New Exhibition Charts the Origins of Photography’s Power in Britain

17 January 2023

A new exhibition at the Bodleian's Weston Library curated by Professorial Fellow Geoffrey Batchen explores the early history and impact of photography in Britain.

The announcement of photography’s invention in January 1839, first in Paris and then in London, introduced a ‘new power’ into British life. This new power – derived from photography’s capacity to automatically capture the images created in a camera – was soon being used for every conceivable purpose. A New Power: Photography and Britain 1800-1850 starts with the invention of the medium and the earliest dissemination of photographic images in Britain and ends with the famous Great Exhibition of 1851. It examines the broad range of uses that photography would quickly come to fill, from the invention of celebrity and the documentation of working-class street workers to the very first travel and ethnographic photography, all in the context of colonial and capitalist expansion.

Comprising over 160 items, drawn from both public and private collections, this ground-breaking exhibition features not only early daguerreotypes and salted paper prints but also paintings, sculptural busts, periodicals, prints and even elements of the first computing engine, along with various kinds of copies of photographs used to illustrate newspapers and books.    

Geoffrey Batchen is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford and a specialist in the history of photography. He says of the exhibition: ‘By showing how photography intersected with all aspects of a nascent modernity, A New Power reveals photography’s crucial role in making Britain the society it is today. But it also breaks with the usual way the history of photography is conceived by focusing on the advent and proliferation of the photographic image, rather than just the photograph.’

The exhibition will be on display in the ST Lee Gallery of the Weston Library from 1 February to 7 May; a scholarly symposium responding to the exhibition will be held at the Bodleian Library on March 18. In a special related lecture, Professor Batchen will will show how photography intersected with all aspects of a nascent modernity, helping to make Britain the society it is today. ‘Modern Times: Photography in Britain 1800–1850’ will take place on 17 March at 1pm.