A new exhibition documents American photography’s first 70 years, exploring the US during a period of immense social, geographical and industrial change.Modern culture is indebted to photography. “We can’t be literate in today’s world if we don’t know how to make and share and interpret images”, Jeff Rosenheim, photography curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, tells the BBC.
“And when did camera culture become so much a part of all of our lives? It actually started in the 1840s and 50s.”Though originating in Europe, “the speed with which this medium took hold in the US is one of the great surprises,” says Rosenheim, who, thanks to the incredible range of early American images in the William L Schaeffer Collection, a recent gift to the museum, saw an opportunity “to tell an expanded story about the birth of this medium”.The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910, which opened on 11 April, documents American photography’s first 70 years through 225 photographs, reversing the usual top-down approach by focusing on unknown makers that tell nuanced stories about the US during a period of immense social, geographical and industrial change.
Young Man with Rooster (Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, William L. Schaeffer Collection, Promised Gift of Jennifer and Philip Maritz)“I quickly realised that there was fantastic picture-making, really important stories, outside of the big cities, all across the country,” says Rosenheim. One suc.
_updates.jpg)
