Camera Obscura
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Louis Daguerre's Contribution to Photography
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By: Arsema Girmay
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2021-03-15T22:39:56+00:00
An early inventor that contributed heavily to the invention and development of photographic technologies is Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. Daguerre and Joseph Nicephore Niepce both made progress in the development and worked together, but after Niepce’s death, it was Daguerre that continued their work and would later take sole credit for the invention of photography. Although this might be his claim, the invention of photography cannot be solely credited to one individual and cannot be pinpointed to a single date in history as it was a process that took many years and ideas and inventions from many inventors and is still a process that continues to be worked on and developed to this day and modernized. Many people take credit for this, but it is still important and key to note that it was Daguerre who was able to put pieces and ideas together. These ideas coming from other early inventors were able to advance photographic technology and build his own inventions from that, this allowed photography to further develop in ways that it had not before. [1]
Daguerre had started researching photography in the mid 1820s in order to find a way to capture clear and detailed still images that he saw in a camera obscura. It was not until 1829 that he had formed a partnership with Joseph Nicephore Niepce, who was also working towards the same goal, which was to permanently capture a still moment using photography through the use of light. [2] They worked together for years and were able to accomplish much research together which led to Niepce’s invention of the heliograph. This method produced one of the earliest photographs using camera obscura. When Niepce passed away in 1833, Daguerre decided to continue the research on his own and expand his ideas by using and putting past research and ideas together. He was able to do this successfully, as he invented the daguerreotype years later. By 1839, this is when Daguerre was confident enough in his invention and idea to reveal and explain his process to the public. [3] This process was known as the daguerreotype. This process had to be done carefully and rendered a detailed image on a sheet of copper. In the first step, a silver plated copper plate was used and it is important that it is cleaned and polished to look like a mirror in order to develop a clear image. Then it is sensitized with iodine vapors in a closed, large box. It is then exposed to light and developed with mercury until an image has appeared and is showing. After this, in order to fix the image, it is put in a salt water mixture, known as sodium thiosulfate. Originally, the earliest daguerreotypes’ exploration times range from three to fifteen minutes, but as the process was worked and developed on, the exposure time was reduced to less than a minute. [4] This was a complicated and time consuming process and when looked at and used, it can be better understood why it took years to create and perfect. It is also important that it must be done with care in order to render clear and highly detailed images, as this was Daguerre’s original goal in creating the process.
Louis Daguerre’s motivation to begin experimenting with light sensitive materials was so that he and others would be able to capture an image from a still moment in time, from what he saw through a camera obscura in a way that captured the image and produced one that was clear and detailed, which would be a great improvement from previous outcomes. Daguerre’s ambitions were a combination of a few factors. Daguerre wanted fame for his invention, this is evident as he took credit as the sole inventor of photography despite not solely using his ideas and work. He was successful in gaining fame because even to this day, he is known as one of the main inventors of photography and much of the ideas and creations are credited to him. Fortune might also have been a factor as he made a profit from his invention of the daguerreotype and was able to patent it also giving him a sum of money that he profited from. Although the money he made was not a large sum, this is why I think fame played a larger ambition and outcome. Daguerre’s ambitions did not seem strictly limited to gaining fame and fortune, despite gaining both, as he openly shared his work over the years. His invention was a scientific breakthrough in the photography world by capturing an image in a way that had not been done before. This allowed the average person to capture photographs quicker and made it more affordable, when photography had been more expensive before, which meant many people could not afford this luxury.His work was able to provide scientific growth in photography and this was his aim and interest while researching and putting ideas together in order to create new ways of photography.
Views of modernity and capitalism heavily influenced Daguerre’s discovery because his main goal was to improve and modernize the process previously used to capture images and to upgrade what he saw using camera obscura. Due to this, the camera obscura played an important role in modernizing and leading to future inventions in photography. This is a perfect example of why the overall invention of photography cannot be credited to a single person, because inventions like Daguerre’s daguerreotype build off of other previous ideas to improve processes already used. Without camera obscura, the invention of the daguerreotype would have had a different process, taking longer, because it is what Daguerre looked at and hoped to improve on, which he was able to do successfully. In “The Daguerreotype'', Edgar Allen Poe writes, “the instrument itself must undoubtedly be regarded as the most important, and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science.” [5] This shows how much the daguerreotype was a modernized process at the time and influenced the history and modern use of photography. It was eventually used in the development of photographic technology because it allowed people to capture images and memories in a quicker and less expensive way. This allowed photography to be more inclusive and give the average person the ability to preserve moments through photography.
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1. Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: a Cultural History. 4th ed. London: Laurence King Publishing ltd, 2014.
2. Daniel, Malcolm. “Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm (October 2004), 4.
3. Daniel, Malcolm. “Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm (October 2004), 4.
4. Library of Congress, "The Daguerrotype Medium". https://www.loc.gov/collections/daguerreotypes/articles-and-essays/the-daguerreotype-medium/ , 4-6.
5. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Daguerreotype” in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger (Philadelphia) (15 January 1840): 2. Cited in Brigham, Clarence S., Edgar Allan Poe’s Contributions to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1943): 20–22.
