Painting with Light: Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelite to the Modern Age

Photography was entangled with art from the very moment of its invention by painter and printmaker Louis Daguerre in 1839. Painting with Light is the first book to look at photography’s complex and fascinating inter-relationship with painting and sculpture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Opening with the experimental beginnings of the medium in the 1830s and 40s, the book spans 75 years, from the daguerreotype to very early color photography, including the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and ravishing Symbolist and Pictorialist works, including landscapes and life studies, documentary and scientific realism, and images that experimented with atmospheric and psychological effects. It uncovers the issues raised by exchanges between photography and other media, many of them still alive today, from the question of copying vs. creating and truth vs. lies to artist vs. machine and tradition vs. modernity.
Mixing iconic and rarely seen works, Painting with Light includes over 100 reproductions and refreshing new insights.

Carol Jacobi is curator of British art, 1850–1915 at Tate.
Hope Kingsley is curator for education and collections at the Wilson Centre for Photography, London.