Photography at the National Gallery

Where: National Gallery of Art, West Building

When: closing December 8, 2019 (today!)

Yikes, I didn't realize how quickly this show was closing - glad I didn't put off going until next week, or I would have been out of luck.  If you want to see it for yourself, head on out right now.

This is a survey of the Gallery's photography collection from the first 50 years' worth of material they own.  So you see pieces from the very beginning of the medium through the late 1900s.  William Henry Fox Talbot called photography a "little bit of magic realized,"  and it would certainly have seemed magical when the technology first debuted.

Although I'm not wild about very early photography or black and white photography generally, I did wander around the show with a great sense of self-satisfaction.  Very bad for my character, no doubt, but quite fun in the moment.

I was puffed up because I saw several pieces I recognized from earlier shows, including the works of Charles Marville, the photographer who documented the changes in Paris in the 1800s.  I also saw the photo "Scourged Back," a photograph of a former slave named Gordon.  And the photographs of the American West (from a show at American Art) that made me want to go and see the grandeur for myself are on display as well.  And the Alexander Gardner pictures of the dead of the American Civil War, which brought the horror into American homes and featured rearranged corpses - perhaps a forerunner of deepfake videos?

Verdict: There's a lot to like in this show - if you're a fan of photography, hope you got a chance to see it.