Audio Guide
Listen to fresh perspectives on early American photography.
This tour runs approximately 40 minutes.
600. Introduction
Welcome to The New Art: American Photography, 1839–1910
JEFF ROSENHEIM: Something remarkable happened about 185 years ago. It was kind of a celestial event that changed the world as we know it. It was the invention of a new medium. We called it photography.
Hi, I'm Jeff Rosenheim. I'm the Curator-in-Charge of Photographs here at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and I'm the curator of this exhibition.
NARRATOR: The exhibition you’re about to see features American photographs from this revolutionary new medium’s first seventy years. They come from a single collection, amassed by William L. Schaeffer, and they were donated to The Met by Jennifer and Philip Maritz.
ROSENHEIM: This exhibition explores the transformation of the country, of the United States, through the lens of photography.
NARRATOR: The majority of the photographs you’ll encounter have never before been exhibited. Most of the people involved—both behind the camera, and in the photographs—–are not famous. We don’t even know who many of them are.
ROSENHEIM: This rarely seen body of photographs are going to allow us to tell a new history of American photography.
Most art history is told from the top down, with canonized, bold-faced names. But this exhibition is expanding the canon dramatically. It's a tour of American photography from the bottom up.
NARRATOR: Throughout this Audio Guide, you’ll hear from curator Jeff Rosenheim, alongside other writers, artists, and cultural historians. We suggest you begin with the gallery to the left, where you’ll see some of the earliest photographs in the exhibition.
To hear how the poet Walt Whitman inspired the curator of this exhibition, listen to the next stop on the playlist.
- 600. Introduction
- 600, Part 2. Walt Whitman’s America
- 601. Early Daguerreotypes
- 602. Postmortem Photography
- 603. Meta Images of Photographers
- 604. Tintypes: Fooling Around
- 605. Pride of Place
- 606. Portraits of Black Americans
- 607. Ambrotypes: Occupational Portraits
- 608. Nature Photography and Landscapes
- 609. The Civil War and the Camera
- 610. Mineral Extraction
- 611. The Civil War: Capturing Slavery
- 612. Views by Philadelphia Amateur Photographers, ca. 1874–99
- 613. Applied Color: Grandma and Grandpa Miller
- 614. Female Photographers: Anna K. Weaver
- 615. Cabinet Cards: “Oddities”
- 616. Cartes de Visite: Imagination and Whimsy
- 617. Portraits of Indigenous Americans
- 618. Stereographs: Armchair Travel and Westward Expansion
- 619. Cyanotypes
- Credits
Playlist
Jeff L. Rosenheim
Jeff Rosenheim joined The Met in 1988. The author of ten books on Walker Evans, Jeff is the steward of the Walker Evans Archive, which the Metropolitan acquired in 1994. He is also the custodian of the Diane Arbus Archive. Rosenheim has a BA in American studies from Yale University, and an MFA in photography from Tulane University. He has lectured extensively, curated numerous exhibitions, such as Photography and the American Civil War (2013), and published essays on a wide range of artists including Carleton Watkins, Thomas Eakins, Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston, and Stephen Shore.
- MetPublications: Selected Publications by Jeff Rosenheim
Lucy Sante
Lucy Sante is a writer, critic, and artist. She is author of Evidence (1992), Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard, 1905–1930 (2009) and most recently I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition (2024).
Makeda Best
Makeda Best is a curator, writer, and historian of American photography. She is currently deputy director of curatorial affairs at the Oakland Museum of California.
Siobhan Angus
Siobhan Angus is an art historian and curator specializing in the history of photography and the environmental humanities. She is currently assistant professor of media studies at Carleton University and author of Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography (Duke University Press 2024).
Wendy Red Star
Wendy Red Star, of the Piegan clan and from the district of Pryor, engages in a multidisciplinary artistic practice grounded in the history and cultural knowledge of the Apsáalooke (Crow) people. Raised on the Crow reservation in Montana, her work reflects her deep connection to her community, culture, and land.
Photo credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation