Early photography

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2003 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

The invention of the daguerreotype was announced in Paris in 1839, four years after the process had actually been invented. The earliest daguerreotypes date from 1837, but it took two more years for Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre and his colleague Nicephore Niepce to simplify the process and make it less expensive, to develop a sophisticated marketing plan, and negotiate an annuity with the French government. Only then was the announcement made to the public.

The fascinating story of this evolution is spelled out in an excellent essay by Andre Gunthert in the catalogue that accompanies a landmark show organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Reunion des Musees Nationaux, and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, where it was earlier on view. Entitled The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855, the exhibition may be seen at the Metropolitan Museum from September 23 to January 4, 2004. The nearly 175 works in the show include some of the most important extant daguerreotypes and represent the full range of how they were used in the fields of science, ethnography, documentation, and art.

Daguerre began his career as a painter, printmaker, theatrical set designer, and maker of dioramas, and several of his paintings and prints, which have received little scholarly attention, are among the exhibits along with ten of his photographs. Those who mastered the rather complicated process of making daguerreotypes were awestruck that these pictures revealed details invisible to the naked eye. As Daguerre wrote, "The daguerreotype is not an instrument to be used for drawing nature, but a chemical and physical process which allows nature to reproduce itself."

While not all artists championed the new invention, some used photographs as aidememoire for their paintings and still others explored the artistic potential of the medium. On a more practical level, photographs introduced Europeans to the monuments and landscapes of distant places they had not visited. Included in the exhibition are early views of Macao, Athens, Cairo, Lebanon, and Siberia.

The daguerreotype became a sensation after it was launched, as Quentin Bajac points out in his catalogue essay on the daguerreotype industry in Paris, which, in 1844, was home to around thirty daguerreotype firms, many of them portrait studios. In the early 1840s only the wealthiest members of society could afford a daguerreotype camera, yet by the close of the decade the cost of having a daguerreotype made was affordable to the majority of the population.

In 1849 the invention of the paper print initiated the decline in the labor intensive and comparatively expensive daguerreotype process then only a decade old. It is estimated that millions of daguerreotypes were made in the 1840s and 1850s, but they survive in much smaller numbers. Those that do offer fascinating insights into many aspects of nineteenth-century life.

The excellent catalogue of this exhibition is unfortunately only being issued in CD-ROM format. The authors of the essays are Mr. Bajac, Dominique Planchon-de Font-Reaulx, Christine Barthes, Mr. Gunthert, Sylvain Morand, Stephen Pinson, Francoise Reynaud, and Paul-Louis Roubert. The CD-ROM includes photographs of all of the exhibits and an animated presentation of the making of a daguerreotype. It is available from the Metropolitan Museum of Art bookshop by telephoning 800-468-7386.