Likeness: Portraiture from the Photography Collection

2010

The inception of photography brought about radical changes in the look and social uses of portraiture. The nineteenth-century photographic portrait, called a likeness, took many formal cues from traditional painted portraits, examples of which can be seen in the Museum’s European and American collections. Yet the photographic likeness quickly reached new and diverse audiences, taking on a visual vocabulary all its own and refashioning the portraiture genre.

Before photography was introduced as a commercial product in 1839, painted portraits were costly luxuries commissioned by and for the wealthy. They served as timeless representations of sitters that conveyed status and esteem through noble poses, expressive backgrounds, and symbolic props. Early photographic likenesses mimicked compositional aspects of painted portraits and were also quite expensive, but as production costs fell rapidly and the technology improved, photographs became accessible to people from all walks of life. Soon, millions of likenesses in the form of daguerreotypes, tintypes, and cartes de visite circulated throughout American and European societies, providing their possessors with immediate and portable representations of family members and friends. This democratization of portraiture, combined with the relative ease of photographic production, encouraged practitioners to move beyond the traditional space of the studio. Photographers, often in collaboration with their subjects, radically reshaped traditional modes of portrait style and meaning.

The portraits on display here, which date from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, vary widely in composition and investigate numerous issues, including social class, interpersonal relationships, and cultural differences. Yet universal themes concerning individuality and self-fashioning surface throughout. The photographer and the subject, often working in tandem but occasionally at odds, participate in a delicate negotiation of expectations. The resulting photographs—whether an intimate and unflinchingly realistic daguerreotype or a large-scale color print that camouflages the true nature of the subject through costume or artifice—capture the full spectrum of the human condition, one likeness at a time.

Curated by Julia Dolan