Little Pictures Difficult to See

… little pictures …

Toronto. Ev and future editor Bob Lansdale visited the GEH in 1993 to join the Daguerreian Society’s 5th annual symposium. The symposium speakers were reviewed in issue 19-4 by Renaté Wickens-Feldman who taught photography in the Department of Visual Arts at Toronto’s York University.

She begins her article as follows, “On October 15-17, Rochester’s George Eastman House (GEH) was the site of the Fifth Annual Symposium of The Daguerreian Society. The meeting, held in conjunction with the Regional Photographic History Group, was complemented by five exhibitions at Eastman House and two at The Strong Museum.

“Most notable were the Eastman House’s ‘Now and Then: Making the Daguerreotype’ and ‘Language of Light: Masterworks from the Collection.’

“The 213 participants at the event (a three- fold increase over the turnout at the original 1988 gathering) were also treated to an optically dizzying 48 table Trade Fair featuring daguerreotypes and, to a lesser extent , antique photographs. The Fair, in turn contributed $5700 toward publishing the Daguerreian Annual.”

The title of this post is a put down remark by a ‘seminal historian’ who ‘is reported to have dismissed these daguerreotypes as “little pictures, difficult to see, of people no one cares much about.”

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