Light & The City

A New Documentary in Development

Drummond storefront on Fulton St, New York

Once Upon a Time in America

For nearly two centuries, the history of photography in America has been told the same way. It frequently begins with Mathew Brady and the Civil War, passes through Jacob Riis and the social reformers, and culminates in the artistic breakthroughs of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and the modernists who followed. But what if that story is incomplete? What if the true origins of American photography were never lost — only overlooked?

Over the past year, I’ve been working closely with Eric Taubman, founder of the Penumbra Foundation, whose archival research has uncovered documentary evidence that upends the accepted narrative. His findings reveal that the earliest photographic manufacturing, distribution, and process innovation in the United States did not emerge from later 19th-century studios — but from two New York families working as early as 1839, the very year photography was introduced to the world in Paris.

Their family names were Lewis and Drummond, and their story has never been told on film.

A History That Needs Restoring

Eric’s research traces the story to a workshop in Chatham Square, where William and W.H. Lewis began producing photographic equipment and chemistry for a growing number of daguerreotype operators. Their business expanded north to New Windsor, New York, a town so transformed by photography that locals called it “Daguerreville.”

The narrative continues with A.J. Drummond, who married into the Lewis family and carried their innovations into the next generation, linking early daguerreotype production with the later development of carbon printing and industrial photographic processes.

This forgotten history reveals a network of artisans, chemists, inventors, and entrepreneurs working years before Brady — and long before photography became an art form or a journalistic tool.

It was, from the beginning, an American industry. This is not a revision. It is a restoration.

About "Light & The City"

Light & The City will be the first documentary to bring this story to the screen — a film about photography not as an artistic afterthought to European invention, but as a homegrown act of innovation rooted in New York’s workshops, rooftops, and factories.

Part detective story, part industrial archaeology, and part cultural re-awakening, the film seeks to expandoand complete the historical record and attribution, restore visibility to early innovators and their descendants, reveal newly surfaced documents, objects, and visual evidence, expand our understanding of how photography took root in America, and return New York to its rightful place as the birthplace of American photographic culture.

Eric Taubman will serve as the archival and historical voice guiding the film, while on-location cinematography, rare images, and reconstructed timelines bring the forgotten story back to life.

A first visit to Penumbra in October 2024

Current Phase

The project is now in scripted development through the Documentary Film Fund (501c3), with Penumbra Foundation serving as institutional partner. I will direct the film through Heritage Film Project, with Soledad Liendo as Line Producer and Eric Taubman as Executive Producer.

How It Began

I first met Eric in Brooklyn almost a year ago through a mutual friend. One conversation led to another, and soon we found ourselves piecing together fragments of a story that had slipped through the cracks of history. What began as curiosity has now crystallized into a shared mission — to bring to light the true origins of American photography before they vanish again.

Light & The City is the result of that collaboration.

More updates — including first research footage, early interviews, and a production timeline — will follow as we move forward.