Opening events, 1984

This exhibition, organized through a collaboration between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, explored the Victorian fasination with photography, from its earliest invention in 1839 through the end of the nineteenth century. Some 240 extraordinary 19th-century photographs by such photographers as William Henry Fox Talbot, Roger Fenton, John Murray, Oscar G. Rejlander, and Julia Margaret Cameron were brought together by Michael E. Hoffman, Adjunct Curator, Alfred Stieglitz Center, and Martha Chahroudi, Associate Curator of Photographs. Following the show in Philadelphia, the exhibition then traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Pew Memorial Trust and the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities each supported "The Golden Age of British Photography" through generous grants.