Girl with a Bee Dress

Date

2004

Creator

This striking, mysterious girl is part of a revolution that has happened many times during the last 170 years—not a radical political shift, but a technological one. Photography was the first true marriage of art and technology, and whenever the technology changed, the images changed. Daguerreotypes disappeared, replaced by albumen prints and bigger, faster wet-plate glass negatives, allowing new types of images to be captured. Dry plates, faster lenses, and flashguns freed photographers from tripods and portable darkrooms, resulting in access to new subject matter. The versatility of small 35-millimeter cameras opened up new views, producing different angles and exciting perspectives, indoors and out. The rise of digital imagery, which is rendering film photography obsolete, has opened new ways of creating and manipulating images. As in previous revolutions, most photographers are still taking the same kinds of pictures they took before, only now they are using different equipment. Others, like Maggie Taylor, have realized they can create pictures that were too difficult, if not impossible, with the obsolete materials. Ironically, this picture, which relies on cutting-edge technology, is full of old-fashioned feelings like wonder, beauty, and nostalgia. from Snite Museum of Art, Selected Works: Snite Museum of Art (Notre Dame, 2005)