Calvert Richard Jones
1845-1846
Santa Lucia, Naples

Salted paper print, from paper negatives
22.4 x 36.2 cm (8 13/16 x 14 1/4 ins, overall Image)
 
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005, Accession Number: 2005.100.947a, b
 
Curatorial description (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY - included in the exhibition "Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop")
 
Frustrated by the optical limitations imposed by photography, Jones began taking two photographs, moving the camera in a slight arc between exposures until the left-hand side of the second view coincided with the right-hand side of the first. Although simple enough to describe, such pairing of negatives was technically challenging to carry off with complete success, as the images were invariably mismatched. Despite this obvious shortcoming, this pair of images demands closer attention than a single photograph. The choice of viewpoint means that each half works well as a single image, but when they are seen together the pairing creates visual correspondence between the bed sheets and shirts on the left and the windows and awnings on the right. In later years Jones designed a binocular camera to overcome the difficulties of alignment.
 
For an analysis of this photograph: Juliet Hacking (ed.), 2012, Photography: The Whole Story, (Prestel), pp. 48-49
 
LL/54204