Dates:
Location:
Halford Gallery, Bernard and Barbro Osher GallerySelected Works
About
In Light of Rome... comprehensively explores, for the first time in the United States, the contribution made by the cosmopolitan art center to the early history of photography and traces the medium’s rise there from a fledgling science to a dynamic form of artistic expression that forever changed the way we perceive the Eternal City. The exhibition ranges from 1842 to 1871, from the earliest pioneers—the French daguerreotypist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey and the Welsh calotypist Calvert Richard Jones—to the work of the Roman School of Photography and its successors, among them James Anderson and Robert Macpherson of Britain; Frédéric Flachéron, Firmin Eugène Le Dien, and Gustave Le Gray of France; and Giacomo Caneva, Adriano de Bonis, and Pietro Dovizielli of Italy. Featuring 112 works, many never before seen publicly, by nearly fifty transnational photographers, this presentation and its accompanying catalogue will expand our understanding of Rome’s place in the evolution of early photography, and the pivotal role it played in the refinement and technical development of the nascent medium in the nineteenth century.
Read the exhibition labels here.
Read the press release here.
Press
“Seventy years after a groundbreaking exhibition on early photography in Rome, scholarship on the subject continues to advance,” Burlington Magazine, May 1, 2023
“When in Rome…,” Boston Globe, April 19, 2023
“In Light of Rome” brings “exceptional” photography collection to the BCMA, Bowdoin Orient, February 3, 2023
“Here, There, and Everywhere: A Rome exhibit in Maine, a dreamy eclipse escape, and a clever duffel backpack," Boston Globe, January 12, 2023
“In Light of Rome Photography Exhibition Opens,” Fine Books & Collections, December 20, 2022
“Exhibition Review: In Light of Rome,” Musée, December 19, 2022
Bowdoin College Museum of Art : In Light of Rome : Early Photography in the Capital of the Art World, 1842–1871, The Eye of Photography, December 8, 2022