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Course: Special topics in art history > Unit 2
Lesson 11: Photographs- Seeing Through Photographs
- Before Photography - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 1 of 12
- The Daguerreotype - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 2 of 12
- Talbot's Processes - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 3 of 12
- The Collodion - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 5 of 12
- The Albumen Print - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 6 of 12
- The Platinum Print - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 7 of 12
- The Pigment Processes - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 8 of 12
- The Woodburytype - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 9 of 12
- The Gelatin Silver Process - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 10 of 12
- An Introduction to Photography in the Early 20th Century
- Color Photography - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 11 of 12
- Digital Photography - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 12 of 12
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The Daguerreotype - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 2 of 12
Photography, a game-changer in history, was invented by Nicephore Niepce using light-sensitive asphalt. His partner, Louis Daguerre, perfected the process, creating the Daguerreotype. This method used a polished silver-coated copper plate, iodide fumes, and mercury to produce images. The Daguerreotype, both a negative and positive image, offered infinite detail and permanence, changing how we remember and see the world.
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- At3:34, the speaker refers to the fixing solution as "hypo"; what chemical did Daguerre use?(4 votes)
Video transcript
I think it’s impossible for us today to imagine what a revelation the first photographs would have been to people. These mirrors with a memory to record things that looked just like what we saw. People’s idea of time changed completely. For the first time you would know what your
grandparents looked like even if they died before you were born. To see this process make its place in the lives of
ordinary people is to me the most exciting thing about it. It changed everything. In 1814, 1815 you have a man named Nicephore Niepce. What he discovered was asphalt was sensitive to light. He’d paint the solution on a piece of glass and put an engraving on a piece of paper on top
of that and where the light shined through and exposed
that asphalt it hardened. If you put that piece of glass with the asphalt into
a solvent it will remove the areas that weren’t hardened. The earliest photograph we know is on a piece of
pewter made by Nicephore Niepce. It’s a view from a window. It’s from the 1820’s and this image made by asphalt still exists. That’s the invention of photography. Niepce knows that he’s onto something and he takes Louis Daguerre on as a partner. Daguerre was well known in Paris in the 1820’s. Well before the 1839 announcement of the
Daguerreotype. He was a showman. He ran this 75 foot diorama. Daguerre himself wants to make images. He understands how a camera obscura works. Niepce didn’t have the money, he didn’t have the
youth he didn’t have the health. He really kick started Daguerre. When Niepce died Daguerre continued his experiments on his own. By 1839 Daguerre has a system that is fully
realized. It’s perfect. It’s a piece of copper coated with silver and you have to polish it very well
to the point where you have a polish that when you turn the plate towards a
darkened room it looks black. It’s fumed with iodide and when you
take it out of the box, it’s yellow. That’s silver iodide. The plate is then placed into a camera obscura. We would say camera now but a camera
obscura. Given enough time, it’s exposed. When you take it out of the camera in a darkened
room There’s nothing to see on the plate. It’s completely invisible, same yellow coating. but when you put it in another box with a little
container of mercury and heat the mercury, the fumes of mercury
dance upon the plate and when you withdraw that from the box you
have an image. You still have to fix the image. Fixing is a strange term. It basically means you’re preventing the plate
from changing any more as light strikes the plate. You place it into a solution that fixes it. Something that we now call hypo. The daguerreotype is then placed into a special case. It’s designed to keep air away from the plate because air is what makes silver tarnish. Daguerre would give the process to the
government. The government then would allow anyone in the
world to do the daguerreotype except England. So if you wanted to make daguerreotypes in
England, you had to pay a fee. This is the Giroux Daguerreotype camera. The world’s first commercially manufactured and
sold camera. It’s the camera but it’s also the system that goes
with it that you need to sensitize and process the image. It’s essentially an American phenomenon. It was the Americans that embraced it,
that used it. It was the Americans that were leaving home and
striking out further and further West so that people could have something to think
about and to reflect on and to remember them by. We are in the photography vault at George
Eastman House. This is where all of our photo collections are
stored and here we have our wall of dagurreotypes. We have one of the largest collections of
daguerreotypes in the world. Over 3,500 daguerreotypes including 1,500
French daguerreotypes which is the largest collection of French
daguerreotypes outside of France. The daguerreotype is both a negative and a
positive image at the same time. I think to really see a daguerreotype and get the
full effect you have to be holding it. It’s an intimate thing, it’s reflective. Sometimes you do see yourself and that kind of
makes you part of the object. With daguerreotypes there’s infinite detail. There’s something just so compelling about a
daguerreotype. They’re not made with a negative so that
daguerreotype plate was actually in the room with the person being
photographed so there’s something of, I read as that person’s
energy on the plate. It’s a very permanent process, much more so
than all the processes that we grew up with. I can take you to an antiques shop that’s 15
minutes from here and we can find a daguerreotype that was made
in the 1850’s. and guess what? They’re still in perfect condition.