Photography has evolved immensely since its invention in the early 1800s, but visitors to the Palmer Museum of Art can now witness the common artistic thread linking each image in history.

Photographs from the Permanent Collection opened June 5 at the museum and will continue until Aug. 19 in Special Exhibitions Gallery I.

Joyce Robinson, curator of the exhibit, said the intent of the exhibit was to showcase pieces from the collection that thematically display the artistry of photography.

"When you see a show like this, you realize there is an art to taking photographs," she said.
The small exhibit of 36 photographs varies in composition and time period. Visitors are greeted by a 1932 portrait of a shrugging Ansel Adams, whose own photography will be featured in another exhibit, Art, Science and Invention, Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, which opens on July 12.

"There's a lot of interesting tech-niques, from daguerreotypes to digital images, and a lot of richness in the examples," Robinson said.

Daguerreotypes are early photographs that were captured by directly exposing an image onto a polished surface of silver. A predecessor to photography, this technique, which yields extremely detailed, mirrored images, was prominent in the 1840s.

"[Photography is] a glimpse into a different world," Dana Kletchka, curator of education at the museum, said. "You get to visit another era or another place through someone that has been there."

The world showcased in the exhibit carries the visitor from a moonlit cityscape of Pittsburgh by W. Eugene Smith in 1955 to a rainy day in Bombay by Steve McCurry in 1992.

Many of the images are in black and white, but those in color, such as the photograph by Cindy Sherman -- a portrait of the artist posing as an aging, heavily made-up woman -- use a sharp contrast of bright color to focus the viewer's attention.

Robinson explained that early in photography's history, a movement began that wanted to emulate painting so that the photographers would be more respected, such as in Edward Steichen's "Self-Portrait" from 1903.

"They're arguing that they are artists, not just photographers," she said.

The reaction to these artistic images is also represented in the exhibit, those like "Iris Facing the Winter" by Paul Strand, with its sharp detail found in an ordinary plant.

Robinson said the wide range of images gives visitors an idea of the broad spectrum of photography and its purpose.

"Photography, certainly in a digital age, can be manipulated, but even in really early images, it's about artifice," she said.