More than 70 rare photographs by foreign and domestic masters of the 19th century, such as David Hill and Robert Adamson, Édouard Baldus, Henri Le Secq, Gustave Le Gray, Gavriil Ryumin, and Stepan Vishnevsky, from the collection of the Béton Center for Visual Culture, will be displayed at an exhibition in the center of Moscow. Most of the photographs will be presented to the public for the first time.

The Béton Center of Visual Culture presents the exhibition «Masterpieces of Early Photography», which will introduce visitors to the unique works created by renowned photographers at the dawn of photography history. Today, the works of these photographers are displayed in leading museums and private collections around the world, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the George Eastman Museum (Rochester), the Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Musée d’Orsay (Paris), the National Library of France (Paris), and others.

At the initial stage of photography development, one of the main areas of its application was the collection of information about the environment, whether it was a natural environment or an urban landscape. Later, several of the most popular types of environmental photography emerged. For example, in the scientific and applied field, images played an important role in solving topographic and engineering problems; in artistic practice, landscape and architectural photographs were used as substitutes for real-life scenes; and specialized architectural photography not only captured individual significant objects but also showcased them to the global community.
However, along with this practical application of photography, prints were also in demand at an early stage, as they were intended to entertain the public, who were eager for new experiences but did not have the opportunity to visit the locations captured by the camera. Later on, this type of image played a significant role in expanding the boundaries of subjective reality.

The emergence of portrait photography was an important milestone in the history of photography. However, due to technical challenges, early photographic portraits were primarily intended to capture the physical features of the model in order to preserve the memory of a familiar person or create a visual representation of a typical member of a community that was unfamiliar to the general public.

The «Masterpieces of Early Photography» exhibition features over 70 works by renowned international and Russian artists such as David Hill, Robert Adamson, Édouard Baldu, Henri Le Secq, Gustave Le Gray, Gavriil Ryumin, and Stepan Vishnevsky. Of particular interest is Le Gray’s photographic marina «The Brig on the Water», which marked the beginning of photomontage in landscape photography. Additionally, the hand-painted stereodaguerreotypes created by the T. Schneider and Sons photo studio, which depict the interiors of Zinaida Yusupova’s palace on Liteiny Prospekt in Saint Petersburg, are an integral part of the global cultural heritage. Today, it is important to understand that the works created at that time were the first of their kind, both in terms of subject matter and technical execution. These authors laid the foundation for photographic visual arts.

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