In this book Douglas Nickel explores the density of meaning and cultural significance in the photographs Francis Frith (1822–1898) took during three trips to the Middle East between 1856 and 1860. Nickel evaluates Frith’s images within the context of their production and reception: a short-lived but potent mid-Victorian configuration of aesthetics, conflicts between religious faith and scientific authority, moral improvement and photographic reproduction—all marshaled in support of Orientalist ideologies. In the introduction Nickel sets out his argument for a history of photographic meaning that emphasizes relationships between photographic discourse and broader patterns of Western thought; Frith’s coordinate in this field is the “fitful overlap” between late Romantic Transcendentalism and Victorian rationalism (11). Within this cultural formation Frith could use the new technology of photography as an art to convince his Victorian audience of the authenticity of biblical sites and, implicitly, the historical validity of biblical narrative. Such rhetorical purposes cannot be seen in the images without a historical inquiry that looks beyond art history or technology to locate the meanings of photographs within culture. Nickel uses a “model of expanding contextualization” (19) to organize his narrative, beginning with Frith’s biography, and then to his photography, its publications, and its cultural...