Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Aristocracy of Talent for an Egalitarian Art


By Roberta Smith @ NY Times

From the daguerreotype to the cellphone snapshot, the history of photography has unfolded as a series of miracles, each of which has profoundly altered our understanding of the time-space continuum. As the innovations become familiar, the photographs become miracles in another way, as connections to a past we’ve never seen.

“Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, manages to operate in the gap between both kinds of miracles, innovative and talismanic. It presents the history of a medium as well as history itself.

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