When the camera arrived in the 1800s, it didn’t just introduce a new gadget — it triggered a full-blown identity crisis for painters. In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, host James William Moore digs into the moment photography “kicks the door in,” forcing painting to choose: compete on realism… or reinvent itself.

We’ll travel from the ghostly early daguerreotype to Realism’s unfiltered truth-telling, then into Impressionism’s radical pivot toward light, atmosphere, and the feeling of seeing. The twist? Photography didn’t kill painting — it freed it, cracking open the path to experimentation, abstraction, and the modern art world as we know it.

Final Stroke: When painting met photography, it didn’t die—it evolved.

Presented by J-Squared Atelier. And if you want more creative origin stories, check out Lattes & Art.

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J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier)
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James William Moore
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