Louis Daguerre, the creator of the earliest form of
photography, was born on November 18, 1787.
The French artist revolutionized the way we see the world when he
perfected his process, which resulted in daguerreotypes, in the 1830s.
Over the next two decades, a mania was
created as people were able to obtain, receive and trade images of people and
sites. Samuel F.B. Morse, a painter and
later inventor of the telegraph, brought daguerreotype to the United States.
Daguerre’s meticulous chemical process, which
reflected mirror-like images, would be superseded by improved photography
such as ambrotypes and tintypes, which took hold by the time of the Civil War
and continued beyond. Each of these
types of images, which were of varying sizes, was housed in cases, often in
ornate early plastic.
I’m particularly
interested in the history of daguerreotypes, and in fact I’m a collector. Hobbyists seek out unusual poses or settings
and even the different cases are avidly pursued. The example here is identified as a ninth
plate, the second smallest size at two inches by two and a half inches. A later dag, this is one of my favorites.
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