How will you remember your time in college 40 years from now? University students in the nineteenth century had a novel answer to this question: by looking at photographs. Within a few years of the photography’s invention in 1839, Edward Lasell, Professor of Chemistry at Williams College, saw its potential to contribute to the unique memory culture around the college experience. Professor Lasell took daguerreotype portraits of the members of the class of 1845 “to be left at the college as class memorial.” Though this practice of using photography to commemorate one’s final days on campus seems commonplace now, Lasell’s daguerreotypes mark the first institutional effort to do so and can be considered the precursor to the yearbook photographs and senior pictures we know today. This exhibition is the first to display these daguerreotypes as well as an album produced by the class of 1845 to redistribute the images 40 years later.
On view in the Special Collections Instruction Gallery through July 2025. Please join us for an opening reception, Monday April 14 at 4:30pm.
Exhibit curated by Alexis Kelly, Grad Art ’26.