“David S. Shields’ appropriately photo-packed history of the nascent days of movie publicity—the first photographers to capture silent screen stars on set, on the backlot, in candid settings and staged studio portraits—offers far more than just an amazing collection of images. So many films from the early decades of the 20th century have been lost, but here, miraculously, they can be found again. . . . A truly major achievement.” 

Philadelphia Inquirer

 “In his richly illustrated Still: American Silent Motion Picture Photography, David S. Shields examines the groundbreaking work of the early cinematographers and still photographers who created that phenomenon. Shields is both scholarly and deeply passionate about the pictures (some from his own collection), gathering rare images from the sets of epic costume dramas and the kind of celebrity portraiture that would reach its ultimate expression generations later in Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone.”

Los Angeles Times

“This book is both an account of the still photography of the silent era and a collection of enthralling images.”

New Yorker

“One opens this book with exquisite care and almost a hush of awe. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Shields has pulled together a beautiful collection of photographic stills and portrait photography from the American silent film era of 1908 and 1928 that chronicles the fascinating intersection between the two art forms of the moving image and commercial photography. . . . Shields’s presentation entrances as he weaves his own spell of their contributions. Not only does one exclaim in reading this amazing work that Hollywood stars had faces then, but that they also had photographic artists who created the icons that linger and enchant.” 

Choice

“The detailed profiles of so many photographers are the book’s triumph. . . . Not just a reappraisal of a collection of daring, innovative artisans, Shields’s book makes all too apparent how bland and safe contemporary movie stills and portraits really are.”

Aperture