Daguerreotype

Daguerreotype
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Name	Daguerreotype
Invented	1839
Inventor	Louis Daguerre
Medium	Silvered copper plate
Display	Framed case
Notable practitioners	Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, John William Draper, Mathew Brady, Julia Margaret Cameron, Nadar

Daguerreotype The daguerreotype was an early photographic process introduced in 1839 that produced a highly detailed image on a silvered copper plate used by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, John William Draper, Mathew Brady, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Nadar for portraiture and documentation. It transformed visual culture in Paris, London, New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston and influenced practices at institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, the British Museum, the Royal Society, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Collectors and scholars at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Getty Museum continue to study daguerreotypes alongside works by Jacques-Louis David, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and Théophile Gautier.

History

The process emerged from experiments by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and earlier contributions by Nicéphore Niépce, Hippolyte Bayard, Johann Heinrich Schultz, and Thomas Wedgwood, with demonstrations held for the Académie des Sciences, the French Academy, the Royal Society, and governments in France and Great Britain. Early commercial studios opened in Paris, London, New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia, attracting sitters like Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Charlotte Brontë as well as travelers associated with Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, John James Audubon, Alexander von Humboldt, and Isabella Bird. The technique spread through exhibition venues such as the Great Exhibition and publications like The Times (London), Le Monde, Galignani's Messenger, and trade catalogs from firms like Giroux and Susse Frères. By the 1850s and 1860s institutions including the Library of Congress, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Peabody Institute, and the Royal Photographic Society were collecting and debating daguerreotypes amid the rise of competing processes employed by Frederick Scott Archer, William Henry Fox Talbot, George Eastman, and Mathew Brady.

Process and Materials

The image was produced on a highly polished copper plate coated with a layer of silver and sensitized by exposure to iodine vapors in devices used by Louis Daguerre and technicians in studios like those of Mathew Brady and Nadar. Plates were exposed in cameras similar to those used by George N. Barnard, John William Draper, and Southworth & Hawes and developed with mercury vapor, fixed with sodium thiosulfate or common salt as debated by chemists like Justus von Liebig, Michel Eugène Chevreul, Jöns Jacob Berzelius, and Heriot. The process required precise polishing techniques associated with metalworkers in Parisian workshops, coating procedures paralleling practices at the Royal Mint, and mounting solutions supplied by cabinetmakers who served collectors connected to The Royal Collection, The Frick Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum, and private patrons such as Eli Whitney and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Instruments and accessories were manufactured by firms including Alphonse Giroux, J. A. Howell & Co., R. & J. Beck, and D. Appleton & Company.

Aesthetics and Subjects

Daguerreotypes are noted for their fine tonal gradation, mirror-like surface, and crisp detail used to portray a range of subjects including formal portraits of figures like Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony; landscapes associated with Ansel Adams's later tradition and field studies by Carleton Watkins, William Henry Jackson, Timothy O'Sullivan, and Grove Karl Gilbert; and documentary images of events such as the Mexican–American War, the American Civil War, the Crimean War, and expeditions led by Lewis and Clark, John C. Frémont, Henry Morton Stanley, and Richard Francis Burton. The medium's aesthetic was exploited by portraitists including Julia Margaret Cameron, Southworth & Hawes, Mathew Brady, Nadar, and Oscar Rejlander, and influenced painters like Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Géricault in studies of likeness and composition. Collectors prize examples featuring sitters from literary, political, and scientific circles such as Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Louis Agassiz, Florence Nightingale, and Ada Lovelace.

Preservation and Conservation

Daguerreotypes are fragile objects requiring specialized conservation protocols used by staff at the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Getty Conservation Institute, the British Library, and the National Museum of American History. Conservators contend with silver tarnish, plate corrosion, glass desiccation, and case deterioration drawing on chemical knowledge from Justus von Liebig and analytical techniques developed at laboratories affiliated with Harvard University, Yale University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Housing solutions employ archival enclosures used by the National Archives and Records Administration, climate control systems spec'd by the International Institute for Conservation, and digitization projects coordinated with the Digital Public Library of America, the Europeana Collections, and museum digitization teams at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Cultural Impact and Legacy

Daguerreotypes reshaped visual documentation practices in places like Paris, London, New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C. and influenced photographers and institutions such as Mathew Brady, Julia Margaret Cameron, Nadar, the Royal Photographic Society, the Photographic Society of London, and the George Eastman Museum. They contributed to public engagement with figures including Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Charles Darwin, and Charles Dickens and informed mass-media developments at newspapers like The Times (London), Le Figaro, Harper's Weekly, and The Illustrated London News. Scholarly reassessment at universities including Harvard University, Columbia University, New York University, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge positions daguerreotypes within histories featuring Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, William Henry Fox Talbot, George Eastman, and Ansel Adams, while contemporary artists and curators at galleries such as the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou revisit their aesthetic and documentary significance.

Category:Photography