"Voyages and Visions: Early Photographs from the Wilson Family Collection"
2000-10-24 until 2001-02-18
J. Paul Getty Center
LOS ANGELES, CA, USA

In early 1839, news spread around the world of an entirely new way of making pictures: photography. The exhibition Voyages and Visions: Early Photographs from the Wilson Family Collection invites visitors to explore a selection of works dating from the emergence of this new medium through the 1850s. Many of the photographs are on view for the first time.

As photographic methods were refined and materials improved, photographers began to venture further afield in their attempts to document the world. Drawing from the collection of Michael and Jane Wilson as well as from the Getty's own holdings, the exhibition covers most of the world's continents through diverse photographs by such masters as William Henry Fox Talbot, Roger Fenton, and Gustave Le Gray. These photographers were keen to document the various moments, landscapes, and people of distant lands-not only as personal record of their own journeys but as visual resources for an audience who could not travel.

Whether recording man-made and natural monuments like cathedrals and rock formations or incorporating current events into their pictures, the photographers considered themselves artists. For example, Fenton's photographs of the Crimean War focus not on live battle action but on the soldiers themselves, capturing traces of the war's impact on these men. And full of light and atmosphere, Le Gray's evocative image of a sailing schooner pulled by a new steam-powered boat was made before the word Impressionism was applied to painting.

IMAGE:
llustrated: Roger Fenton.

The Artist's Van, 1855. Salted paper print.
Michael and Jane Wilson,
The Wilson Center for Photography, LLC.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in LOS ANGELES