Past Light: Vintage Photographs

Before there was digital photography, there was photography. Scientists have described photography as the perfect mechanical rendering of nature. Artists have described photography as painting with light. Some churches in Europe condemned photography for only God had the power of creation. Honoré de Balzac feared that some part of his self was stripped away when photographed. In 1839, Daguerre introduced the world to the daguerreotype; the Provincial Archives of Alberta's Past Light exhibit explained what all the fuss was about.