The written and verbal traces of the past have been extensively studied by historians, but what about the nonverbal traces? In recent years, historians have expanded their attention to other kinds of sources, but seldom have they taken into account the most vital and omnipresent nonverbal aspect of life – body language. Silent History explores the potential of early photography to uncover the structure and nature of everyday body language in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a close study of street photography by pioneering photographers who were the first to document urban everyday life with hidden cameras, Peter Andersson examines a key period of history in a new light. By focusing on a number of body poses and gestures common to the nonverbal communication of the fin de siècle, he reveals the identifications and connotations of daily social interaction beyond the written word. Andersson also depicts a broader picture of the body and its relationship to popular culture by placing photographic analysis within a context of magazine illustration, caricature, music-hall entertainment, and the elusive urban subcultures of the day. Studying archival photographs from Austria, England, and Sweden, Silent History provides a clear picture of the emergence of the modern bodily conventions that still define us.

Peter K. Andersson is a researcher in history at Lund University, Sweden.

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"Readers looking for a scholarly exploration of how bodies can communicate will find much of interest in Andersson's rigorous study of popular historical poses in England, Sweden and Austria (with forays into southern Germany)." Times Literary Supplement

“Overall, it is a fascinating and productive excavation. … this book is a noble effort to use photographs constructively in a critical historical analysis. It is full of fascinating and precisely observed detail excavated from the photographs, and an exhilarating attempt to write a history out of photographs and their co-relates. It is far from perfect, but it is a serious and grounded attempt to unpack otherwise inarticulate histories.” English Historical Review

"Drawing together methods and literature from cultural history and the social sciences, and informed by literature on the history of photography and more sociological sources, Silent History is an engaging and original consideration of important issues in visual representation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." Jordan Bear, University of Toronto

“Silent History is a fascinating account. It is rare to be able to say about a book that there is not much like it, but in its geographical scope, its thoughtful commitment to visual sources and its focus on the stories embodied in the detail of the movement of hands and shoulders and hips, it provides an original and thought-provoking account of the European city at the end of the nineteenth century.” Urban History