How Photography Changed Painting (and Vice Versa)
When painter and showman Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre burst onto the scene in 1839 with his Daguerreotype—one of the earliest forms of photography—“Daguerreotypemania” quickly ensued. The art world quickly took notice of the new kid on the block, both negatively and positively. Dominique de Font-Réaulx’s simply titled Painting and Photography: 1839-1914 tells the not so simple story of how photography came to influence the world of painting, and vice versa. “[C]oncentrating less on immediate links between a photo and a given work of painting or drawing,” de Font-Réaulx instead focuses “on the manner in which photography gave rise to a paradigm of representation at once original yet familiar.” Painting and Photography: 1839-1914 outlines how what started as competition soon became an alliance of vision that changed the way we see forever. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Photography Changed Painting (and Vice Versa)."
[Image: (Left) Théodore Chassériau, The Two Sisters, c. 1845, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris. (Right) Anonymous, Portrait of Twin Sisters, c. 1848, colored daguerreotype, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © Painting and Photography: 1839–1914 by Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Flammarion, 2013.]
[Many thanks to Rizzoli USA for providing me with the images above and a review copy of Dominique de Font-Réaulx’s Painting and Photography: 1839-1914.]