Prints x Photographs―1839-1900
Honore Daumier, NADAR elevating Photography to Art, 1862, lithograph, The National Museum of Western Art
Exhibition Overview
The invention of photography brought a massive change to the world. Print art, which had been playing the same role of conveying visual information by copying images over the centuries, was affected by it more than anything.
The relationship between print art and photography in the 19th century tends to be discussed in terms of a conflict. However, in photography’s early days, there were many technical inadequacies such as the lack of mass-printing techniques and the long time it took to shoot a photo, and print art was used to complement photographic techniques in many ways back then, and thus the two were in a complementary relationship. Over time, as photography continued to make remarkable technological advances, the two sides competed to generate a variety of expressions.
This exhibition explores the competitive yet mutually supportive relationship between print art and photography, starting from 1839 when the Daguerreotype, the world’s first photographic process, was released up to the end of the 19th century when photographic technology was improved and put to practical use as a printing technology. In addition to prints and photos, we will introduce 180 related items, mainly from Europe, including cameras and photographic equipment.
Basic Information
| Duration | Oct.8.Sat. – Dec.11.Sun. |
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| Closed days | Monday *Open Monday, October 10 (public holiday) |
| Admission fees | Adults ¥900 (¥700), University and high school students ¥450 (¥350), Junior high school students and younger free of charge. Fees given in brackets are those for groups of 20 or more people. |
Days with Free Admission/ Discounts
| Free admission | Free admission on the opening day, Saturday 8 October and Culture Day Holiday, Wednesday November 3. Silver Days [free admission for those aged 65 and over] Wednesday 26 October and Wednesday 23 November. |
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| "Prints x Photographs" SNS Discount | Please post a photo of a poster, signboard, etc. with the exhibition logo on Twitter, Instagram, and other social networking services with the hashtag #Machidacitymuseumofgraphicarts. You can get a 200 yen discount on the admission ticket! Discounts cannot be combined with other discounts. |
| Discount for repeat visitors | 200 yen off all admission fees Please show your ticket stub from this exhibition at the ticket counter. |
| Share Cycle discount | 100 yen off all admission fees Please show the usage history screen of your Share Cycle app at the ticket counter. * See [here] for more about Share Cycle. |
| Taxi discount | 100 yen off all admission fees * Only one person will receive a discount for each taxi receipt |
| Passport discount | 100 yen off all admission fees Please show the cover of a non-Japanese passport at the ticket counter. |
| Web coupons | We are currently distributing “100 yen off” coupons, valid throughout the exhibition period. Please either save or print out [this coupon screen ], and show it at the ticket counter. * Discounts cannot be used together. |
Exhibition Details
Chapter 1 The Arrival of Photography and its Evolution
In the West, there had long been a wish to reproduce what is seen as it is and to leave it in the form of an image. The photographic process, which became available in 1839, was an innovative technology that made such wish a reality.
Since the Renaissance era, painters relied on theories of painting such as perspective and chiaroscuro, and occasionally used optical instruments such as camera obscura and camera lucida to produce images based on geometry and perspective. However, these instruments were merely auxiliary tools for drawing, and the quality of the artwork was dependent on the skill of a painter. The daguerreotype, which was introduced by French showman Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in 1839, is a metal plate photo that is known as the world’s first photographic process. Although it took a long time for exposure and could not be reprinted, the highly precise image like a mirror fascinated people. Subsequently, scientists worked hard to improve photographic technology, and the exposure time of the daguerreotype was shortened to a few seconds in 1840.
As each daguerreotype was unique and could not be reproduced, reproduction needed the techniques of printmakers. Meanwhile, British scientist William Henry Fox Talbot invented the calotype process based on the negative and positive process in 1841. This reprintable paper photograph achieved remarkable development, and in the 1850s, the combination of the collodion wet plate process and the albumen print that generated clear images became widely available. Accordingly, photography once dependent on the printmaking processes began to challenge the position of print art that had long been the only image reproduction technique.
Chapter 2 Conflict between Practical Use and Art
Since both print art and photography played a crucial role in “capturing images,” it was foreseeable that photography that had achieved a certain level technically would begin to encroach on the area in which print art had been dominant.
Print art played a wide range of roles as a technique to duplicate images – a technique to print images – over the centuries. “Reproduction print” is one of them. This refers to a copperplate print created based on other artworks such as oil paintings and sculpture and was widely used to convey the image of various artworks. According to the Academy’s code of conduct, reproduction prints of great artists’ paintings were recognized as distinguished works in their own right, and also valued as new artworks whereby printmakers interpreted the originals and reproduced them with a print expression. However, there is no doubt that photography surpasses print art in the field of reproduction in terms of accuracy and speed. Print art was freed from its practical role and began to seek ways to survive by becoming artistic expressions.
On the other hand, in the early days of photography when complicated work was required because of technical immaturity, a photographer was more of an engineer. However, many improvements were made in the 1840s and it became widely available to many people. As a result, some photographers became more interested in artistic expression, seeking recognition as art. Responding to such a movement, the existing art industry criticized photography and claimed that merely mechanically capturing an image in front of the lens was not art. Photographers strived to express their creativity with composition, lighting, printing, and finishing. After a process of trial and error, photographic techniques were further improved, and photography returned to its original characteristic of capturing the moment precisely to pursue ways of expression unique to itself.
Chapter 3 Photography and Print Art in Rivalry
Photography ventured into the privileged realm of print art, where images are reproduced and recorded. It was inevitable that printmaking as a technique would be replaced by photography, with the latter’s superior accuracy and speed. However, following this substitution, we can see that it was not just a technological shift, but also a change in values. In this chapter, we examine three themes in which print art was used for centuries and in which photography has been actively used to this day.
First, “Portrait” looks at how easy and inexpensive photos blurred the line between public and private portraits. Secondly, “Landscape” examines how photographers, who were attracted by the images drawn in prints, viewed actual landscapes, mainly ancient Egyptian ruins, and used existing images of such. Lastly, in “The press,” we consider the issues of subjective and objective views in reporting through press illustration prints created with imagination, along with ways of photographic reporting in an era when there was not adequate photographic technology to capture a decisive moment.
In these times when digital images have become mainstream and can be taken, sent, and edited far more conveniently than before, how will our viewpoint change?
3-1 Portrait: Private and Public
Portraits realize people’s wish to preserve, know, or inform others about the appearance of someone. Large portraits of royalty and titled nobility were symbols of authority, and portrait prints spread various figures of policymakers and intellectuals. In contrast to these public portraits, there were private portraits such as those for private rooms and portable miniatures. Expectations for portrait photography were high since the invention of photography, and as early as 1840, the first photographic portrait studio was established in London. The high-resolution daguerreotype portrait, fixed on a polished metal plate, must have come as a great surprise. After the 1850s, the issue of artistry in portrait photography was also discussed. With the invention of inexpensive carte de visite photographs in 1854, people began to casually visit photo studios, and collecting commercially available carte de visite photos of famous people, in addition to their own family members and acquaintances, became popular. The arrival and development of photography can be said to have blurred the line between public and private portraits.
3-2 Landscape: Recording and Art
Until the middle of the 19th century, the appearance of distant lands could be known through sketches by artists who went there and print arts based on them. In particular, prints showing ruins around the world have stimulated the imagination of a bygone era and increased the enthusiasm for archaeological research and cultural property protection. When the daguerreotype was introduced in 1839, what was mentioned as an example of images to be replaced by photographs was the illustration in “Description of Egypt,” a magazine that introduced ancient Egyptian ruins. Print art of landscape pictures and reproduction prints had a romantic appeal; however, it was undeniable that they were inferior to photographs in terms of accuracy of recording. The French government was quick to recognize this, and in the early 1850s launched a project to photograph the country’s historical monuments. Around the same time, writer Maxime Du Camp published a photographic travel book with photos from his trip to the Middle East. After that, professional photographers who found business opportunities visited the Mideast one after another, and photographs of archaeological sites with high artistic quality were released.
3-3 The Press: Subjective and Objective Views
Presently, events occurring across the world are transmitted immediately as images, but in the 19th century, photographs and print arts played a similar role. Beginning with the Illustrated London News (first published in 1842,) many illustrated newspapers were born, and in the West, media that reported by images rather than by texts developed rapidly. Soon after they were invented, photographs were used as illustrations in newspapers, but sketches and caricatures, in which the artist’s subjectivity had a significant influence, also continued to be used to vividly express critical moments. During the Crimean War, which broke out in the 1850s, photographers served with painters, and Fenton of England took the world’s first war photographs. His glass negatives were sent home to provide objective information on the battlefield. During the civil war over the Paris Commune, an autonomous workers’ government that was established in France in 1871, information warfare was waged through lithography and other traditional print media, and at the same time, photographers recorded the scene of the ruined city.
