Through the Looking Glass: Daguerrotype Masterworks from the Dawn of Photography

This exhibition brought together a comprehensive collection of daguerreotypes from America, France, England, and the Mideast featuring subject matter as diverse as landscapes, architectural studies, occupations, post-mortem images, and portraiture. The daguerreotype, the earliest successful photographic technique, was introduced in France in 1839 by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, and was exported to the United States later that year. Featured in the exhibition are such rarities as a previously unpublished image of a female gold-rush miner, one of the earliest photos of Jerusalem, whole plates of Boston’s upper crust by Southworth & Hawes, and an archeological whole plate by Girault de Prangery, one of the medium’s masters. The exhibition offers a window into history as captured by the cutting-edge imaging technology of the day.

This exhibition, organized by art2art Circulating Exhibitions, included more than one hundred works, all generously lent from the collection of Judith Hochberg and Michael Mattis. It was supported by the Horace Goldsmith Exhibition Fund and the Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Exhibition Fund. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.