Galassi, Peter. Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography by Peter Galassi. .

NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1981. 152 pages, 82 plates (9 in color), 38 reference illustrations. 1st edition (unstated). Stiff illustrated wraps with minor wear to extremities. Catalog for exhibition that traveled in the U.S. in 1981-1982, this is Galassi's first significant book. (Later he succeeded John Szarkowski as chef d'oeuvre of photography at MoMA and produced many more.) Despite its title, this book includes both photography and painting and includes many photographs obviously made after, not before, the invention of photography. The object is to examine the precursors of photography in the world of painting. Biographies of the artists and photographers included in the back of the book. Artists include Robert Barker, Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld, John Constable, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, John Sell Cotman, Johan Christian Dahl, Francis Danby, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Thomas Fearnley, Caspar David Friedrich, Eduard Gaertner, Thomas Girtin, Francois-Marius Granet, Jean-Antoine-Theodore Baron Gudin, Adolf Henning, Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres, Louis-Gabriel-Eugene Isabey, Thomas Jones, Christen Kobke, John Linnell, Johan Thomas Lundbye, Ernst Meyer, Friedrich Nerly, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Jan-Frans van Dael, Carl Wagner, Ferdinand George Waldmuller, and Friedrich Wasmann. Photographers include George N. Barnard, Felice Beato, Bisson Freres, Samuel Bourne, Louis de Clerq, A. Collard, Maxime Du Camp, Roger Fenton, John B. Greene, Alfred A. Hart, Humphrey Lloyd Hime, Jean-Charles Langlois, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, Robert MacPherson, Charles Marville, Charles Negre, Timothy O'Sullivan, Andrew Joseph Russell, Auguste Salzmann, Pierre-Charles Simart, Southworth & Hawes, William James Stillman, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Linnaeus Tripe. Wraps, VG+. Summary:

Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography (1981) is a seminal exhibition catalog written by curator Peter Galassi and published by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Key Details & Summary

• Central Thesis: Galassi argues that the invention of photography in the 1830s was not merely a mechanical or chemical breakthrough, but a natural evolution of Western artistic vision. He asserts that changes in European painting conventions—specifically from the late 18th to the early 19th century—had already conditioned the human eye to see "photographically."

• Shift in Perspective: The book contrasts Renaissance linear perspective (which constructed organized, synthetic, and ideal scenes) with early 19th-century landscape painting and oil sketches. Artists began favoring cropped compositions, unexpected angles, ephemeral light, and casual details—qualities that defined the basic visual language photography would later automate.

• Exhibition Scope: The catalog features landscape sketches, studies, and prints by pre-photographic painters (such as John Constable, Camille Corot, and Thomas Jones) alongside early photographs by pioneers like Nicéphore Niépce, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Édouard Baldus.

• Impact: Before Photography redefined photo-historical scholarship by shifting the narrative from a purely technological timeline to a history of visual syntax and artistic perception.