The Daguerreotype

For ages, man has viewed objects and scenes and then wished to record his visions. Recording these visions first employed a laborious task employing both the hand and eye to create likenesses of what the artist saw. Then mechanical and optical devices were invented to help improve the accuracy of the record. The camera obscura evolved to become quite sophisticated, employing fine quality lenses and mirrors to cast sharp, clear images for artists to trace. But it took the Frenchman, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (born in Paris in 1787) to create the first commercially viable photograph.

Daguerre, a commercial artist in Paris, was also the creator and proprietor of a giant illusionistic theater called the Diorama. Patrons enjoyed huge paintings of scenes, lit in ways to recreate the changing light of day and changes in the weather, as well as the illusion of motion. Daguerre depended on his accurate representation of detail and perspective on a grand scale. And like many artists of the day, he employed the camera obscura as a tool to achieve the images he then traced in two dimensions. Is it any wonder that he was most interested when he learned of fellow Frenchman Joseph-Nicephore Niepce and his experiments with light-exposed plates that could be inked and printed? One such image, done of Niepce's studio in 1826, is recognized as the world's earliest existing "photograph." (See this photo at the University of Texas, Gernsheim Collection of the Humanities Research Center.) His method coupled pewter and resin, along with long exposures (often as long as eight hours for a single shot), to create an image burned onto the metal.

Daguerre began a partnership of research with Niepce that lasted until Niepce's death in 1833. It took Daguerre until 1837 to discover a system that worked successfully and was fast enough to be practical. Though the primary force in the development of the daguerreotype was to improve his commercial enterprise, all attempts to market the process failed. It was not until Daguerre's contact with respected French scientist Francois Arago that an enthusiastic response occurred. Through Arago's influence, the French government granted pensions to not only Daguerre but also the heirs of Niepce for the work done in the development of this extraordinary process. Soon thereafter, translations of the actual step-by-step methods were available worldwide and were considered France's gift to the world. As it turned out, the developer had very little to do with the process once his knowledge and methods were made public. He died in France in 1851.

The response to the daguerreotype was immediate as the world began a love affair with it. America, especially, was fascinated with the silver plate that lasted twenty years. Within a year of the initial instructional material publication, improvements had been made in lenses and chemistry of the process to the point that portraiture was possible in relatively short exposures. By 1843 the daguerreotype portrait industry had evolved; and even though still expensive, a miniature photo was no longer the exclusive realm of the painter or the very rich. For the equivalent of $2, a person's "phiz" could be captured on a thin piece of silver. The image was then framed and pressed into a fitted leather case. The rush for people to be photographed created a whirlwind of businesses related to photography - from materials to finished products.

For all its beauty, the daguerreotype had disadvantages. Viewing was difficult because the surface of the image had a mirror-like sheen. Because the image was affixed onto metal, it was heavy for its size and was also difficult to create in large sizes. Most images were around 2 x 3 inches, and each was a unique original with no negative for reproduction.

In all fairness, it should be explained that at the same time Daguerre was creating the processes for daguerreotype, English scientist William Fox Talbot was creating a paper-based imagery. Unlike Daguerre's crisp images on metal, Fox Talbot's process produced soft, painterly paper prints made in separate steps from their original negatives. It was this quality of reproductive capability that allowed Fox Talbot's method to eventually overtake Daguerre's plate methods. By the 1860's, most daguerreotypes, quick tintypes and imitation daguerreotypes had been eclipsed by the favored paper prints.