For other examples, see the online exhibitions Secrets of the Dark Chamber ( Smithsonian American Art Museum) and The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855 ( Metropolitan Museum of Art), or try the Daguerreian Society.
Early examples are valued by collectors because each is unique, not having been made from a negative. For this reason, daguerreotypes were typically protected under a metal mat, covered by a plate of glass, and enclosed in a case (see these examples). Morse (of Morse code) in Paris in 1839, who subsequently taught it to paying students in the United States.Īlthough the daguerreotype was capable of capturing fine detail, the highly polished surface had a mirror effect when viewed at an oblique angle and was easily scratched and tarnished. Made public in 1839, the process was named after its French inventor, the painter of dioramas, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, who relied heavily on earlier experiments by Joseph Nicephore Niepce. By exposing the plate to light in a camera obscura, a laterally reversed latent image was captured in the photosensitive layer of silver iodide that could be developed with the application of mercury vapor. Historically, the first photographic process that actually worked, producing a positive image directly on a highly polished, silvered copper plate sensitized with iodide vapor.