Public Exposure!

On July 10, 1851, painter and printmaker Louis-Jacques Daguerre died. He spent most of his life trying to invent something that could capture an image that could be printed and kept. Daguerre had worked with metal etcher Joseph Niépce (and later his son, Isidore), to try various chemistry processes on different metals to capture the images.

Eventually they created a copper photographic plate
– covered in a thin film of highly polished silver
– that when placed into a container with iodine
– the vapour reacted with the silver to form a layer of silver iodide.
That was the negative!

Once exposed to an image in the camera box, the plate was developed
– in heated magnesium vapour that stuck
– only to the coated silver parts exposed to light.
– Next it was dipped in a sodium solution to dissolve the unexposed silver
– then a third bath of hot water completed the process to produce a print!

And it worked!

These plates capture very fine detail of light and shade but originally took about eight hours of exposure. Anything that moved just didn’t show up.

By 1840, people around the world were transfixed by Daguerreotypes of seashells, statuary, and the streets and buildings of Paris. DAGUERREOMANIA was on!

Daguerreotype associations and studios popped up faster than they could process their plates! In placing the ability to capture life images into the hands of anyone who could afford the equipment, Daguerre took the first steps in creating the new, limitlessly accessible art form, Photography!

By publishing and sharing processing details, he sparked the evolution and growth of Photography – both its art and its industry.

B Bondar