Photography is a melding of art and technology. While it is difficult to separate photography from photographs, our focus is upon the artistic and historical impact of that technology. The technology itself, interesting though it is, would have been of no lasting significance if it had not given us a vivid record of the social, artistic, historical, and political events over the past two centuries.

The exhibit illuminates the way photography advanced our comprehension of life and history as the technology of making and preserving images developed from the daguerrotypes of the mid 1800s to the digital generation, processing and distribution of images in 2010. Today we view events throughout the world with an accuracy and timeliness that were not even imagined in the 18th century and barely comprehended in the 19th century. The impact has been profound: we may prefer not to have seen such vivid images as those of the great depression, 9/11 terrorism, Civil War battlefields or the Haiti earthquake, but the photographic records of these events makes them impossible to ignore and stimulates a wide and energetic human reaction.