All is Vanity

The daguerreotype is the earliest form of photography and it offers a flawless and unique picture of 150 years ago. Nowadays several hundreds of daguerreotypes can be found in The Netherlands, most of them in private collections.

Most of those have been restored and preserved by the museums department of Conservation and Restauration . This exhibition is the first overview of daguerreotypes from Dutch collections, of which a number belong to the earliest documented photographs in The Netherlands. They are very vulnerable and are not often shown in exhibitions.




gift
In 1839 the Frenchman Louis Daguerre caused a true revolution. A new medium was born: for the first time everybody could capture a photographic image. For that his procedure was labelled as a gift to humanity by the French. The base of a daguerreotype is a reflecting metal plate, a very thin silver layer at or on a copper base to be exact. In contrast to photo paper with a paper or PE base a daguerreotype is not flexible and slightly heavy.

daguerreobase
While the Fotomuseum exhibits these daguerreotypes a selection of daguerreotypes of the Museum Enschedé can be seen in Huis Marseille. Also the website www.daguerreobase.org will be launched. This database website has the ambition to register all existing daguerreotypes.

dossier
Also visit the webdossier Permanent Gleam (Permanente glans) about daguerreotypes on this website.

watch video’s
On top of that the Nederlands Fotomuseum has selected a number of interesting video’s about daguerreotypes of other museums on its channel.

You can see them here:



More video's about photography can be watched on the museum's YouTube Channel