Daguerreotypy: The World's First Photography
Although 1839 is generally considered the birthdate of
photography, cameras were used as early as 1544 to view the solar
eclipse, and an instrument called the camera obscura, which
projected an image onto paper for tracing, had been used by artists
since the seventeenth century. In 1827, Frenchman Joseph Nicephore
Niepce used a camera obscura to produce the first semi-permanent
photographic image, a view taken from the window of his home in
Gras. The image, produced on a pewter plate, still exists in the
Gernsheim Collection in Austin, Texas. Two years after making this
image, Niepce formed a partnership with a Parisian artist named
Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre who, after Niepce’s untimely death in
1833, succeeded in perfecting the world’s first practical
photographic process, which he named for himself--the daguerreotype.
The
French government awarded Daguerre a yearly pension in exchange for
the details of his process, which the government wished to reveal to
the world as a gift of France. (Except in England, but that’s
another story.) An instruction manual was published in August 1839,
and it quickly made its way into the hands of scientists and artists
around the world.
Daguerre had experimented with numerous materials before finally
arriving at the choice of a silver coated copper plate as the base
of his process. He used the recently invented electroplating system
to galvanize silver onto the copper surface, and then the plate was
given an acid wash to remove impurities. The plate was next placed
in a closed box where it was subjected to iodine vapors. Now
sensitized to the reaction of light, it was exposed in a camera of
the Frenchman’s design. In Daguerre’s early experiments, exposures
could take as long as 30 minutes and averaged no less than 5
minutes. The exposed plate was then removed from the camera and
placed in a second box where, by the fumes of heated mercury, the
latent image was developed. A finishing bath in hyposulfate of soda
made the image permanent. The process sounded simple, but early
practitioners discovered that great patience and attentiveness were
required to obtain acceptable results.
American inventor Samuel Morse had visited Daguerre early in 1839,
and when details of the daguerreotype process arrived in the United
States aboard the steamer Great Western in September of that year,
Morse and his associate John Draper began experimenting with
portraiture, and teaching the process to others. Other's of Morse's
circle may even have experimented with the process even before full
details were available. (See my article on
Seth Boyden's Daguerreian Camera.)
New Yorkers Alexander Wolcott and John Johnson developed a
specialized portrait camera and opened a portrait studio in March of
1840, just six months after details of the process had been
published. By 1841, hundreds of Americans were involved in the
daguerreotype portrait industry.
American daguerreotypy flourished during the 1840s and early 1850s.
Major cities were overrun with portrait studios (then called
“galleries”) while itinerants carried the process to small frontier
towns and even to California. The first western routing expeditions,
and the California Gold Rush, were all documented by the
daguerreotype. In 1853, daguerreotypists were enjoying overwhelming
success, unaware that, in just a few short years, the daguerreotype
would be replaced by a collodion-based “wet-plate” process, and the
world's first practical form of photography would soon be obsolete.
Most daguerreotype portraits had some small amount of coloring added
by artificial means. Usually this coloring was limited to "pinking"
the cheeks and applying gold jewelry; however, some operators
employed professional artists who, through careful and expert
application, could color an entire image with amazingly true-to-life
results. A number of coloring processes, both simple and elaborate,
were patented. The most common method involved the creation of
stencils to isolate the areas receiving a particular color. The
artist would then breathe on the plate, forming condensation to
which the pigmented dust would cling. Other artists applied the
colors with a fine camelhair brush, often imparting the appearance
of full-color photograph.
The
daguerreotype image is made up of millions of tiny droplets of
mercury setting on the surface of the silver-coated plate. White
parts of the image contain extremely dense areas of mercury, while
grey areas have less mercury, and black areas have no mercury at
all. Therefore, daguerreotypes are best viewed by reflecting a black
surface or by placing the image under strong light. Although most
daguerreotypes have “hardened” over the centuries, the image is
still extremely fragile and should always remain in the protection
of its original case and glass cover. Once careless touch of a
finger on the surface of a daguerreotype can destroy the image
forever. While it is true that badly tarnished daguerreotypes can be
cleaned using a chemical or electrolytic process, scientists have
proven that these cleanings do irreparable harm to the image and
will likely lead to its eventual obliteration.
Parts of the above were excerpted from my book,
Collector’s Guide to Early
Photographs. For more information on daguerreotypy, and to
view more daguerreotype images, visit the
Daguerreian Society website.
