Mirrors of Ourselves Common Faces

The Art of the Daguerreotypes

For best results use "Netscape". This page and the daguerreotype scans have been contributed by Avishai Halevy

I keep my Daguerreotypes in an old box in the attic. Not a rich person, I did not actively looked for daguerreotypes. Just wandered around and collected them like wild flowers. When I saw a beautiful image my pulsed increased, my hands started sweating an d my all body switched to "must have it" mood. In between the years of 1976 and 1986 I managed to collect a box full of miniature cases with their hidden mirror like images. Daguerreotypes flourished between 1840 and 1860 and are one of a kind, I was happ y to own a small piece of history. Common people starring into the future. Daguerreotypes have special charm. Hidden inside small cases opening like a book, sitting inside a velvety surrounding, framed by a golden decorated mat, shining proudly.

We have seen the views taken by the Daguerreotype, and have no hesitation in avowing, that they are the most remarkable objects of curiosity and admiration, in the arts, that we have ever beheld. Their exquisite perfection almost transcends the bounds of sober belief.

---The Knickerbocker, 1839 The New Art,---We saw the other day, in Chilton's, in Broadway, a very curious specimen of the new mode, recently invented by Daguerre in Paris, of taking on copper the exact resemblances of scenes and living objects, through the medium of sun's rays refl ected in a camera obscura. The scene embraces a part of St. Paul's church, and the surrounding shrubbery and houses, with a corner of the Astor House, and for aught we know, Stetson looking out of a window, telling a joke about Davie Crockett. All this is represented on a small piece of copper equal in size to a miniature painting.

--New York Morning Herald, September 30, 1839 The Daguerreian artist should possess quick perceptive powers; an eye for the beautiful, which will enable him at a glance to decide on expression and position...The picture should express feeling, thought and intelligence...It is the "everyday," "home" expression, which renders the picture an object of admiration in the familiar circle where it is to be appreciated."

--"The True Artist,"Daguerreian Journal , August 1851

Daguerreotypes are posed images. And because so many of their makers are unknown, and their subjects cannot be identified, we become reliant on the autonomy of the image itself. They embody the subject of communication itself, which survives the lost context of the making of these images. In America the daguerrean vision was an attitude not only toward face and place but also possessions and responsibilities. The ingenuousness of commonplace prosperity marks an entire category of daguerreotype images. Houses, livestock, carriages, families, and children are framed with simple directness. Sharing the same impulse toward vernacular formulas as American folk art, the convention of the familiar object and the average person, rendered with bold frontality, carries with it an intensity of observation that goes far beyond description to become a form of impersonal expression.

--Merry A. Foresta, "Secrets of the Dark Chamber" 1995

The Daguerreotype Process

Daguerreotypists learned that their plates were more sensitive in dry weather than in damp, and that just before a thunderstorm their exposures were the shortest

Standard Daguerreotype Sizes:

Whole plate - 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches

Half plate - 4 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches

Quarter plate - 3 1/4 by 4 1/4 inches

Sixth plate - 2 3/4 by 3 1/4 inches

Ninth plate - 2 by 2 1/2 inches

Sixteenth plate - 1 3/8 by 1 5/8 inches

Quoted from: ICP Encyclopedia of Photography / Pound Press, Inc. 1984 and

" Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype" / National Museum of American Art, 1995.

A comprehensive historical survey of the daguerreian art "The American Daguerreotype" by Floyd Rinhart and Marion Rinhart was published in 1981 by The University of Georgia Press.

For a wonderful site with lots of daguerreotypes, visit the exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution: National Museum of American Art: Secrets of the Dark Chamber A fascinating catalogue " Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype" was published in 1995 on the occasion of the exhibition.

Visit the Daguerreian Society's Home page. The Daguerreian Society's expanded presence on the World Wide Web: Three galleries & and more to come; 19th and 20th texts about the daguerreotype; information regarding The Daguerreian Society.



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