Animals in Art - Early Photographs

I stumbled across this mysterious daguerreotype of a bird from 1851.
It is one of the first photographic images taken of an animal...

19th Century Stereographs

Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In fact,
matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, ...

... except as the mould on which form is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from different points of view, and that is all we want of it. Pull it down or burn it up, if you please. We must, perhaps, sacrifice some luxury in the loss of color; but form and light and shade are the great things, and even color can be added, and perhaps by and by may be got direct from Nature.
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