About

Michael Part works with and about photography. His concentration on the technical requirements of the medium is closely connected to the early history of analog photography. The title of Part’s exhibition, Mercury et al., names an element that was used in daguerreotype to bring out the image during the final stage of the process.

Developed between 1835 and 1839, daguerreotype is considered the first viable photographic process. A plate coated in silver halide is inserted into a camera; the molecular structure of the silver halide crystals is destabilized by exposure to light, which leads to …