Seizing the Light, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER TWO The Daguerreotype: Image and Object

 

 

 

WHEN DAGUERREOTYPES REIGNED

Daguerreotypes reigned from 1839 through the 1850s. In this first period of photography, millions of daguerreotypes were made of almost any subject on which light would shine, from street corner scenes to the Acropolis. All the major cities and tourist destinations were daguerreotyped, but the new process had its most revolutionary impact in portraiture. Before the nineteenth century, only the wealthy had the means to act on the desire to commemorate their likenesses. Industrial-age products, like the physionotrace and the camera lucida, had begun to expand the picturemaking process, but the daguerreotype was the great equalizer, providing ordinary people with ...