HF The History of Photography 600pág

6 The daguerreotype
Though to Niepce goes the credit of having devised the first photographic process,
and of having invented the earliest photo-engraving method, it was left to his partner
Daguerre to make photography practicable as distinct from possible. Indeed, for
twelve years the daguerreotype remained supreme in the photographic studios of
the world.
LOUIS JACQUES MANDE DAGUERRE was born on 18 November 1787 at Cormeilles- Pl 28
en-Parisis. His childhood was spent at Orleans, where his father was employed as a
clerk on the royal estate. Showing talent for drawing, the boy was apprenticed to an
architect at the age of thirteen, and three years later became a pupil of Degotti, scenepainter
at the Paris Opera. Later he made himself independent and designed the decor
for the productions of several Paris theatres. He also collaborated with Prevost on a
number of large panoramas-a kind of show which eajoyed immense popularity in
the last decade of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, having been
invented in 1787 by Robert Barker, an Irish artist working in Edinburgh.
In l 822 Daguerre associated himself with the painter Charles Bouton (an assistant
of Prevost) in a new venture, the Diorama, a picture show with changing light effects
which aroused astonishment and admiration by its perfect illusion of reality. The
whole of Paris was in ecstasy. One mystified eye-witness of 'A Midnight Mass at St.
Etienne-du-Mont' -one of the most famous of Daguerre's tableaux-gives a vivid
description of the kind of show thac held the spectators in the darkened theatre spellbound
and brought fame to the inventor.
At first, it is daylight; we see the nave with its chairs ; little by little the light
wanes and the candles are lighted. At the back of the choir, the church is illuminated
and the congregation arriving, take their places in front of the chairs, not
suddenly, as if the scenes were shifted, but gradually, quickly enough to astonish
one, yet without causing too much surprise. The midnight mass begins. In this
reverent stillness the organ peals out from under the distant vaults. Then the daylight
slowly returns, the congregation disperses, the candles are extinguished and
the church with its chairs appears as at the beginning. This was magic.1
The 'magic' was achieved by fairly simple though very ingenious means. The picture
was painted on both sides of a transparent screen, and the change of effect was produced
by controlling the windows and skylights so that sometimes the picture was
seen by light shining on the front of the screen, at others by transmitted light from
behind, or by a combination of both. In this particular tableau the empty church was