Editing photographs wasn’t so easy before the advent of the smartphone or Photoshop, but people always found a way to alter images. Our current display entitled “Trying to Forget: The Removal of Figures from Early Photographic Images,” guest curated by Madison Brown, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Curatorial Fellow in Photography at Harvard Art Museums, examines our desire to forget or erase certain memories. Madison selected examples that show the creative and sometimes laborious modes of alteration in early photographic work. Some tintype photos, as shown in this post, figures carved out with shears or faces roughly scratched out. These scratches and rough edges only highlight the very act of erasure, rather than achieving a complete annihilation of memory.
These objects from Special Collections at the Fine Arts Library demonstrate an enduring desire to forget, as well as the persistence of visual evidence that often forces us to remember.
The Fine Arts Library is open to all Harvard ID holders. We recently switched out tintypes and turned pages in the case, so check out the new images currently on display!
