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| William Edward Kilburn Chartist Meeting in London 1848 daguerreotype Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| William Henry Fox Talbot Oak Tree in Winter ca. 1842-43 salted paper print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Auguste Vacquerie La Main de Madame Hugo ca. 1853-54 salted paper print George Eastman House, Rochester, New York |
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| Roger Fenton Dinornis Elephantopus ca. 1855 albumen print Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| William and Frederick Langenheim Eclipse of the Sun 1854 daguerreotypes Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| John Adams Whipple and James Wallace Black The Moon ca. 1857-60 salted paper print from glass negative Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally. It is time, then, for it to return to its true duty, which is to be the servant of the sciences and arts – but the very humble servant, like printing or shorthand, which have neither created nor supplemented literature. Let it hasten to enrich the tourist's album and restore to his eye the precision which his memory may lack; let it adorn the naturalist's library, and enlarge microscopic animals; let it even provide information to corroborate the astronomer's hypotheses. In short, let it be the secretary and clerk of whoever needs absolute factual exactitude in his profession – up to that point nothing could be better. Let it rescue from oblivion those trembling ruins, those books, prints, and manuscripts which time is devouring, precious things whose form is dissolving and which demand a place in the archives of our memory – it will be thanked and applauded. But if it be allowed to encroach upon the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary, upon anything whose value depends solely upon the addition of something of a man's soul, then it will be so much the worse for us!"
– Charles Baudelaire, from the Salon of 1859, quoted by Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Harvard, 1999)
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| Julia Margaret Cameron Study of Dead Child 1868 albumen print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Adrien Constant de Rebecque Man Posing as Dying Soldier ca. 1863 albumen print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Thomas Eakins Man Walking ca. 1880-90 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Kennedy & Schenck Excision of the Radius of Brig. Genl. Penrose, formerly Colonel 15th New Jersey Vols. ca. 1865 albumen silver print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Louis Igout Album d'Études - Poses ca. 1880 albumen silver prints from glass negatives Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Dr. Samuel A. Bemis Barn in New Hampshire ca. 1840 daguerreotype Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Franck Colonne Vendôme, Paris (pulled down by Communards) 1871 albumen silver print from glass negative Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Béchard-Henri- Climbing the Great Pyramid ca. 1860-80 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Alinari & Cook Hall of the Emperors' Busts - Capitoline Museum, Rome ca. 1890 albumen silver print National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |