Making Photography Matter: A Viewer’s History from the Civil War to the Great Depression by Cara A. Finnegan has won the Outstanding Book of the Year by the National Communication Association’s Visual Communication division.

In Making Photography Matter, Finnegan illustrates how encounters with photography helped viewers negotiate the emergent anxieties and crises of U.S. public life spanning the Lincoln era to the Depression era.

The NCA awards committee chair stated that “reviewers were impressed with the book’s careful historical analysis and its thoughtful and clear prose.”

The award will be presented at the NCA’s annual convention in Las Vegas later this month.