A truthfulness that completely defies competition: photography, collections & the Great Exhibition

Orla Fitzpatrick, Ireland’s Border Culture Research Fellow, Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, examines the role played by photography in recording the 1853 Great Industrial exhibition, tracing its subsequent use by Irish museums. Photography was heralded by W.K. Sullivan in John Sproule’s guide to the exhibition as ‘a boon to the antiquary,’ noting that ‘everything may be copied with a truthfulness that completely defies competition.’ The showcasing of the medium, which, at only fourteen years’ old, undoubtedly paved the way for its subsequent adoption by cultural institutions. Less than a year later, in March 1854, at a meeting of the Academy, the Rev. Charles Graves displayed calotype photographs of Irish antiquities by Edward King Tension (an exhibitor in 1853) and also announced that the Academy had purchased a camera with the intention of creating illustrated catalogues of its collections.