Joel Snyder

Joel Snyder Headshot

Joel Snyder is renowned as a world-leading expert in 19th-century photographic history. For more than four decades, he has contributed to and edited the Critical Inquiry literary journal. An accomplished photographer, Snyder has taught his students how to integrate intellectual rigor into their photographs. His books include Gentlemen Photographers: the Work of Loring Underwood and William Lyman Underwood (1987); American Frontiers: The Photographs of Timothy H. O’Sullivan, 1867‒1874 (1981); and co-authored with Doug Munson The Documentary Photograph as a Work of Art: American Photographs, 1860‒1876 (1976). Snyder is professor emeritus in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago.

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