Carnegie Museum of Art presents Digital to Daguerreotype: Photographs of People, an exhibition that chronicles the evolution of photographic processes and reveals how photographers from the last 160 years have explored the human subject through an exceptional range of practices, from daguerreotypes, to black-and-white gelatin silver prints and color chromogenic prints, to digital inkjet prints.
The exhibition will be on view through January 31, 2010, at Works on Paper Gallery.
“Since the invention of photography, people have been a favored subject for the medium. It was a revolutionary process to have a picture of a loved one; prior to the invention of photography, only the wealthy could afford to hire a painter for a portrait,” said Linda Benedict-Jones, organizer of Digital to Daguerreotype and curator of the department of photography. This is Benedict-Jones’s first show since being appointed to the newly created photography department in November 2008.
The daguerreotype—an image transferred by iodine vapor onto a mirror-like plate—was the first kind of photograph with an exposure time short enough to make it viable for portraits. It was soon followed by the tintype, the ambrotype, the cyanotype, and others. In the 20th century, black-and-white gelatin silver prints and color chromogenic prints allowed everyday people to document the places and people in their lives. Since 2000, photography has been undergoing a quiet revolution; while people are still being photographed (probably more than ever with digital cameras and cell phones), most images are shared electronically rather than produced as prints.
Digital to Daguerreotype features 73 photographs from the permanent collection and local private collections, organized in reverse chronological order. The first images on display are inkjet prints and the last are daguerreotypes, a process first invented in 1839. The final work is a daguerreotype of President Barack Obama taking the oath of office last January, captured during an eight-second exposure by New York City photographer Jerry Spagnoli.
“The daguerreotype was meant to be taken in a studio setting; it is remarkable how early technology is being reused by modern photographers. This is truly a one-of-kind photograph,” said Benedict-Jones of Spagnoli’s image.
The exhibition features rarely exhibited gems by masters of the medium, such as Julia Margaret Cameron, August Sander, Alfred Stieglitz, Chuck Close, Robert Frank, and Robert Mapplethorpe—alongside the work of little-known photographers. Photographs range from a 1958 gelatin silver print of Andy Warhol and his mother by Duane Michals to an 1887 collotype, Mother and Child, by Eadweard Muybridge, the first photographer to develop photographic sequences of people in motion. The exhibition includes four photographs by Pittsburgh Courier photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris. -- www.cmoa.org
Comment and add to the story without registration, but keep the comments meaningful please. Links are not accepted.
