The central importance of glass in the history of photography has often been taken for granted: a crucial material that has largely escaped commentary, as if hidden in plain sight. In 1851 English photographer Frederick Scott Archer invented the wet plate collodion, the first practical method for making photographic negatives on glass, which produced sharper and more densely toned pictures than paper negatives. By 1853, photographers had adapted the process for the ambrotype, which grew in popularity as a less expensive alternative to daguerreotypes. The introduction of dry-plate negatives in the 1870s made glass plates an easy-to-use and preferred material, which photographers continued to rely on into the 1930s. Similar technology enabled mass production of jewel-like slides for magic lantern shows, a popular form of visual entertainment into the early twentieth century. Today, contemporary photographers continue to utilize glass for its depth and beauty, as well as to ground their work in histories of photographic imagery. 

Delicate Sights spans the nineteenth century to the present day and includes works produced around the world. Works on display include glass based photographs from NOMA’s permanent collection, by such photographers as E.J. Bellocq and Joseph Woodson “Pops” Whitesell. Delicate Sights includes unique historical photographs on loan from the collections of Dr. Stanley B. Burns, Elizabeth A. Burns, and Jason L. Burns of New York. The exhibition concludes with an installation of ambrotypes by artist Felicita Felli Maynard that uses a historical process to make an important, contemporary intervention in the photographic record.  All together, Delicate Sights is an invitation to consider how glass photographs have always made it possible to see our world more clearly.

Delicate Sights: Photography and Glass is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art and is supported by the Del and Ginger Hall Photography Fund, James and Cherye Pierce, Tina Freeman and Philip Woollam, and the A. Charlotte Mann and Joshua Mann Pailet Endowment.