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Many pictures in After Daguerre, however, convey a sense of joy in the world, a delight in vision as if it were some magic new gift, which painting had lost and would not acquire again until the triumph of impressionism. In a picture labeled simply The Hound "Balliveau," no pains have been taken with composition. The subject is tied to a barn wall. To see the picture, though, is to brood on the look of this ungainly dog as if a new species had just been invented. And in the best landscapes by Gustave Le Gray, one can almost see the air. It is as if the slow exposure required by the technology of the time made the acquisitive glance of the camera's eye not a click, but a long, slow, indrawn vision of the world, burning the image lovingly into an almost personal memory. The first society of photography in Paris was called La Société Héliographique because the light of the sun collaborated in the exposure of film. Its motto says all that can be said for photography: "Nothing is so beautiful as the truth; but one must choose it . "
—By Timothy Foote