Louis Daguerre

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, better known as Louis Daguerre (Cormeilles-en-Parisis, November 18, 1787 - Bry-sur-Marne, November 10, July 1851), was the first popularizer of photography, after inventing the daguerreotype, and also worked as a painter and theater decorator.

Origins

Educated in a wealthy family, from his youth he showed a great inclination for the study of letters and the arts. Daguerre received a very elementary education that he finished at the age of fourteen. At this age he had to start earning a living. Of natural intelligence and with an extraordinary facility for drawing, Daguerre was employed as an architect's apprentice. There he learned to draw plans and draw in perspective. These teachings were of great value for his second occupation, as he began to work as an apprentice to the famous and famous —at that time— set designer for theater and opera Degoti. He remained in this job for three years, before leaving it to become an assistant to the most prominent set designer in Paris at the time, Prevost. In that occupation Daguerre began to be known for his work, consecrating himself among the most important men in the theater.

Ruins of the Chapel of Holyrood (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1824, 214 x 260 cm), is a sample of the remarkable activity as a painter of Daguerre, eclipsed by his later fame as one of the pioneers of photography. In this case, the brilliant texture, the nuanceless colors and the hard contours are shown how it was still possible to use such traditional techniques (against the impetuosity of brushstroke and the coloured vivacity of the contemporary Delacroix), to express, however, one of the most romantic themes.

Daguerre was a second-rate painter in Paris in the first half of the 19th century. However, he achieved one of his most spectacular creations with the diorama & # 34; Mass of the Rooster in Saint-Etienne-du Mont & # 34;, due to the realism of his perspective.

Louis Daguerre will go down in history for inventing the diorama, an installation that gives images a sense of depth. This invention aroused the attention of the Parisian public in a show that consisted of creating the illusion for the viewer that they were in another place through huge images that could be moved and combined with a play of lights and sounds, etc., so that it would seem that the viewer was in situations such as a battle, a storm, etc. For all this to be credible, the paintings had to be very realistic and for this reason, Daguerre was interested in applying the camera obscura principle to Diorama.

His installations reached the Paris Opera and his success was such that he was awarded the Legion of Honor (France).

House of Louis Daguerre, where he lived between 1839 and 1851 in Bry-sur-Marne.

Dioramas

Central panel preserved from a Daguerre diorama, in a Bry-sur-Marne restoration workshop, September 2007.

The diorama was a visual spectacle designed by Daguerre in which images of natural landscapes, interiors of chapels or other views were shown through elaborate scenographic techniques that included movements such as that of clouds or that of a sun that changes as it passes the tones of the landscape. Thus, with light effects, transparencies, sound effects, elements in relief and other effects, it was possible to recreate different environments with great realism.

Daguerre patented his diorama in 1823, a year after putting on his first show in Paris, which featured two landscapes recreated in detail in 21.3 x 13.7 meter images, viewable through a frame of 7.3 X 6.4 meters at 12 meters away from the viewer. This show, which was successful for almost twenty years, was presented in a building specially created for the occasion, with a box for more than 300 spectators. The audience area was made up of seats on a revolving platform that, after viewing the first image, turned towards the second. The invention, as was the case with his Daguerreotype (based on the invention of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce), is not really his, but rather he knew how to see the wishes of an audience that was already beginning to demand shows like this, which they had been doing before, albeit on a scale minor, other stage designers such as Philippe-Jacques Loutherbourg (1740-1812) with his "Eidophusikon" or Franz Niklas König (1765-1832) with his “Diaphanorama”.

List of dioramas

• D.20 Sermon dans l'eglise real de Santa Maria Nuova, à Monreale en Sicile.
• D.19 Inaugeration du Temple de Salomon.
• D.18 Eboulement de la Vallée de Goldau'.
• D.17 Une Messe de minuit un santo-Etienne-du-Mont.
• D.16 Le Bassin du central à Gand commerce.
• D.15 Vue de la Forêt Noire.
• D.14 Mont Blanc, prise de la Vallée de Chamouny.
• D.13 Le Tombeau de Napoléon; à Sainte-Hèlène.
• D.12 Le 28 juillet 1830 à l'Hôtel de Ville de Paris.
• D.11 Vue de Paris, prise de Montmartre.
• D.10 Le Déluge du Start (shown 4 November 1829 as at 31 January 1831).
• D.7 Second sample la Ville d'Edimbourg, pendant l'Incendie.
• B.10 Campo Santo de Pise, by Bouton (1 August 1829-14 May 1830).

Currently, the three-dimensional landscape model that shows historical events, nature, cities, etc., used for education or entertainment, made with three-dimensional materials or elements, that make up a scene from life, is called a diorama. real. They are located in front of a curved background, painted in such a way as to simulate a real environment and the scene is completed with lighting effects. Animals, plants, battles, landscapes, etc. can be represented.

The Daguerreotype

His second invention was the daguerreotype, the first publicly disclosed photographic process, in 1839, in Paris.

Invention

The artist's workshopDaguerrotype, 1837.

Daguerre followed with great interest the discoveries that were made about photography at that time. He used the camera obscura to make models of his vast compositions, and became seriously concerned with reproducing his works. He did some experiments with phosphorescent substances, but the image was fleeting and visible only in the dark. Daguerre worked on numerous occasions with the optician Charles Chevalier who put him in contact with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, upon learning of the experiments he was carrying out in fixing images from the camera obscura.

On December 5, 1829, they signed a partnership agreement, in which Daguerre acknowledged that Niepce "had found a new procedure to establish, without resorting to drawing, the views offered by nature". Daguerre and Niepce were working together for several days. Each informed the other about their work, sometimes suspiciously, other times more spontaneously. They worked with sensitive plates of silver, copper and glass. They used vapors to blacken the image.

Without seeing each other again, when Niépce died in 1833, Daguerre continued to investigate. Later, in 1835, he made an important discovery by accident. He put an exposed plate in his chemical cabinet and found after a few days that it had become a latent image, due to the effects of the evaporating mercury acting as a revealer.

Daguerre perfected the daguerreotype until 1838. The daguerreotype did not allow obtaining copies, since it is a unique positive image. In addition, the exposure times were long and the mercury vapor had toxic health effects.

The death of Niépce

In 1833 Joseph Niépce died without the invention being made public and two years later, in 1835, Daguerre took advantage of the economic problems of Isidore, son of Joseph Niépce, to modify the signed contract, which means that the name of Daguerre comes to appear before the name of Niépce, in exchange for the father's economic rights being recognized to the son Isidore.

In that same year, a third modification of the contract took place, which entailed the disappearance of the name of Niépce and the procedure being renamed «Daguerreotype». A few years later, in 1838, Louis Daguerre took the first photograph on the Boulevard du Temple, in which a person appears.

Daguerre perfected the photographic procedure tested by Niépce. He used silver-plated copper plates, sensitized in iodine vapors. He got good prints from mercury vapors. And he fixed the images in very hot salt water. These were Daguerre's three great innovations. As a result he obtained very sharp images of permanent quality.

Daguerrotype Boulevard du Temple Paris, in 1838, with two people in its lower left area.

Industrialization

Quickly, in the city of Paris, 500,000 daguerreotypes were made in one year. Daguerre, helped by his brother-in-law, manages to market the camera called Daguerrotype , which was numbered and bore Daguerre's signature. The explanatory manual of the daguerreotype procedure was translated into the main languages.

The first people photographed

In 1838, what is believed to be the first photograph of living people was taken. The image shows a very busy street (the Parisian Boulevard du Temple). However, due to the long exposure time to impress the image —around fifteen minutes in the hours of maximum irradiation— the traffic or other passers-by do not appear, as they move too fast. The only exceptions are a man and a boy who cleaned his boots, who remained in the same position for as long as the daguerreotype was exposed. According to the research of the historian Shelley Rice, the shoeshine boy and his client are actors located there by Daguerre, who previously would have taken another photograph of the same place, noting the inability of the photographic technique of that moment to record the intense human activity. from that place.

Public presentation of the invention

On January 7, 1839, the invention was publicly presented at the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Subsequently, the French State bought the invention for an annual life pension of 6,000 francs for Daguerre and another 4,000 francs for the son of Joseph Niépce, with the aim of making the invention available to the public, which allowed the use of the daguerreotype spread throughout Europe and the United States.

Advantages of the daguerreotype

With the contribution of Daguerre, it was possible to reduce the time necessary for taking images to a period between five and forty minutes, compared to the two hours necessary with the Niépce procedure, which represented a huge leap in fifteen years.

From this moment on, Daguerre began to work on improving the chemical process with the use of silver iodide and mercury vapor, as well as dissolving the residual iodide in a hot solution based on common salt.

This is the oldest known daguerreotype from this same year. Under the name Composition we find ourselves before a still life of various objects that presents a more volumetric image, with greater depth and better reliefs.

During the years 1838 and 1839 he dedicated himself to promoting the invention through various means such as his attempt to create a public subscription exploitation company that failed or the operations of taking views carried out on the streets of Paris. Thanks to his actions, he managed to contact François Aragó, a liberal scientist and politician, who in 1839 publicly presented the invention to the French Academy of Sciences.

Daguerre achieved unanimous recognition throughout the world, receiving appointments from foreign academies and French and foreign decorations, concealing the true achievements of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce as his research predecessor. Little by little the truth became known and he finally ended up recognizing Niépce's contributions.

Death

Monument erected to Daguerre in Cormeilles-en-Parisis.

Until the date of his death, on July 10, 1851, in Bry sur Marne, he dedicated himself to the mass production of photographic material, together with his brother-in-law Giroux, and to the organization of public demonstrations of the invention.

Acknowledgments

• Honor Legion Officer.
• Its name is engraved on the list of 72 scientists from the Eiffel Tower.
• In 1935, the International Astronomical Union gave its name to the lunar crater Daguerre.
• In 1975, the filmmaker Agnès Varda filma Daguerréotypes (1975), a tribute to its neighbours of Daguerre Street in Paris and the inventor of Cormeilles-en-Parisis.
• On 19 August 2006, he was given a monolith in the Photomuseum (museum of photography) by Zarauz (Guipúzcoa).

Artistic works by Louis Daguerre

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  The ruins of the chapel of Holyroodpainting by Daguerre (1824).

• 

  Still Life with Jupiter Tonans (1839)

Additional bibliography

• Carl Edwin Lindgren. Teaching Photography in the Indian School. Photo Trade Directory: 1991. India International Photographic Council. Edited: N. Sundarraj and K. Ponnuswamy. VII IIPC-SIPATA Intl. Workshop and Conference on Photography — Madras, p. 9. (in English)
• R. Colson (ed.), Mémoires originaux des créateurs de la photographie. Nicéphore Niepce, Daguerre, Bayard, Talbot, Niepce de Saint-Victor, Poitevin, Paris 1898 (in French)
• Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L.J.M. Daguerre. The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, London 1956 (revised edition 1968) (in English)
• Beaumont Newhall, L'histoire de la photographie depuis 1839 et jusqu'à nos jours, Bélier-Prisma, Paris, 1967 (in French)
• Beaumont Newhall, An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Various Processes of the Daguerreotype and the Diorama by Daguerre, New York 1971 (in English)
• Hans Rooseboom, What's wrong with Daguerre? Reconsidering old and new views on the invention of photography, Nescio, Amsterdam, 2010 (www.nescioprivatepress.blogspot.com) (in English)
• Daguerre, Louis (1839). History and Practice of the Photogenic Drawing on the True Principles of the Daguerreotype with the New Method of Dioramic Painting (in English). London: Stewart and Murray. "A practical description of the process called daguerrotype. »
• Daniel, Malcolm. "Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography." The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Home. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. Web. 17 January 2012. (in English)
• Gale, Thomas. "Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre." BookRags. BookRags, Inc., 2012. Web. 14 April 2012. (in English)
• Kahane, Henry. Comparative Literature Studies. 3rd ed. Vol. 12. Penn State UP, 1975. Print. (in English)
• Maggi, Angelo. "Roslin Chapel in Gandy’s Sketchbook and Daguerre’s Diorama." Architectural History. 1991 ed. Vol. 42. SAHGB Publications Limited, 1991. Print. (in English)
• Szalczer, Eszter. "Nature’s Dream Play: Modes of Vision and August Strindberg’s Re-Definition Of the Theatre." Theatre Journal. 1st ed. Vol. 53. Johns Hopkins UP, 2001. (in English)
• "Classics of Science: The Daguerreotype." The Science News-Letter. 374th ed. Vol. 13. Society For Science & the Public, 1928. Print. (in English)
• Watson, Bruce, "Light: A Radiant History from Creation to the Quantum Age," (London and NY: Bloomsbury, 2016). Print. (in English)
• Wilkinson, Lynn R. "Le Cousin Pons and the Invention of Ideology." PMLA. 2nd ed. Vol. 107. Modern Language Association, 1992. Print. (in English)
• Wood, R. Derek. "The Diorama in Great Britain in the 1820s." Annals of Science, Sept 1997, Vol 54, No.5, pp. 489–506 (Taylor & Francis Group). Web.(Midley History of early Photography) 14 April 2012 (in English)
• Adrien Mentienne, La découverte de la photographie en 1839 - Description du procédé faite aux Chambres législatives par Daguerre (Inventeur) 1892 (in French)
• Jean Loup Princelle, « Ces noms qui ont fait la photo: Louis Daguerre », dans Réponses Photo ISSN 1167-864X, number 186, {September 2007 (in French)
• Louis Daguerre par J Roquencourt - Revue Vivre in Val-d'OiseNumber 48, (in French)
• Ennery Taramelli, Le roman de Daguerre, l'artiste qui fixa le temps, Contrejour, 2013, ISBN 979-10-90294-10-3 (in French)