“They’re luminous, and they’re almost three dimensional, and you almost want to step into one.”
He also says daguerreotypes were one of a kind, not meant to be reproduced like current photographs. Louis Daguerre of France was the inventor of this first photographic process. The technology was very popular in the United States in the middle of the 1800s.
“It spread like wildfire in the United States. There were hundreds of thousands of daguerreotypes made over a 20-year span.”
Ed Vicenzi is a researcher with the Smithsonian Institution. Many of the most important daguerreotypes are now stored at the Smithsonian and in the collections of the United States Library of Congress.
The images include the mysterious young woman we spoke of earlier. Ed Vicenzi calls her “Clara,” although her real name is unknown.
“We don’t know her name, her family, the state she’s from.”
What he does know is that the image is in danger of being lost in the future unless something is done to stop the breakdown of its chemical makeup.
“Daguerreotypes are actually made up of a bunch of nanoparticles on the surface that scatter the light and this is in some ways similar to the way high technology devices are made today, so we’re also interested in what did 19th century photographers know about nanotechnology unwittingly.”
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25