As we can see from Charles Thurston Thompson‘s photograph of the 1858 Exhibition of the Photographic Society of London, no one knew how to hang a photograph on a museum or gallery wall at this point in the nineteenth century, or how to look at such a photograph. The exhibition took place in a room where refreshments were served, rather than in an official gallery, and the chairs lined up in the middle of the room appear to be those normally used for this purpose. It is also organized more like a bazaar than an exhibition hall [and the room in which it was staged] is very decorative—so much so that it must have deflected attention away from the photographs on its walls…

And this isn’t the only distraction. The man sitting behind the covered table on the right side of the room is doing business with the hard-to-see man on the other side of the table, who is apparently purchasing—or thinking of purchasing—one of the photographs in the exhibition. Ornate stereoscopes are arranged on tables, encouraging visitors to peer through them, instead of standing in front of the photographs on the walls. Stereoscopes, framed photographs, a decorative room, a financial transaction: each calls for a different kind of looking. Is it any wonder, given all of these competing spectatorial demands, that the only trace of a viewer in this photograph is the hat left on an oddly-angled chair, stranded midway between the stereoscopes and a wall of photos?

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