A History of Photography

This installation in the History of Photography Gallery, on view from May 12 to October 8, 2017, provides an overview of the history of photography through photographs of architecture, one of the medium’s earliest and most popular subjects. The photographs were made by a variety of practitioners—professionally trained architectural photographers, tourists, artists—and highlight the wide range of approaches that photographers have adopted in their depictions of the built environment.

The George Eastman Museum photography collection is among the best and most comprehensive in the world. With holdings ranging in date from the announcement of the medium’s invention in 1839 to the present day, the collection represents the full history of photography. Works by renowned masters of the medium exist side-by-side with vernacular and scientific photographs. The collection also includes all applications of the medium, from artistic pursuit to commercial enterprise and from amateur pastime to documentary record, as well as all types of photographic processes, from daguerreotypes to digital prints.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.