The Age of Salt: Art, Science and Early Photography
3 February – 6 March 2015
(click to enlarge)
James Hyman Gallery, the UK’s leading commercial gallery for vintage 19th and 20th century photography, is pleased to present the latest in a series of monographic and thematic exhibitions addressing photographs from the earliest days of the medium.
The Age of Salt: Art, Science and Early Photography, which is open to the public from 3 February to 6 March, takes as its staring point one of William Henry Fox Talbot’s greatest works and one of the finest prints outside a museum. Entitled Veronica in Bloom (1840), this exceptional print dates from the very moment in which the birth of photography was announced.
The exhibition traces the development of photography both through technical advance and through the forging of a new aesthetic, initially in dialogue with painting and then freed from this relationship. These pioneering moments include intimate untrimmed salt prints by Calvert Richard Jones and Edouard Baldus, remarkable salt prints made in Britain, France and Italy and, subsequently, the evolution of new techniques including collodion on glass, albumen printing and forms of photomechanical engravings from heliogravures by Charles Negre and Henri le Secq through to photogalvanographs by Roger Fenton.
The Age of Salt: Art, Science and Early Photography anticipates Tate Britain's exhibition of early salt prints entitled Salt and Silver (25 February ‐ 7 June 2015) and the Media Space's Revelations: Experiments in Early Photography (20 March - 13 September 2015).
Images (top to bottom):
Roger Fenton, Woods at Bolton Abbey, 1856 William Henry Fox Talbot, Veronica in Bloom, 1840 Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne, Mechanisme de la physiognomie humaine, 1862
All courtesy James Hyman Photography, London
About James Hyman Gallery:
James Hyman Gallery is the UK’s foremost commercial gallery for vintage 19th and 20th century photography. The gallery holds a substantial inventory of rare and museum-quality vintage photographs from the early days of British and French photography, through European and American Modernism, to the present day.
The gallery is a leading specialist in British Photography and represents many of the most important British photographers working today, especially those engaged in forms of subjective or contemporary documentary practice. Contemporary British photographers represented include Anna Fox, Ken Grant, Mark Power, Andy Sewell and Jon Tonks. The gallery also works with the Estate of André Kertész and is proud to represent the celebrated French New Wave photographer Raymond Cauchetier.
James Hyman Gallery is also a market leader in 20th century British art, specialising in 20th century painting, especially by the Camden Town School, St Ives artists, Kitchen Sink painters and the School of London; sculpture, especially by the post‐war Geometry of Fear Sculptors; British Pop Art; and limited edition prints. The gallery is proud to represent a select group of artists, including Dennis Creffield and Derrick Greaves, as well as the Estates of Michael Andrews, Peter de Francia, Robert Medley and Edward Middleditch.
In addition to working closely with private collectors, the gallery regularly sells and loans to museums and public collections across the world.
About Dr. James Hyman:
James Hyman received his doctorate from the Courtauld Institute in London, where he subsequently taught. He worked for the Saatchi Collection, Christie’s and Helly Nahmad Gallery before opening his own gallery in 1999. A respected academic and art historian, his book, The Battle for Realism. Figurative Art in Britain during the Cold War, 1945-‐1960 (Yale University Press, 2001) was shortlisted for the W. B. Berger Prize for studies in British Art History.
James Hyman is a world expert on Modern British art and photography from the 19th century to the present day. He is a leading authority on and supporter of British photography and will launch a new educational website devoted to British photography in early 2015.
