America and the Tintype is an exhibition catalogue that examines the cultural history and social significance of tintype photography

in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth century. The publication accompanies a major museum exhibition and presents tintypes as a distinctly American photographic medium, valued for its affordability, immediacy, and widespread popular use.

Through a broad selection of images drawn from public and private collections, the catalogue traces how tintypes functioned as objects of personal memory, social identity, and everyday visual culture. Essays by Geoffrey Batchen and Karen Halttunen situate the tintype within the histories of photography, material culture, and American social life, addressing themes such as intimacy, mobility, class, and the relationship between photography and modernity.

Rather than focusing on professional studio practices alone, the book emphasizes the tintype’s role in vernacular contexts, highlighting its use by soldiers, families, travelers, and itinerant photographers. America and the Tintype thus contributes to a broader reassessment of nineteenth-century photography by foregrounding the material, social, and affective dimensions of a medium long regarded as marginal to photographic history.