“In the 19th century, painting was supreme, prints were a lesser form of painting, and photography was artistic only insofar as it aspired to the condition of painting. What happened, though, when technology and representation collided at the end of that century to create the motion picture, a whole new way of visualizing reality? Did still pictures change when there emerged a new kind of picture, one that moved? Might Thomas Eakins and Thomas Edison have shared more than just a first name and monogram?”