, by Dave Liepmann and Edward Tufte. Other than adjusting the text to fit the new format, I have resisted the temptation to edit the prose of my college-aged self.

Feel free to email me but keep in mind that I wrote this essay more than 30 years ago and am not an expert on early photography.