Research Conversations: The Post Office and the Rise of Photography with Natalie Pellolio

Since the early decades of photography, practitioners have relied on a growing international postal system to send photographs, materials, and information about technological developments to recipients near and far. The official announcement of the invention of photography in 1839 occurred just six years before the landmark Postal Act of 1845, in which the United States Congress reduced postage rates to allow the mail to be, for the first time, an affordable form of communication for most Americans. Central to the history of photography though rarely discussed within it, the mail facilitated the production of photographs and proved a key agent in the evolution of the photograph from a singular and costly object to a reproducible and disseminable image.
 
 Natalie Pellolio is a Visiting Professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture department at California College of the Arts. She received her B.A. in Art History at Reed College in 2009 and her Ph.D. in Art & Art History at Stanford University in 2018. She has held positions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Portland Art Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the California Historical Society. She is currently completing a book manuscript about the intertwined histories of photography and the postal service and the impact of the mail on American photographic aesthetics.