Overview: 67 photographic prints and 2 albums acquired by the National Gallery of Art between 1998 and 2006 were presented in this exhibition, which was arranged chronologically, highlighting the museum's collection of 19th- and 20th-century European and American photographs. Included were early images by William Henry Fox Talbot, Charles Nègre, and Albert Sands Southworth, turn-of-the-century photographs by Eugène Atget, Edward Steichen, and Laura Gilpin, and photographs from the 1920s to the 1940s by Brassaï, Dora Maar, Ilse Bing, and others. The newly discovered fifth volume of Sun Prints by Alfred Stieglitz also was on view.

Early publications of photographic images were displayed in a companion installation, Photographic Beginnings: Selections from the National Gallery of Art Library, shown in Gallery 21 on the West Building Ground Floor.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Sarah Greenough, curator and head of the department of photographs, and Diane Waggoner, assistant curator, department of photographs, were exhibition curators.

Sponsor: The exhibition was made possible by the Trellis Fund and The Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation.