PAC members have been invited to join the opening events for the exhibition Salt and Silver: Early Photography 1840-1860.

A symposium (including a presentation by the Getty Museum's Mazie Harris) will be held in the Scripps Humanities Auditorium on Sat., Nov. 10 from 3–4:30 p.m., dinner is at 5pm, and an opening reception at the Williamson Gallery is from 7–9 p.m Click here for more details and a full schedule of events.

Cost including dinner is $33 per person. No refunds after November 3.

Salted paper prints, with their soft images in charcoal, sepia, and ochre, represent one of the earliest photographic technologies and offer rare glimses into seldom seen worlds. Salt and Silver presents more than 60 salted paper prints by renowned photographic pioneers such as William Henry Fox Talbot and the studio of Mathew Brady. Fragile and fewer in number than the metal daguerreotypes and tintypes predominant during this era, salted paper prints offer a glimpse into the early world of photography, as well as previously unseen landscapes.“This exhibition presents photography when it was a completely new imaging technology,” said Hope Kingsley, lead curator. She added: “The pictures show an experimental richness that gives us access to photography’s beginnings as a compelling artistic and documentary medium.”

With their hand-coated edges and organic colors, these prints are like pictures out of a storybook, giving these historical prints a fantastical aura. The process was the result of technological advances made during the early 19th century, in which a faint latent negative image was chemically developed to the full density and fixed, and then used to print many positive prints. “With this new portable technology,” said Gallery Director Mary MacNaughton, “photographers were able to take photographs around the world for the first time. Indeed, this exhibition presents rare glimpses of life in 19th-century Europe, Middle East, and the Americas.” Glimpses of lives long-forgotten, yet still accessible through these images.