The Hasselblad Foundation is proud to present a fall exhibition with photographs by some of the pioneers of photography.
A large number of the images in this exhibition belong to the Gegerfelt Archives, part of the regional and city archives in Gothenburg. There are also photographs by British photographer Charles Clifford from the collection of the Gothenburg Art Museum as well as others,  from the polar expedition headed by Swedish adventurer and mechanical engineer Salomon August Andrée in 1896-1897

The exhibition contains some 70 photos, almost all of which were taken between 1850 and 1900, by more than ten photographers, including Gustave le Gray, Bisson Frères, Charles Clifford and Roger Fenton.
The main focus of the exhibition is architectural and landscape photography.

Gustave le Gray (1820-1882), is known as the most significant French photographer of the 19th century, owing to his technical innovations in the still new medium of photography, and the extraordinary imagination he brought to picture composition. Le Gray was originally trained as a painter, but moved into the new medium of photography in its early years. Le Gray used the calotype technique in his photographic work. Calotype (or talbotype) is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide.

Charles Clifford (1819-1863) was born in Wales and was appointed Court Photographer to Queen Isabella II of Spain in 1850s. He was an outstanding early photographer of Spanish landscapes and architecture. Clifford took up photography in the early 1850s, his first work used the albumen technique.
The albumen print, also referred to as albumen silver print, was invented in 1850 by L. D. Blanquart-Evrard, and was the first commercially useful method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a glass negative. It used the albumen from egg whites to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper.

Bisson Frères, Louis-Auguste (1814-1876) and Auguste-Rosalie (1826-1900) were some of the best known French photographers of their day. In the early 1850s, after switching to the calotype process, they began photographing the works of Rembrandt and Durer, after which they turned to architectural photography.

Roger Fenton (1819-1869) was a pioneering British photographer. He first became known for his still life and landscape photography. In 1855 Fenton became one of the first war photographers., covering the Crimean War on assignment for publisher Thomas Agnew, and  photographing the troops.

A vintage print is a photograph made in close connection with the development of a negative. However, in the art world the term is more widely used about old prints.

As a complement to the exhibition Vintage, the Hasselblad Foundation is also displaying a selection of photographs from our collection, with images from the American Farm Security Administration project. The FSA is well known as having been influential with a photography program run between 1935 and 1944, when photographers and writers were hired to report on and document the predicament of impoverished farmers. The Information Division of the FSA was responsible for providing educational materials and press information to the public. Walker Evans was one of the most famous photographers engaged in the project. The exhibition also includes work by Dorothea Lange, Marjory Collins, and Russell Lee among others.