The History of Photography in the United States
Photography came to the United States a few years after Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre invented Daguerreotype (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype ) in 1839 in Paris, France. This was a popular medium until about 1850’s. By the late 1850’s, most of Americans switched to a different process that combined daguerreotype clarity with paper reproduction. This process used albumen silver prints and large glass plate negatives rather than the polished silver plated copper sheet that the daguerreotype process had used.
Photography was used mostly for making counterfeit money during this time. As well as photographs. Not much was seen of buildings or landscapes. They were also said to be ‘stiff’. It wasn’t until around 1860 that photographs of cities were seen taken as stereographs. Stereographs are images that are commonly known as a stereo view. A double photograph as though you were looking through a stereoscope (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stereoscope) to see it in three dimensions.
In the late 20th century, there were photographers that wanted to use the old Daguerreotype process for their artwork.
I have a hard time picturing all this. I’m wondering if we are able to see this stuff in real life, verses on a computer, to really process how things started. To think back to the days of our Kodak cameras spiting out the photo as we took it, to having to take in our rolls of film to be developed and now everything done digitally kept on a memory card still has me baffled about photography being produced in these ways. I can’t picture it at all. I can read it, but have difficulties comprehending it.
Photography was used mostly for making counterfeit money during this time. As well as photographs. Not much was seen of buildings or landscapes. They were also said to be ‘stiff’. It wasn’t until around 1860 that photographs of cities were seen taken as stereographs. Stereographs are images that are commonly known as a stereo view. A double photograph as though you were looking through a stereoscope (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stereoscope) to see it in three dimensions.
In the late 20th century, there were photographers that wanted to use the old Daguerreotype process for their artwork.
I have a hard time picturing all this. I’m wondering if we are able to see this stuff in real life, verses on a computer, to really process how things started. To think back to the days of our Kodak cameras spiting out the photo as we took it, to having to take in our rolls of film to be developed and now everything done digitally kept on a memory card still has me baffled about photography being produced in these ways. I can’t picture it at all. I can read it, but have difficulties comprehending it.
Resources:
https://www.photographymuseum.com/ease.html
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/adag/hd_adag.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype
https://www.dictionary.com/
https://www.photographymuseum.com/ease.html
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/adag/hd_adag.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype
https://www.dictionary.com/