I have a quote to share today. Not only is this a quote from a famous dude (the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson), and not only is it about photography, but it really gives us a lot of context in which to put photography. I like to think outside of the digital box sometimes, and going back to daguerrotypes is certainly a way to do it, being the first method to record an image in a camera (…because cameras existed long before a method to capture that image, besides painting it).
There are folks who still use daguerrotypes today. Chuck Close is one hitting the photo world headlines lately with his groovy daguerrotype of Brad Pitt. As he says, in explanation to why he uses a 150 year old photographic method, photography never got better than it was at the beginning. Daguerrotypes are actually extremely high quality, higher than we can attain in paper or digital methods today (they are polished metal…silver coated copper, if I remember correctly).
So, with that wordy context, here is what it was like to sit for a daguerrotype photo.
From Emerson’s journal on 24 October 1841:
. . . Were you ever Daguerrotyped, O immortal man? And did you look with all vigor at the lens of the camera or rather by the direction of the operator at the brass peg a little below it to give the picture the full benefit of your expanded & flashing eye? and in your zeal not to blur the image, did you keep every finger in its place with such energy that your hands became clenched as for fight or despair, & in your resolution to keep your face still, did you feel every muscle becoming every moment more rigid: the brows contracted into a Tartarean frown, and the eyes fixed as they are fixed in a fit, in madness, or in death; and when at last you are relieved of your dismal duties, did you find the curtain drawn perfectly, and the coat perfectly, & the hands true, clenched for combat, and the shape of the face & head? but unhappily the total expression escaped from the face and you held the portrait of a mask instead of a man. Could you not by grasping it very tight hold the stream of a river or of a small brook & prevent it from flowing?
Copyright 1996, The Daguerreian Society
