Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1859 1859

Editor: This is a print titled "Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1859" by David Thomas Valentine, dated 1859, made with etching techniques. It seems like a pretty standard cityscape, a park view with buildings, but what stands out to me is the incredible detail achieved with simple black lines. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Well, immediately I'm drawn to the means of production. This wasn't a quick snapshot. This etching demanded skill and labor. The image isn't just *of* State Street, but *about* the act of representing it in 1859 through this specific, reproducible medium. The book, or “manual,” suggests official sanction – the image and its labor serving the goals of municipal authority. Editor: So, you are looking at how the image came to be rather than simply what it depicts? Curator: Precisely! The materials matter. Think of the etcher’s plate, the ink, the paper—all commodities within a growing industrial system. And consider who had access to these manuals? What does the distribution of these images tell us about class and literacy in 19th-century New York? Is it truly realism if the depiction of labor – that of the etchers, printers, binders, distributors, even those of people in the street, etc -- is obscured? Editor: That's a good point! It does kind of gloss over the realities of labor and production in the city. So this manual is actually part of a whole network of material culture and power dynamics at the time? Curator: Exactly. It's not just a pretty picture of a park, but part of the machinery of how the city presented, and controlled, its image. Editor: I never considered all of that! Thinking about it in terms of production, labor, and distribution offers a whole new way to analyze it. Thanks for opening my eyes! Curator: My pleasure! Shifting our focus from the 'what' to the 'how' often reveals surprising truths about art and society.