When painter and showman Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre burst onto
the scene in 1839 with his Daguerreotype—one of the earliest
forms of photography—“Daguerreotypemania” quickly ensued. The
art world quickly took notice of the new kid on the block, both
negatively and positively. Dominique de Font-Réaulx’s simply
titled Painting and Photography: 1839-1914 tells the not so
simple story of how photography came to influence the world of
painting, and vice versa. “[C]oncentrating less on immediate
links between a photo and a given work of painting or drawing,”
de Font-Réaulx instead focuses “on the manner in which
photography gave rise to a paradigm of representation at once
original yet familiar.” Painting and Photography: 1839-1914
outlines how what started as competition soon became an alliance
of vision that changed the way we see forever. de Font-Réaulx,
chief curator at the Musée du Louvre in Paris and senior
coordinator in the Louvre Abu Dhabi project, masterfully sets up
the pre-1839 scene first, allowing y