Wall Street Journal Holiday Guide to Photography Books
"Playing With Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage" by Elizabeth Siegel (Amazon.com:
Photocollage was invented not long after photography. Aristocratic women in Victorian England were notably keen on cutting up photographs of humdrum realism and mixing and matching them to create whimsical fantasies - e.g., photos of children nestled in the blooms of painted flowers or a drawing of a juggler tossing balls decorated with portrait photographs of sober, bearded Englishmen. Ms. Siegel's expert commentary on her selection from family albums of the 1860s and 1870s leads us on a twisty ride down the rabbit hole.