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Portrait of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, 1844 | Jean-Baptiste Sabatier-Blot | George Eastman House, Rochester
Dear Mr Niépce,
If you are not the inventor of photography, then who is? You are praised as the first person to fix an image drawn by sunlight, in 1827. I therefore turn to you in an attempt to reconstruct the origin of photography.
I am particularly interested in your pupil Louis Daguerre. The enclosed portrait of Daguerre will indeed amaze you. You see not only him, but also the invention that made him famous: the daguerreotype. The support is a copper plate with a very thin layer of polished silver. The image to be found in this reflective layer is formed by light. Daguerre has discovered a way to develop it and then permanently fix it.
That is after your time. In 1839, six years after your death, he made his invention known to the world. The news came as a real bombshell. The first photographic process that could in principle be used by everyone was born. Within five years the daguerreotype evolved into a process that was used all over the world, chiefly to make portraits.
You can see it for yourself: beholding a daguerreotype is like a breath of fresh air. Even now, after more than 150 years in which photography has been able to develop, the clarity and sharpness of a daguerreotype can hardly be surpassed. They effortlessly bridge this time span. Moreover, a daguerreotype is like a jewel: a glittering object that is so vulnerable it has to be protected. The cases that serve this purpose are splendid creations in themselves. The most special quality, finally, is that each daguerreotype is unique.
Perhaps you don’t find this last quality so sensational. Since 1841, however, it has become possible to make an infinite number of prints from a single exposure. This form of reproducibility has grown into a basic condition for almost every photographic process that followed: first via a paper negative, then a glass one and finally a celluloid one. Now we even use an image that is no longer definitive and tangible... I doubt whether you can imagine that. In any case, the use of processes with negatives brought so many advantages that after around three decades the daguerreotype slowly but surely fell into disuse.
The daguerreotype is now a sort of fossil. I don’t know whether that is entirely justified. Let it suffice to say that it occupies a unique place in the history of photography. The examples that we come across today may be considered as a cultural heritage. I ask myself whether you yourself, the pioneer of photography, have ever looked at your work in this way.
Yours sincerely,
Nickel van Duijvenboden
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