Today, most of us take for granted the invention and existence of photography. Yet, in 1839, it landed on our shores as a technological bombshell, as transformative as the steam locomotive, the steam ship and the electric telegraph. They arrived almost at the same time and like the computer, the internet and AI are to us, dramatically shortened the distances between people and places, and forever changed the way civilizations communicate.
Jeff L. Rosenheim, the Met Museum’s Curator of the Department of Photographs, is even more expansive in his view of the medium. “The camera and its myriad democratic products – rivals to the greatest literature of the era – are clearly the origin of modern communication and global image-sharing today.” Back then, American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, “Our age is ocular.” It is even more so today, especially via the personal iPhone, a hand-held device that is the same size as card-mounted early photographs.
The Museum, drawing from the William L. Schaeffer Collection, a recent gift, has put together a sensational exhibition of early American photography, from every stage of its early development: daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, salted paper prints, cyanotypes, platinum prints, and gelatin silver prints. It’s a “must see” for anyone interested in the art form.
As Max Hollein, CEO of the Met put it, “Through an impressive array of 19th and early 20th century images that capture the complexities of a nation in the midst of profound transformation, this exhibition offers something new even for those well-versed in the history of the photograph.”
The three galleries are mostly organized by picture format. Many images have never been seen before. Especially fascinating to this viewer are positive post-Civil War portraits of African Americans. In fact, Frederick Douglass, lecturing throughout the country, famously said, “No one could be truly free until each individual could sit for and possess their own photographic likeness.”
The exhibition also features a selection of 19th century American cameras.
Photos by Eleanor Foa-Dienstag
Top photo: Matthew B. Brady (1823-24 – 1896
Engineer Corps, 12th New York State Militia,
Camp Anderson, Washington, D.C., May-June 1861
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through
Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2019 (2019.494)
