Performing for the camera has become integral to social media self-marketing, having arrived at the smart phone/Facebook/Instagram nexus. But dramatic portraits go back as far as the arrival of photography itself in the 19^th century. With her costume box and props closet, Julia Margaret Cameron is perhaps the best known of Victorian-era photographers for costuming and directing her subjects, who include relatives and the notable artists, poets and thinkers who visited her studio on the Isle of Wight.

Her contemporary, Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), photographed the children of his large circle of friends, costumed, and sometimes only partly clothed. One of his most famous subjects was Alice Liddell, the girl to whom he first told the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Although he was an Oxford don, Carroll, an early adopter of the camera, was much in demand as a photographer by his friends; over his lifetime he made more than 3,000 photographs, most of which were collected in hand-bound albums.

Left: Julia Margaret Cameron (English, born in India, 1815-1879), A Beautiful Vision, Julia Duckworth, carbon print, circa 1875. Right: Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (English, 1832-1898), Xie (Alexandra) Kitchin as a "Dane", 1873. Courtesy Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs.

Cameron and Carroll are just two of the photographers whose portraits comprise the exhibition Facing The Camera, currently on view at Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs.  Among these are three rare 1862 albumen prints from glass negatives made circa 1856 by pioneering neurologist and physiologist Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1875), the first scientist to explain that facial expressions were connected to human emotions through discrete muscle actions. The results of Duchenne’s experiments and collaboration with photographer Adrien Tournachon, illustrated in Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, occupy a distinct place at the intersection of art and science.

John Beasley Greene’s (1832-1856) Venus de Milo on rooftop in Paris, a waxed paper negative from 1852-1853, will also be on view. It was made during Greene’s formative period as a student of Gustave Le Gray.

Left: Circle of Charles Simart, Male nude, clutching ladder, Folio 3 recto, from the album assembled circa 1856-1860. Right: Duchenne de Boulogne and Adrien Tournachon (French, 1806-1875 & 1825-1903), Profound suffering, with resignation, 1862. Courtesy Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs.

Contemporary work by Adam Fuss and Vera Lutter is also included. Both are inspired by the early photographers and their work resonates with that of their forerunners, On display is Lutter’s unique, Marble Torso of Eros, Metropolitan Museum, 5 November 2012, which highlights the expressive, sculpted human form. Fuss’s pinhole photographs and cameraless photograms are often concerned with temporality, memory, regeneration, and death. Untitled silhouette, 1997, a toned silver print from a photogram, is a strikingly bold self-portrait.

Facing the Camera will be on view through March 16, 2018 at Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs, 962 Park Avenue at 82^nd Street, New York, NY. Info CV19.EX.PHOTO PITCH_HYPE