The Image Wrought: Historical Photographic Approaches in the Digital Age December 29, 2009

In sharp contrast to the broad embrace of digital technology, a growing contingent of contemporary photographers is revisiting 19th-century photographic approaches. These photographers, whose aesthetic goals cannot be met through the seamless resolution of the pixel, are returning with increasing frequency to archaic processes such as the daguerreotype (which was almost extinct by 1860), the cyanotype, and the tintype. Wrought from silver, gold, mercury and iron, the resulting images have a strong physicality and presence and seek out the particular technical challenges of these difficult and often unstable media. Drawn from the holdings of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, this exhibition of some 80 works (including period cameras and equipment to make the processes in question more transparent) makes use of the Center's expansive photographic collections to present contemporary images alongside vintage examples of their 19th-century predecessors. These pairings allow us to examine how contemporary photographers view the past-some relying on an almost sentimental continuity, others contrasting with radically fresh imagery.