Daguerreotype

History

The daguerreotype is not the first photographic process, but the images of the former processes had the annoying tendency to disappear quickly once exposed to the light. The photographic process of the daguerreotypes is one of the first to be recorded and to post an image in a permanent way and it became the first photographic process used commercially.

The term daguerreotype comes from the name of its inventor, the French artist and decorator Daguerre, which discovers this process in 1835. After years of improvement, it presents its discovery to the French Academy of sciences on January 9th 1839.

The Brevet of Daguerre is acquired by the French government which, on August 19th 1839, announces the invention as being a “gift in the world”.

The daguerreotype is an only positive process not allowing any reproduction of the image. It consists of a copper plate, generally, covered with a layer of money. This plate is sensitized with the light by exposing it to vapors of Iode which, while combining with the money, produce Iodure of photosensitive money. When it is exposed to the light, the plate records an image invisible, known as “latent image”. The duration is from approximately twenty to thirty minutes, much less than the preceding methods which required several hours of exposure.

The development of the image is carried out while placing the exposed plate above a container of slightly heated mercury (75 °C). The vapor of mercury condenses on the plate and combines with iodide money by forming a Amalgame only at the places where the light acted proportionally with the intensity of this one. The image thus produced is very fragile and can be removed by heating the plate, which produces the evaporation of the mercury of the amalgam.

The following operation consists in fixing the image, i.e. to make it permanent, while plunging the plate in a solution of the hyposulphite of soda, whose action had been earlier discovered by Daguerre and Nicéphore Niepce. The image produced by this method is so fragile that it does not support lightest handling, and must be protected from any contact.

The daguerréotypie was spread quickly, except in England, where Daguerre had secretly made patent its process before selling it at the French government. To the beginning of the Years 1840, the invention was presented at once to the artists of the United States by Samuel Morse, the inventor of the Télégraphe. Quickly, an exuberant market of portraits was born, often by the work of travelling artists who moved city downtown.

The daguerreotype was employed only during approximately ten years, because it was caught up with by other processes:

the Ambrotype, presented in 1854, an positive image on glass, with a black bottom;
the Ferrotype, an image on tin treated chemically;
photography with the Albumin, a photograph on paper produced from large negative of glass.

The fast decline of photography by daguerreotype was inevitable. The process was complex, required much work and implied many stages, which made the daguerreotypes expensive and not very accessible to the general public. Moreover, the typical exposure was long, demanding to remain motionless and to hold the installation during all this time. Lastly, the principal disadvantage was perhaps the absence of negative which prevented any reproduction of the image.

However, unlike the photographs on film and papers, a daguerreotype can last for always, when it is suitably protected. Today, the daguerreotypes are very required articles of collection. Some, daguerreotypes produced by Southworth & Hawes, of Boston, and George S. Cook, of Charleston, are regarded as masterpieces of the art of photography.

Workshops of daguerreotypes

The official announcement of Daguerre in 1839 is initially launched to Paris, city which will remain during more than one decade one of the principal research centres and production of the daguerréotypie. In the middle one era or art and science are recrossed, the impact on the public is enormous, and promising marketing: very quickly the first workshops open their doors.

Generally, the daguerreotypists come from a foreign formation to photography even, and number of them even continue to practice their old trade: painters, opticians, sometimes commercial. To open a workshop, publicity is very important. The advertisements are made in the local newspapers, and the sign must be imposing taking into account increasingly strong competition in Paris. The workshops propose mainly portraits, but also shots taken on location, either for portraiturer in residence, in the garden of the customer, or for the sale of sights of landscapes. In parallel with their public activities, much of daguerreotypists devote themselves in their workshop to searchs or catches for sight of Paris, less commercial. A Parisian workshop of the years 1845-1850 can produce more: 5000 images per annum.

Only a small portion of their production reached us. Indeed, the plates worsen easily and the conservation at the 19th century is not sufficiently advanced to avoid the corrosive oxidation of the daguerreotypes left in contact with the air. The plates not preserved in hermetic jewel cases are often irremediable, while others, because of the high cost of material, are later repolished in order to be re-used.

As from 1841, the scientific projections make it possible to carry out a portrait in less than one minute. The daguerréotypie is spread commercially more and more, of many workshops of portraits open their doors in Paris in the years 1840. Less than two years after the advertisement of Daguerre, certain daguerreotypists arrive already, by the reduction of the formats of their plates and the improvement of their methods, to obtain portraits in a few tens of seconds. These projections appear initially with Vienna, with the brothers Natterer, then in the United States, before being diffused in Paris as from March 1841.

The first Parisian workshops are installed around the Palais Royal - France is then still under monarchical mode - on the last floors of the buildings. Thus appear indexed in the bottins the workshop of Charles Chevalier since 1841, then those of Sabatier-Blot, Legros and Vaillat starting from 1845. They make build canopies on the roofs in order to carry out portraits daguerreotypes in full sun. Obviously, the beautiful season supports these activities, very difficult in winter the first years, because of the lack of light. With the beginning of the year 1840, these workshops remain relatively artisanal, necessary work with the daguerréotypie (revelation in the darkness with mercury), and especially its nonreproducibility, not allowing massive production of images as Paris will know of it under the Second Empire. As of the medium of the Years 1850, these workshops of daguerréotypie will be seen eclipsed by the competition of the new studios of drawn on paper and reproducible portraits, and will not preserve, as Nadar will say then it, that a charm obsolete, very right to attract the provincial ones good or the nostalgic ones.

The portrait

The workshops of portraits are addressed to the beginnings primarily with the middle-class, their cost remaining before years 1850 rather high. A new middle-class is then in full rise, the “new rich person”, leaders of the industrial society. The majority result families not very famous, even poor, and hardly settle in an easy medium where them integration is difficult without the image of a glorious past. This new leading class then sees in the daguerréotypie the means of stage to the absence of galleries of family tables, and to manufacture a sizeable “history thus”. The daguerreotype consequently becomes a crucial witness of its place in the social hierarchy.

The Parisian workshops are then arranged in luxurious interiors, in order to testify to the standard of living of the subject, but also in order to evoke more personal features: its trade, its formation. The social success being the only glory of these new middle-class men, they thus emphasize it by the excess of luxury in which they are made immortaliser: curtains in draped, rich furniture of living room, signs high culture (books, musical instruments). The installation becomes a true ritual, in the tradition of the painters portraitists, and the time of installation necessary, so long is it, does not block the attraction of the customers for the daguerreotype. Because, contrary to the scientific community and the photographers, the rich person customers hardly worry about the practical aspect of a reduced exposure time. They are rather attracted by with dimensions at the same time rare, single, invaluable and new one of the daguerreotype, of which one of the main features is its silver plated brightness). At the end of the years 1840, one goes until using mechanisms of maintenance of the body and head, in order to adjust his posture and to make sure of his immobility, only guarantor of the clearness of the image. The exposure times which can be of more than 30 minutes, it is difficult to be held fixed so a long time. It is out of the question to pass in addition to the toilets at the entry, where one must readjust his hairstyle and give oneself great outdoors. All this implements of appearing and the illusion do not fail to attract the mocking remarks of the caricature, nor to poke criticism. Since the advertisement of 1839 was born in Paris a community “daguerréophobe”.

The workshops propose soon daguerreotypes colored, thanks to colors on metal. The size of the plate, Siver-bearing material of metal thus expensive, is also a considerable indication of abundance of cash; nevertheless, dimensions vary little as from 1844-1845, the format more running for carried remaining the quarter of plate, that is to say approximately 10×8cm. The plate impressed is then preserved under glass to mitigate the risk of oxidation of the metal deposit, then inserted in an ECRIN and generally within a framework evoking the luxury of the object. Drawn gildings, decorations or carefully calligraphiée inscription emphasize the central image. Among the proposals of the workshops also the practice of the funerary portrait appears: since 1842, the Parisian workshop Frascari proposes portraits in residence of people deceased.

These workshops also will exploit a big role in research the improvement of the process of Daguerre during the few years which follow the discovery. The first daguerreotypists meet in their workshops in order to exchange their artisanal methods and their discoveries. To No5el Paymal Lerebours, for example, which installs its workshop in its shop of optician places New Pont, colleagues and friends come to take sights of its window (Hossard among others, around 1845). Thus, in 1840, Hippolyte Fizeau, former student in medicine, develops a process of gold toning, improving the detail and the smoothness of returned, quickly adopted by various Parisian workshops. One year later, collaborating with Fizeau, Leon Foucault, which will be founding member of the French company of photography, tries out with Marc Antoine Gaudin the treatment of the plates with bromine, extremely sensitive, allowing a spectacular reduction in the exposure time. Lerebours and Gaudin speak then about sights taken in a tenth of a second, poses sufficiently short to let appear people moving. Towards 1843, Choiselat and Ratel, two other daguerreotypists installed in Paris, they also develop a bromine liquor combined with hydrogen, and carry out catches of sights of less than two seconds.

Sights of Paris

The beginnings of the daguerréotypie, the obstruction of the hardware requirement to the realization of good catches of sights hardly allows landscape excursions. The first photographers work in interior, taking sights of their window. Thus are born the first buds from workshops in Paris, of which that of Lerebours, profiting from a unspoilable view on the quay of Louvre. The extreme detail of the process fascine to the advertisement of Daguerre in 1839, and very quickly the initiates see the advantage which this precision represents for catches of sight of the city.

Paris remains the city most favourable with the sights daguerreotypes, as well because of its role in the birth of this technique as by its cosmopolitanism. Even before the rural migration, Paris of the medium of XIXe already over-populated, is engoncé in a too reduced surface before work of urbanization of the Second Empire. However, the daguerréotypie of the time really does not stick to reproduce the ceaseless sways in the crowd of main street, initially because it does not allow it, technically, then because it rather seeks to give for the first time an exact vision - without partiality suitable for a representation of human hand - urban space. The choice of the Prises of sight remains very anchored in the tradition of painting and engraving, and of conventions settle quickly: the sights of the great places and the large monuments of the capital years 1845-1850 very current, then are probably sold in some workshops but especially intended to travel abroad. Moreover, these places often are released, therefore sufficiently luminous, and the disastrous cholera epidemics which strike the capital with length it XIXe push to flee the popular lanes, often unhealthy. Other sites are also often photographed: certain luxurious private mansions, houses of great exposures, but also stations, witnesses par excellence of the industrial age, and, finally, most sumptuous churches. And, in fact, this subject lends itself to it to wonder: people can see, like never on fabric or engraving, the most negligible details of the Gothic architecture retranscribed on the plates.

The most interesting remainder that at this same time, certain bolder daguerreotypists release themselves from conventions of representation of their city and thus explore new new “points of view”. In 1845, Frederic Martens develops a room with opening to 150 panoramic degrees to carry out taken of sight, technique which will be also used for famous sights of the new bridge taken since the window of the workshop of Lerebours, perhaps by itself. These vast sights of the Seine, of almost 40 cm length, bequeathed by Martens and some others, constitute certainly the most spectacular testimonys of the Parisian daguerréotypie of the years 1840.

Paris then ignored, showing its not very famous face but appearing sudden O how much charming - quays of the Seine, bridges, complexes assemblies of buildings and popular quarters, wakes up in the world of the pictorial representation. The postal stereotype-charts now so widespread in the world were then inconceivable within the framework of an “artistic” perception. It will have had to be awaited the daguerreotypists so that the strange aspects of Paris, like its immense extended from roofs, or the charm fluid and throbbing of its banks of the Seine, cause the interest of the public and, more tardily, that of the artists.

A few years later, very an other reason comes to animate the sights daguerreotypes of Paris. After the come to power of Napoleon III, Haussmann prepares to reorganize all the city, to build the grand boulevards, and to destroy consequently many recesses of the capital. Some daguerreotypists charge interest then museographic their catches of sight, and much of disappeared places survive yet today in the pictorial memory only thanks to the daguerréotypie of before 1851. Even if this aspect mémoriel lent to the daguerreotypes is due especially to our modern vision of photography, of important historical testimonys remain nevertheless, in particular thanks to the Parisian daguerreotypists having carried out catches of sights lasting the Revolution of 1848. But these traces are extremely rare and often anonymities.

Certain workshops of Paris carry out publications in addition, sometimes answering orders of editor, sometimes on their own initiative when they have the means of them. These works, made up of copies of daguerreotypes in engraving or lithographies, were intended to more widely diffuse, on paper, the work of these workshops. The most famous remainder that published by Lerebours in 1841, the Excursions daguerriennes , where appear of many sights of the monuments of Paris. Fizeau and Chevalier contributed much to these works, having developed several techniques of direct or indirect transformation of the plate daguerrienne into board to engrave, in order to obtain printed reproductions.

The prolific activity of the workshops of Parisian daguerreotypes is crowned in 1844 by the first World Fair, where many work on daguerreotypes is presented. It remains the only World Fair where the daguerréotypie will have held such an important place; to that of London in 1851, much less images are presented and the daguerreotype is seen quickly eclipsed by the novel methods of drawn on paper, reproducible images and much less expensive. It preserves its prestige all the same still a few years, especially by the means of the Stéréoscopie, introduced in Paris in 1850, and whose daguerreotype remains the principal support until 1855. To the beginning of the year 1850, many Parisian workshops launch out in the sale of seen stereoscopic (to which the daguerreotype, very precise, lends itself particularly), often colored, and work with the improvement of the effects of relief. They are the last great successes of the daguerreotype, before the workshops of the capital do not turn to a more massive production on paper in the middle of the years 1850.

But, more than one century and half later, the production of the workshops of daguerreotypes of the years 1840 remains most incredible, detail precision, of the history of the photographic techniques, a fortiori that of the workshops of Paris, then most prolific.

The dimension

a daguerreotype of 1839, manufactured by the brothers Knew, found in good state in an attic with Munich, was sold with the biddings with Vienna, at the end of May 2007, for 588 613 euros. It is about the “only known specimen of this manufacturing” according to Michel Auer, historian of photography.

Random links: