The Barnes Foundation Gallery in Philadelphia is presently featuring a collection of some of the earliest photographic works known to man.
From the Gallery:
On first seeing a photograph around 1840, the influential French painter Paul Delaroche proclaimed, “From today, painting is dead!” The story sounds far-fetched, but it captures the anxieties that surrounded the technology when it first emerged in the mid-19th century.
Julia Margaret Cameron’s ‘King David and Bathsheba (Henry Taylor and Mary Hillier)’ (1869) PHOTO: COLLECTION OF MICHAEL MATTIS AND JUDY HOCHBERG.
At the time of photography’s invention, painting was (and had long been) the primary medium for recording images. The art establishment had rigid guidelines for style and an official hierarchy of subject matter: First came history paintings, which sought to impart moral messages. Portraiture was next. Then came scenes of daily life, or genre paintings. Landscape and still life ranked lower still.
Roger Fenton. The Valley of the Shadow of Death (detail), 1855. Salt print from collodion-on-glass negative. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg
The nearly 250 iconic pictures in this exhibition are organized by these official categories, illuminating the possibilities and challenges that amateur and professional photographers faced while experimenting with their new medium. In each section, you’ll see how early photographers both embraced and questioned the conventions of the dominant tradition; how technical limitations hindered their attempts to imitate painting; and how, in the process, they invented new ways of seeing the world, setting the stage for our modern visual culture.
Peter Henry Emerson. Poling the Marsh Hay, c. 1886. Platinum print. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg
From the 17th century until the end of the 19th century, the fine arts academies of Paris and London considered history painting to be the supreme visual art. Large-scale, theatrical pictures illustrating stories from history, mythology, or the Bible sought to enlighten the populace.
Technical limitations prevented early photographers from taking pictures of this kind. (Long exposure times, for example, made it impossible to capture complicated multi-figure scenes.) But as cameras became faster and easier to carry, photographers realized they could narrate important events as they happened. Increasingly, in the 1870s and 1880s, photographs accompanied news stories in the press.
Gustave Le Gray’s ‘The Great Wave, Sète’ (1857) PHOTO: COLLECTION OF MICHAEL MATTIS AND JUDY HOCHBERG.
By the end of the 18th century, Enlightenment thought (which centered on reason and intellect) had increased the popularity of portrait painting. Successful artists sought to convey a sitter’s personality, or inner life, in addition to capturing physical likeness.
Early photography struggled with such nuance. The daguerreotype, the first popular photographic portrait medium, required an exposure time of several minutes to produce a detailed picture. Sitters had to remain perfectly still, in bright light, for extended periods of time. They often appeared rigid and expressionless in the resulting images.
Nonetheless, for a growing middle class who could not afford painted portraits, photographic likenesses were in great demand. Though they had only entered the market in 1839, daguerreotype studios in Paris were producing more than 100,000 portraits a year by the early 1850s.
Marie-Alexandre Alophe. Untitled, c. 1859. Albumen print from collodion-on-glass negative. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg
I would love to see this exhibit firsthand.