“I have seized the light. I have arrested its flight.” -Louis Daguerre
Louis Daguerre invented the first form of modern photography, one-of-a-kind images he named daguerreotypes. It began with a partnership with Joseph Niépce and a camera obscura.
Camera obscura
The camera obscura was used by painters to sketch accurate perspective in their works. A dark space, usually a tent, with a small hole or lens in one wall. The image is projected on the opposite wall where the artist could trace the upside-down and reversed image. The tracing could then be placed on a canvas right side up and by flipping it the image would as it was. It was transferred to a canvas or other mediums.
Physautoype
Niépce and Daguerre worked together to explore new photographic processes other than bitumen. In 1892 they worked with a residue created by distilling lavender oil. Once a dry tar was produced, a small amount was dissolved in alcohol. The solution was spread on a polished silver plate. The plate was exposed in the camera obscura for eight hours. After the plate was exposed, it was suspended above a tray of kerosene. The fumes developed the image.
Niépce died but Daguerre continued his work on fixing camera obscura images. While developing a plate, a mercury thermometer was broken and the vapor sped up the development from eight hours to just 30 minutes.
Introduction of photography
The daguerreotype process was presented to the public on Jan. 7, 1839 during a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. Later that year, Deguerre and Niépce’s son sold the rights for the daguerreotype process to the French government. While this sale required Daguerre detail how the process worked, he kept the patents for the equipment required to make them.
Art and science
Photography became a tool for artists and scientists alike. Daguerre promoted his process to both groups. One of the first scientific daguerreotypes was of a spider under a solar microscope. Hippolyte Gaucheraud, a journalist of the time, described the picture saying, “You could study its anatomy with or without a magnifying glass, as in nature; [there is] not a filament, not a duct, as tenuous as might be, that you cannot follow and examine.”
Argo the director of the Observatoire de Paris was surprised by a daguerreotype of the moon. None of the microscopic or telescopic daguerreotypes have survived.
Fire
On March 8, 1839 Daguerre’s laboratory burned down. His written records and most of his early experimental works were lost.
Fewer that twenty-five photographs by Daguerre survive today. Among them some still lifes, views of Paris and portraits.
The first photo of a human
Daguerre took a photo of the Boulevard du Temple in 1838 (opening photo, far left.) The street was known as Crime Boulevard because the plays in the dozens of theaters along it featured stories with murders in them. It was a place full of Parisians. They don’t show because the exposure took 10 minutes. In the bottom left of the image a man is having his shoes shined. The shoeshine boy is nearly invisible because of his constant movements performing the service. No one knows who the man in the photo was. All we know is it is the first time a person was captured in a photo. An enlargement of this part of the daguerreotype is below.
Sources: ThoughtCo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Un Jour De Plus A Paris.
Read more stories about inspirational photographers in On Photography.
Thank you for the article Kevin! I remember most of this history from early classes at Brooks Institute of Photography, but don’t recall ever seeing the image you’ve shared of the man having his shoes shined. Wonderful to see!