The first stiffly posed daguerreotypes of the famous--startling, unique, and fragile lifelike images--were handheld and treasured. Today, mass-produced images of the well known are more often made to startle by challenging convention and then circulated more for profit and diversion than for edification. In the one-hundred and sixty years since photography's invention, honoring people of serious achievement has yielded to the demands of an image-hungry mass media and a public that have come to value the famous for their notoriety and the cathartic experience they offer. Fame After Photography provides a historical context for people to consider how the histories of fame and photography have been intertwined from the moment photography was invented, and to reflect upon how our fascination with images of the famous throughout history have mirrored the changing values of our changing times. In a world used to endlessly reinventing itself through changing photographic images, it is difficult to realize just how shocked people were to see the first photographs, how their perception of the world, as well as their consciousness, was forever altered by photography. Because of its unprecedented technical power to describe and record a world just beginning to be transformed by technology, photography quickly and firmly established itself as the medium best suited to record the accomplishments of its most important men and women. The studios of the first photographers were frequently visited by a curious public, and when photographers such as Nadar (Gaspar-Felix Tournachon) in Paris or Mathew Brady in New York City competed with other studios for famous subjects--leaders of government, business, and culture--their goals were twofold: to capture the likeness of the illustrious of their times and to make a name for themselves. Widespread fascination with the new pseudosciences of physiognomy and phrenology led people to believe that a person's appearance, the literal form of their bodies, expressed their true essence. Capturing images of the famous for posterity then was believed to morally benefit those who viewed them later. And because the display and sale of those pictures of the famous attracted the person in the street, who were themselves potential customers for portraits, from the earliest days photographic images of the famous also served to entertain, lure, and sell products to a public eager to measure themselves against those recognized and lauded by society.

Valente-Van Steen. Front cover of Stage magazine, featuring Katharine Cornell in Saint Joan. March 1936. Offset lithograph, 14 x 10" (35.6 x 25.4 cm). Courtesy Richard S. West/Periodyssey   select image for enlarged view

 

2/8

 
 

 
©1999 The Museum of Modern Art, New York