World history and culture: “A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum” Exhibition in Washington

June 28, 2013, the exhibition “A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum” will open in Washington.

Approximately 130 photographs from the museum’s collection trace the evolution of photography in America from a purely documentary medium to a full-fledged artistic genre. The exhibition charts a particularly American preoccupation within the larger history of photography— the use of photographs as empirical evidence of the country’s economic, social, and cultural development. Photography not only captured the country’s changing cultural and physical landscape but also evolved into an art form possessing its own language and layers of meaning.

The photos, daguerreotypes, tintypes, and photo albums on view are organized around four major themes that defined American photographic character and culture.