Product Details
Hardcover
222 pages
University of Iowa Press
Published 1995
Amazon.com
Imagine a "gold and mercury image on a layer of silver bonded to copper," an all-metal photographic process that poisoned some its practitioners. Imagine an era long before a surfeit of images began to dull the viewer, when a visual reality--not a virtual one--captivated the imagination. The daguerreotype process is not only "one of the great artistic vehicles for rendering the human face," says John Wood, but an equally potent and elegant means of rendering a scenic image. The author has assembled the largest collection of daguerreotypes ever seen in book form, including Jean-Louis-Baptiste Gros's masterful studies of the Acropolis and the Seine, and Joseph Wilhelm Pero's striking images of Lubeck, Germany.
From Library Journal
Invented in 1839, daguerreotypes were small (the largest being 61/2" x 81/2") and could not be reproduced because there were no negatives. These two titles provide a visual reflection of the 19th century through these images and confirm the beauty and elegance of the early images themselves. Both volumes contain essays by Wood, a noted historian of early photography, who suggests that daguerreotypists regarded themselves as artists and recognized the artistic value inherent in photography.... read more |
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