[Seated Female Nude]

Unknown

ca. 1850 · Daguerreotype · Photographs

This daguerreotype was surely intended to serve artistic purposes, but the odd twist of the body and the strange relationship of the three visible limbs seem to render it inappropriate for artistic emulation. Such tension between an artistic ideal and realistic means—between the classicism of an academic pose and the awkwardness of the camera’s rendering of human movement—seems emblematic of the dilemma faced by the nascent medium striving to be an art.

Artist

Unknown

Date

ca. 1850

Medium

Daguerreotype

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005