Exhibition Dates: September 23, 2003 -- January 4, 2004
Exhibition Locations: Galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs
Press Preview: Monday, September 22, 10 a.m. -- noon
Some 175 of the best surviving examples of a medium that changed the history of art and visual representation forever will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 23, 2003, through January 4, 2004. The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855 is the first survey of key monuments from photography's first moments, when its pioneers used the invention for artistic, scientific, ethnographic, documentary, and other purposes. The exhibition will employ state-of-the-art display and lighting techniques to reveal the incomparable detail and sculptural quality that distinguishes this process and which led one of its earliest champions, Jules Janin, to describe the daguerreotype as "divine magic."
The exhibition is made possible in part by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented: "The invention of the daguerreotype -- the earliest photographic
process -- was revolutionary, irrevocably altering the way we see and understand
our world. Not since the invention of Gutenberg's moveable type had the transmission of knowledge been so enhanced, and perhaps not until the
informational revolution of the late 20th century would such an impact be felt upon visual perception."
Among the highlights of the exhibition will be 10 daguerreotypes by the medium's inventor, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (French, 1787-1851), most never before shown in the United States, as well as rare examples of his painting and graphic art. Daguerre was a Romantic painter and printmaker, theatrical designer, and proprietor of the Diorama, a famous and popular Parisian spectacle of illusionistic effects. He perfected a photographic process initiated in 1816 by Nicéphore Niépce, and the two maintained a partnership from 1829 until Niépce's death in 1833. Examples of the new art -- astonishingly exact, one-of-a-kind images on silver-plated sheets of copper -- were presented before the French Academy of Sciences on January 7, 1839. These were the first photographs to be seen in public. Daguerre, perhaps immodestly, dubbed them "daguerreotypes."
Seven months later, after negotiating a government annuity in exchange for placing his process in the public domain, Daguerre revealed the specific steps in creating these dazzling images. So rapid and great was the success of the new medium that a caricaturist, Théodore Maurisset, lampooned the "Daguerreotypomania" that had already swept the world by December 1839.
Over the next two decades, before they were replaced entirely by paper photography, millions of daguerreotypes were made by great artists, itinerant artisans, gentlemen amateurs, explorers, astronomers, and archivists on both sides of the Atlantic. Most have disappeared in the course of time, but the works on view in The Dawn of Photography include superb examples that have survived the intervening century and a half.
Painters, of course, were among the first to understand that Daguerre's invention would change the course of art. Some resisted the new medium, some exploited it
as an aid to painting, and others embraced it as a new means of expression. Self-consciously artistic works are amply represented in the exhibition, including a lyrical landscape near Troyes (George Eastman House, Rochester) by the painter Alexandre Clausel; an exquisite study of two standing nudes (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) by Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin (some of whose "photographic studies for artists" were deemed obscene by the authorities, thus earning him a month in jail and a 100-franc fine); and numerous posed tableaux vivants by the gentleman-amateur photographer Louis-Adolphe Humbert de Molard, including Louis Dodier as a Prisoner (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) in which the foreman of his estate sits on a straw-covered floor, his hands bound in chains and his eyes fixed in a sultry stare.
One of the most frequent subjects of daguerreotypes was the portrait, which fulfilled the natural desire to leave one's visage to loved ones and to posterity. Among the famous artists and writers portrayed in the exhibition are Daguerre himself, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-François Millet, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas. There are also many striking portraits of people whose identities are lost to history but whose characters remain palpable on the daguerreotype plate.
Scientists immediately recognized the potential of this new medium. They harnessed the camera to telescopes and microscopes, seeking to maximize the daguerreotype's capacity for recording whatever came before the lens with unparalleled exactitude. Daguerreotypes by Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault showing the solar spectrum and blood cells of a frog are among the scientific images in the exhibition. Daguerreotypes of skulls, skeletons, and living men and women of various racial types—made in the 1840s for the renowned museum of natural history in Paris, the Musée de l'Homme, and still in its archives—are also included.
Equally astonishing to 19th-century viewers and fascinating to modern
audiences are the images of distant lands that daguerreotypists brought back to Paris. Hippolyte Gaucheraud, writing on the day before Daguerre's photographs were to be revealed to the Académie, wrote presciently, "Travelers, you will soon be able, perhaps, at the cost of some hundreds of francs, to acquire the apparatus invented by M. Daguerre, and you will be able to bring back to France the most beautiful monu-ments, the most beautiful scenes of the whole world. You will see how far from the truth of the Daguerreotype are your pencils and brushes." Daguerreotypes made by Alphonse-Eugène-Jules Itier in Macao, by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey in Athens, Cairo, and Lebanon, and by Jean-Pierre Alibert in Siberia are among the earliest surviving photographs of these locations. Four large and extraordinarily beautiful daguerreotypes made on the Acropolis in Athens by Baron Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gros in 1850 are among the highlights of the exhibition: the façade of the Propylaea (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal), a bas-relief from the Parthenon (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), a Nike tying her sandal (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris), and the Erechtheion (Therond Collection, Paris.)
The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855 is organized at the Metropolitan by Malcolm Daniel, Acting Curator-in-Charge of the Museum's Department of Photographs, with the assistance of Stephen Pinson, Aaron and Betty Lee Stern Research Fellow in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan in 2002-2003.
A fully illustrated, scholarly catalogue on CD-ROM, published by The Metropolitan of Art, will be available in the Museum's book shop for $29.95. In addition to reproductions and catalogue entries of all works in the exhibition, the
CD-ROM includes essays by Quentin Bajac and Dominique Planchon-de Font-
Réaulx, both of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and co-curators of the exhibition; Christine Barthes of the Musée de l'Homme, Paris; André Gunthert of the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris; Sylvain Morand of the Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg; Stephen Pinson; Françoise Reynaud of the Musée Carnavalet, Paris; and Paul-Louis Roubert of the Société française de photographie, Paris. The CD-ROM also includes a computer animation of the daguerreotype process and an anthology of early texts in translation as well as in the original French.
The accompanying CD-ROM is made possible in part by the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Inc.
The Museum plans a number of educational programs in conjunction with the exhibition. Lectures by Mr. Pinson, Ms. Planchon-de Font-Réaulx, and Mr. Bajac will take place in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium on Sunday, October 19, beginning at 2:00 p.m., following a 1:00 p.m. screening of the 1964 film Daguerre: The Birth of Photography (directed by Roger Leenhardt). Mr. Daniel will lead gallery talks in the exhibition at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, October 7; Thursday, October 16; Wednesday, October 22; Thursday, November 13; and Friday, December 19; and at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, December 12.
Educational programs have been made possible by The Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust.
The exhibition will be featured on the Museum's Web site (www.metmuseum.org).
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