The last day of the old year found me in the Museum of Modern Art looking at the “New Photography 2006” exhibition. Actually, since conceptual art takes place mainly in the head, there wasn’t much to look at. The good news is that now it is 2007, so the exhibition has been rendered chronologically irrelevant. But the rooms of the Edward Steichen Photography Galleries have a new selection of photographs from the museum’s permanent collection, and these are works of long enduring interest, interest that will continue when they are returned to storage and replaced with a yet another selection.

MoMA was one of the first museums to collect systematically works of photography. Early on it had exceptionally talented directors for its department of photography — Beaumont Newhall, Edward Steichen, John Szarkowski, and Peter Galassi — who understood what should be collected. They were frequently the first to spot and showcase important new photographers and to acquire choice examples of their work. No other institution has had as considerable an impact on the course of the medium, few have comparable holdings, and the museum makes good on its obligation to the public through the successive iterations of work from the permanent collection.

The latest exhibition begins at the beginning with eight daguerreotypes from the mid-19th century, all taken by Americans, but only one by a known artist. Daguerreotypes have incredible detail and an almost magical sense of the third dimension, closer to holograms than to paper prints. Most of these are in closeable holders with rich, red velvet on the interior and goldlike metal frames surrounding the image indicating how dear it is. These pictures were meant to be treasured possessions, not like cell-phone jpeg images that are sent by e-mail and deleted instantly upon being seen. They are a reminder that technologies are not necessarily replaced because their successors produce superior results, but because they are more convenient.

Each of the daguerreotypes shows a small group of people, and one can imagine that the occasion was a family event. The one I lingered over the longest, dated 1859, was a picture of a young girl, maybe 9 or 10, with a serious demeanor, wearing a white lace pinafore, and standing beside and leaning on a table. On the other side of the table sits a woman in her late 30s or early 40s wearing a white blouse with a lace collar closed at the neck with a brooch. It is hard to be sure which adjective best describes her expression: dour, introspective, thoughtful, pained, or sour. The girl and woman have similar profiles and must be mother and daughter, but beside the strong physical resemblance there is a psychological kinship. The daguerreotype’s illusion of depth makes this palpable, even as the cause for the state of the pair remains a mystery.

The rest of the first room is filled with French, English, and American photographs from the late 19th century. As in all the rooms, most of the important names are represented, sometimes by their best-known works, but sometimes by lesser known, but also shown are works by obscure or even anonymous artists. This judicious balance lets viewers with a limited knowledge of the history of photography get a sense of the heights and range the medium was capable of in any given period, and keeps the show interesting for more sophisticated visitors.

So, along with works by major photographers Roger Fenton, Edouard-Denis Baldus, and Gustav Le Gray, one can see a picture by William H. Bell from “Explorations and Surveys of the 100th Meridian” and Charles Marville’s “Rue de Rheims, From Rue des Sept-Voies” (1865–69). Marville, like Eugène Atget, was a documentarian of vieux Paris, as competent, thorough, and methodical as Atget, but entirely without his sense of drama. For Marville, a street is a street; for Atget it is a stage set. Atget’s “Couryard, 22 rue Quincampoix” (1912) makes the point; the closed area is brought to life with a blinding light that comes through the entranceway from the street.

An untitled portrait by Julia Margaret Cameron (c. 1867) presents us with a woman of absurd beauty, seen in profile so we can admire the exquisiteness of her nose and eyes and mouth and chin and hair and shoulders, and understand that the meaning of feminine was different then, and altogether lovelier.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue is represented by his famous “Grand Prix of the Automobile Club of France, Course at Dieppe” (1912) in which he exploited the characteristics of his camera’s curtain shutter to make the rear wheels of the racing car seem oval, and very fast indeed. James Van Der Zee, the chronicler of Harlem in its Black Renaissance, is represented by “Unity Athletic and Social Club, Inc.” (1926). The seven young men in tuxedos strike casual poses in their formal clothes. Several are holding cigarettes or cigars, and the overall tone is one of self-assurance, the dignity of men who are competitors.

Sixteen pictures by Helen Levitt are displayed, two of them in color. This mass gives the viewer a feeling of what an artist’s oeuvre is like — that although there may be an element of chance in an individual photograph, the ability to produce great work over and over is the result of steadfastness and technique. It is enough work to illustrate the artist’s vision, in Levitt’s case a sidewalk humanism. The pictures date from 1939 to 1982, and viewing them together is like walking around the neighborhood. One I do not recall seeing before is of two middle-aged black women, one facing the camera, her face troubled, her hands clasped. The other has her back to us, but we see that her coat is ragged. In the background is the stairway to the elevated subway and a glimpse of a boy with a wagon. There is more genuine drama here than in an hour of reality television.

This exhibition contains nearly 200 photographs. The wall plaques cite the names, countries, and dates of the artists as well as the names of the pictures, their dates, and the type of negative and/or print. There are no elaborate texts, no learned explaining. Sarah Hermanson Meister, who curated the show, wisely decided to let MoMA’s permanent collection of photographs instruct by wonder.

wmeyers@nysun.com

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