"Reading The Red Book: Ferdinand de Rothschild and the Country House Album"

本论文研究了费迪南德·罗斯柴尔德男爵（1839-1898）在他1877年建造的乡村别墅沃德斯登庄园制作的摄影集《红书》。这本相册中的图像经常被复制并用于说明与这所房子相关的历史，但相册本身作为一个独立的对象从未被分析过。1897年，斐迪南·罗斯柴尔德（Ferdinand de Rothschild）出版了《红宝书》（The Red Book），以纪念他在白金汉郡的庄园和“爱的劳动”二十周年。这张专辑制作了多个拷贝，由27张专为沃德斯登庄园的观点和方面而制作的铅版组成。我的项目将分析费迪南德·德·罗斯柴尔德（Ferdinand de Rothschild）的自我塑造与他自己的房子的照片之间的关系，他是罗斯柴尔德银行家族奥地利分支的后裔，他委托并为这本相册收集了这些照片。论文将认为，这样的检查提供了洞察现代犹太人在欧洲的经验和摄影表现在其关节中所扮演的角色。《红皮书》提供了沃德斯登庄园的形式和功能的视觉之旅，将这座房子作为一个仪式性和反思性的空间进行了叙述。当通过相册的地形框架进行调解时，该财产的摄影作品成为费迪南德·罗斯柴尔德自己的历史，身份和遗产的自我意识表达。《红皮书》也是一种更广泛的物质文化的产物，这种物质文化是由罗斯柴尔德家族、犹太地产所有者和解放后欧洲的土地贵族制作的。在乡村住宅和乡村住宅的摄影中，创作和保存的主题并置，揭示了相册制作和流通的文化是如何被用来记录、展示和流通房屋图像的。因此，这种做法可以被理解为19世纪精英身份建构的一个组成部分。仔细阅读《红皮书》提供了一种新的方法来理解乡村别墅摄影的重要性，超越了通常对其作为建筑物和室内记录的功效的欣赏，将此类照片视为充满记忆和意义的标志。专辑的时间、空间和诠释方面将塑造这个项目的方向。通过再现，身份和机构的主题，我的论文将围绕纪念乡村别墅相册的特定方面进行组织。以影集的形式解读其功能，将《红宝书》作为一种独特的物质文化置于影集的多重领域中，并利用其多样性特征来阐释创作者的精神气质。仔细阅读《红宝书》将产生两个中心的探究线索：一个是将这本书作为费迪南德自己身份的叙述，另一个是作为乡村住宅及其摄影表现的物质历史和视觉文化的更广泛背景的证据。确定社会和内部自我是如何浓缩成一本相册的叙事结构将提供洞察犹太人的经验和摄影在乡村别墅。我将使用《红宝书》的整体来构建一个拓扑分析，以了解费迪南德·德·罗斯柴尔德对他的财产的看法，暗示他在家中最看重的是什么，以及他希望表达的关于自己的理想。调解的复杂性的历史演员对更广泛的文化和社会背景下，本文将表明，主观性是通过仔细检查的房屋摄影表示破译，打开欠研究的类型的乡村住宅摄影专辑更广泛的批评欣赏的可能性。

This dissertation examines The Red Book, a photographic album produced by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839-1898) of Waddesdon Manor, his country house built in 1877. Images from this album are often reproduced and used to illustrate histories associated with this house, but the album itself as a discrete object has never been analysed before. In 1897, Ferdinand de Rothschild commemorated the twentieth anniversary of his Buckinghamshire estate and 'labour of love' with the publication of The Red Book. Produced in multiple copies, the album consists of twenty-seven collotypes dedicated to views and aspects of Waddesdon Manor. My project will analyse the relationship between the self-fashioning of Ferdinand de Rothschild, a scion of the Austrian branch of the Rothschild banking family, and the photographs of his own house that he commissioned and collected for this album. The thesis will argue that such an examination offers insight into both the modern Jewish experience in Europe and the role played by photographic representation in its articulation. The Red Book provides a visual tour of the forms and functions of Waddesdon Manor, producing a narrative account of the house as both a ritualistic and reflexive space. When mediated through the topographical framework of the album, photographic depictions of the property become self-conscious expressions of Ferdinand de Rothschild's own history, identity, and legacy. The Red Book is also product of a wider material culture of country- house albums executed by the Rothschild family, Jewish estate owners, and landed aristocracy in post-emancipation Europe. Juxtaposing themes of creation and preservation in photography at and of country houses uncovers how the culture of album production and circulation was employed to document, display, and circulate the images of houses. This practice can therefore be understood as an integral aspect of identity construction for nineteenth-century elites. A close reading of The Red Book offers a new approach to understanding the significance of country-house photography, going beyond the usual appreciation of its efficacy as a documentation of buildings and interiors to see such photographs as signs redolent with memory and meaning. The temporal, spatial, and hermeneutic aspects of the album will shape the direction of this project. Through the reoccurring themes of representation, identity, and agency, my dissertation will be organized around particular aspects of the commemorative country-house album. Using the form of the album to decipher its function, I will situate The Red Book as a distinct piece of material culture within the multiple registers of the photographic album and exploit its diversiform characteristics to illuminate the ethos of its creator. A close reading of The Red Book will produce two central threads of inquiry: an examination of the volume as a narrative of Ferdinand's own identity and as evidence of the wider context of the material history and visual culture of the country house and its photographic representation. Identifying how the social and interior self is condensed into the narrative structures of a photograph album will provide insight into both Jewish experience and photography at country houses. More than a sum of its parts, I will use The Red Book in its totality to construct a topoanalysis for Ferdinand de Rothschild's vision of his property as suggestive of what he valued most in his home and the ideals he desired to express about himself. Mediating the complexities of historic actors against wider cultural and social contexts, this dissertation will demonstrate that subjectivity is decipherable through the careful examination of photographic representations of houses, opening the understudied genre of country-house photographic albums to the possibilities of wider critical appreciation.