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A Curious and Ingenious Art: Reflections on Daguerreotypes at Harvard

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Stunning book on daguerreotypes

A Curious and Ingenious Art: Reflections on Daguerreotypes at Harvard
Melissa Banta
Manufacturer: University Of Iowa Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science

ASIN: 0877457247

Book Description

Around the time Louis Jacques Mand Daguerre perfected his method for fixing images on polished metal plates in 1839, Harvard was emerging as a modern research institution. Accordingly, the college began amassing vast collections for teaching and research. Among these collections in the university's libraries, museums, archives, and academic departments are some of the earliest photographic documents of American life: daguerreotypes. A Curious and Ingenious Art brings together a representative sampling of Harvard's internationally significant but relatively unknown collection of daguerreotypes. Many of these images were made for, by, and of members of the universityÕs community and have been in its holdings for more than 150 years. The collection includes the work of some of America's pioneering daguerreotypists, such as Mathew Brady, Southworth and Hawes, and John Adams Whipple. Most notably, the Harvard collection preserved for posterity such faces of the era as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, James McNeill Whistler, Dorothea Dix, Jenny Lind, and even Tom Thumb.

The university also seized upon photography as a tool of scientific research, stunningly exemplified in one of the first detailed daguerreotypes of the moon taken in 1851 as well as in images capturing the emergence of modern anesthesia. An unfortunate misuse of photography is recalled in the now famous slave daguerreotypes commissioned by natural historian Louis Agassiz, who believed in the theory of separate human species.

The Harvard collection represents the early history of photography and its social meaning. The accompanying essays explore the personal, telling histories behind the images, stories that unveil the reflections of individuals who searched for purpose and promise in the new medium.

Customer Reviews:

Stunning book on daguerreotypes.......2000-11-06

The best daguerreotype portraits are some of the most striking photographic likenesses you'll ever see. Talk about verisimilitude: Those who posed for daguerreotypes in the last century seem about to start speaking, or to step right out of the image. The pictures are practically holographic in their three-dimensionality, and you feel you could almost reach out and touch the faces captured therein so long ago. The generally small size of the images doesn't detract from the experience; in fact, like the finest Mughal miniatures, the reverse is true. As you draw close to the frame, you find yourself entering the daguerreotype's exquisite little world. The experience is enhanced by the thought that, since daguerreotypes are positive images, the photograph before you is the only one in existence.

A daguerreotype's power is greatest when you're seeing the actual image before your eyes, of course, but the reproductions in this beautifully designed coffee-table book, many of which are reproduced in actual size, are so stunning that you're truly getting the next best thing. Here you'll find likenesses of some of the most famous figures to traipse through the 19th century -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jenny Lind, Tom Thumb, James Whistler, Dorothea Dix.

The author, Melissa Banta, a kind of curator-at-large at Harvard, was not content simply to ferret out all daguerreotypes then existing at Harvard (over 450 images, some of which are seeing the light of day for the first time here). She delved into the often compelling stories behind each image's creation, life history, and curation. In lyrically written short essays, we learn how the first daguerreotypes of the moon came into being in 1851, why Louis Agassiz had daguerreotypes taken of slaves forced to disrobe, what Harriet Beecher Stowe was thinking at the time her likeness was taken, why Asa Gray collected daguerreotypes of his fellow botanists (all images that appear here).

In short, this is a coffee-table book with substance and personality. It will serve as an excellent introduction to daguerreotypy for the layman, and a must-have compendium for the avid daguerreian. Highly recommended.

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