Unknown Maker: The Art of the American Daguerreotype
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The daguerreotype, invented by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, debuted in 1839 and by the mid-1840s was widely used commercially, particularly in the United States. The process itself sounds distinctly alchemical: a copper plate is coated with a layer of light-sensitive silver, which is then exposed and developed with the fumes of heated mercury and toned with a solution of gold chloride (shuddering OSHA officials come to mind). In essence a daguerreotype contains its own negative; it can’t be reproduced, and its level of detail is remarkable. The images don’t break down upon close viewing–as viewers here are able to see with the help of a magnifier mounted on one of the cases. They’re also highly reflective, which makes them glow with a silver sheen. Luminous and mutable, daguerreotypes require a certain kind of engaged seeing since the light and the beholder’s point of view can make them seem to dissolve and rematerialize.
The daguerreotypes in “Unknown Maker” are divided into fairly predictable categories, and this curatorial flat-footedness is unnecessarily limiting to some of the more inventive representations. There are, among others, sections labeled “Occupationals,” “Children,” “Accidents,” “Objects,” and “Mysteries.” These tidy categories usually contain exactly what one might expect: “Identities” includes daguerreotypes of Native Americans, of the men of a military family posed with their servant sitting at their knees, and of Frederick Douglass. “Occultism” offers portraits of a phrenologist, a mesmerist and his subject, and a man posed inexplicably with a pile of skulls.
