The first photographic images, presented by Louis Mandé Daguerre in Paris in 1839, caused a storm of enthusiasm among his contemporaries: The small images on silver-plated copper plates showed a new truth in the detailed reproduction of nature and seemed like small miracles to the astonished public.
With over 200 exhibits from an extensive private collection from Westphalia that had never been shown before, the exhibition told the cultural history of early photography and reported on the great fascination and worldwide triumph of the new image medium.
Rare original equipment and historical documents from the 18th and early 19th centuries demonstrated how the birth of the photographic image came about: from the camera obscura, the discovery of light-sensitive silver salts, to the “daguerreotype” and the first images on paper, to the widespread fashion for portrait photography, which was made possible by rapid technical development.
The exhibition shows how the first portrait photographs were kept in fine leather and velvet cases or presented in magnificent frames as an expression of special appreciation, how foreign countries and distant cultures became the focus of photographers, as did the increasingly visible poverty on the streets of the metropolises.
