Every Picture Tells a Story

When they look at a photograph, most people look at the image to remember an event. In the case of researchers consulting photo archives, they are seeking information from the details of the pictures.

Since the beginning of photography in the early nineteenth century, over one hundred processes have been used to capture visual information and to distill it into portable images. The photochemical process of photography has required a capture device, chemicals, and a surface on which to display the image. Billions of images have recorded places and events, family and friends—what we want to remember.

But when we look at a photograph, what does it tell us about when it was made, or how it was created?

The Frick Art Reference Library’s Photoarchive has more than one million images of works of art, many taken on photography expeditions during the early twentieth century. In addition, The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives contain photographs dating from the latter part of the nineteenth century that document the history of photography and the various processes used to create the images. The Frick family displayed a keen interest in this new technology. In the late 1890s, using the same cyanotype technique as is used in the production of blueprints, Childs Frick documented friends, interiors and exteriors of houses, and landscapes in Pittsburgh. In 1909, Helen Clay Frick illustrated a catalog of her father’s collection of paintings using platinum prints. When she founded the Frick Art Reference Library in 1920, she began collecting photographs of paintings taken by professional photographers and mechanical reproductions found in printed publications such as auction catalogs. From film-based photographs to today’s digital images, at least
twelve different photographic processes have been documented in the Library’s collection. The intention of this exhibition is to help clarify what we often overlook in photographs—what they are made of and how they are different.

Curated by Donald David, Luciano Johnson, George Koelle, and Don Swanson.

Click to view the exhibition brochure.

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