NONFICTION - Oct. 10, 1993

THE WAKING DREAM: Photography’s First Century selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection (The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Harry N. Abrams Inc.: $60; 384 pp.) Old Isaac Gilman begat the Gilman Paper Co. He also begat Charles, who begat Howard, who begat Gilman Paper’s corporate collection of European and American photographs in the medium’s first century. The selection here represents the first major show to be exhibited by the Metropolitan Museum’s new Department of Photographs, whose first curator is Maria Morrisa Hambourg. The collection was started in the mid-70s, and includes works by Roger Fenton, William Henry Fox Talbot, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Eugene Atget, Man Ray, Gyula Halasz Brassai and Robert Frank, to name a few. The title comes from John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819), in which, inspired by the nightingale’s song, the poet wonders: “Was it a vision, or a Waking Dream?” Indeed, turning through the roughly 250 photographs in the book feels like sleepwalking through history, in a pleasant, muzzy haze. There can be no doubt that while photographs had several uses, photography was, is and ever shall be its own art form. Above: Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum by Hugh Welch Diamond (British, 1808-1858). Diamond was a medical doctor and “gentleman photographer.”