Playing With Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage

Let's hope this exhibition reaches the British shores shortly as it appears to be making its way round the world. There has already been a number of interesting comments made of this exhibit on this blog. For those of you who can't wait, the catalogue is available from Amazon (ISBN-10: 0300141149).

This exhibition showcases the little-known phenomenon of Victorian photocollage. Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Elizabeth Siegel, it features more than 40 of the best albums and loose pages from collections across the United States, Europe and Australia — many rarely, if ever, seen in public before.

With sharp wit and dramatic shifts of scale, these delightful collages upend the serious conventions of photography at that time. They also reveal the accomplished hands and educated minds of their makers — taking on the new theory of evolution, addressing the changing role of photography, and challenging the strict conventions of aristocratic society. And while these unique compositions may seem wonderfully odd to us now, they are actually perfectly in keeping with the Victorian sensibility that embraced juxtaposition and variety. They also offer enduring inspiration for photographic experimentation today.

Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago