Why is there an engraving in the History of Photography?

This post is written by Sarah Brody, a student in the Photographic Preservation and Collection Management master’s program.

Despite being a rather small gallery, a great deal of work goes into curating an exhibition for the History of Photography Gallery. Our exhibit preparations spanned approximately eight months, although it is not uncommon for preparations to begin a year or more before opening.

My favorite aspect of curating this rotation was the process of selecting which photographs to show. With over 400,000 photographic objects within the George Eastman Museum’s collection, there were quite a number of photographs that related to the moon or space exploration to choose from. We began our process by searching the database and pulling viewing in person every single photographs that was relevant to our theme.

We looked at resulted in approximately 100 objects. The initial selection featured everything from amateur snapshots to a large transparency featuring an image of a werewolf. With limited wall space, we had to make significant cuts to our selections. It was important to choose objects that were not only diverse but spanned all 180 years of the photographic medium. We were able to narrow our selections down to approximately 25 objects.

For me, the most exciting object in the exhibit is actually not a photograph.
Rather, it is an engraving made by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre prior to his invention of the daguerreotype. Before his photographic invention, Daguerre experimented with the manipulation of light in other ways. He worked as a theatrical designer creating three-dimensional performances by moving light over large paintings to create an illusion of a moving scene. The spectacle was known as the diorama theatre and was quite popular in Paris in the 1820s. The engraving on view was is a moonlight study in that Daguerre used to create paintings for the diorama display. Only a few years later he would invent a method of permanently capturing the effects of light and shadow in a process now known as photography. I find this work to be an incredible introduction to the other 24 objects on display and an eye-opening reminder of what the world looked like before photography.