Art: Two Billion Clicks

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The first act goes back to 1822 or 1826 (the date is uncertain), when a French aristocrat with an unlikely name, Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce, and a Parisian scene-painter named Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre developed the professionally workable "daguerreotype." It was so successful that a French cartoon soon complained that half of mankind had become "daguerreocrazed," while the rest was "daguerreomazed."*Everything in sight was caught on the magic plates—Victor Hugo's hand, the moon, the 30th reunion of the Yale class of 1810, President John Quincy Adams (first U.S. President ever photographed). But already the revolt against realism had begun. A Swedish photographer named Oscar Rejlander invented the composite photograph, and started to turn out allegories. His most startling picture was produced from 30 separate negatives : The Two Paths of Life, showing one youth embarking on a career of virtue, illustrated by chaste and busy maidens on one side of the picture, while another youth started out on a course of licentiousness, dramatized by fetchingly nude ladies and assorted revelers on the other (and considerably larger) side of the work.