Early Topographic and Documentary Photography

Exhibition

Exhibition Overview

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Early Topographic and Documentary Photography
Thomas Southall, curator
South Balcony, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas

From the introduction of the first photographic processes in 1839, photography was immediately recognized as an ideal medium for the accurate recoding of familiar and exotic scenes of the world. The broad scope of this exhibition, from views of ancient Egyptian ruins to the streets of Junction City, Kansas, is reflective of the great variety of cultures, architecture, and landscapes which have been documented by the camera.
By the first decades of the twentieth century, when the most recent photographs in this exhibit were made, many of the manipulative controls available to the photographer were being used self-consciously for the first time to create a new aesthetic of photography, and anew, intentionally subjective form of documentary photography. As a brief overview, this show presents and outline of photography in its infancy and early growth, as both the photographers and their audience came to understand the potential of the medium.

Works of art

Frédéric Flachéron
1850
Paolo Salviati
mid 1800s
Alexander Gardner
1867
Alexander Gardner
1867
Alexander Gardner
1867
Carleton Emmons Watkins
circa 1859
William Henry Jackson
circa 1880s
Francis Bedford
circa 1870
Francis Bedford
circa 1870
Francis Bedford
circa 1870
Francis Bedford
circa 1870
Francis Bedford
circa 1870
circa 1880, Meiji period (1868–1912)
Edward Sheriff Curtis
1914
Joseph Judd Pennell
1921
Joseph Judd Pennell
1904
Joseph Judd Pennell
1905
Joseph Judd Pennell
1901
Joseph Judd Pennell
1899
Joseph Judd Pennell
1899
Joseph Judd Pennell
1905
Joseph Judd Pennell
1906
Joseph Judd Pennell
1899
Ernest James Bellocq, Lee Friedlander
circa 1912
Lewis Wickes Hine
circa 1910
Lewis Wickes Hine
circa 1912
Lewis Wickes Hine
1909
Lewis Wickes Hine
circa 1924