Could Daguerrotypes be updated?

[Bill_1856]

Daguerrotypes are actually pretty miserable stuff. Their only saving grace seems to be that today they are relatively rare, and (in some people's eyes) quite beautiful. They are difficult to visualize, easily destroyed just by touching them, have very, very poor resolution, and impose a serious personal and enviromental hazzard when they are made.
On the other hand, they produced far, far superior images when compared with Fox-Talbot's Calotypes.
But over the next 80 years Talbot's negative/positive process was developed and evolved into the "modern" photographic process (as practiced even today by those Luddites who have not been seduced into scratching a digital itch).
My question is, was the Daguerrotype truly a dead-end process, or could it have been (or still could be) developed into a viable and competative image-making system?
(This is just a possibly provocative thought, not a proposal.)

[Ed Richards]

Search for Chuck Close's work with Daguerrotypes. Sure worked for him.

[Toyon]

One of the major improvements is that you no longer have to fume them with Mercury, you can use Iodine. Of course, it is a commercially viable process, provided you can identify and serve the specialized market.

[Kerik Kouklis]

http://www.jerryspagnoli.com/

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

As a working Daguerreotypist, I can answer no, there was no real future for them simply because the inherit problem with Daguerreotypes--short of their cost and toxicity--is that they are singular positive images.

Of course in the 19th century making Daguerreotype copies of Daguerreotypes was done quite frequently and for commercial purposes. I believe one could walk into a studio, look at the images on the wall of your favorite star, and then order a copy made for yourself.

I actually don't think that Fox-Talbot was of great significance because his patent limited the use of his method. Daguerre and Archer, by not patenting their methods were much more influential. How may calotypes are there compared to Daguerreotypes and Tintypes or Ambrotypes? I think the Daguerreotype and later the collodion processes were of huge importance because the allowed first the middle and later the working classes to bring an image home and make it part of their daily lives. Sure, the Calotype may be technologically important, but it didn't have much of a place in the parlors of the 19th century.

ps: the resolution on Daguerreotypes is hardly "very, very poor", it is about 20 l/mm.

[AF-ULF]

I suppose the answer to your question depends on what you mean by "viable an competitive." Clearly there are some very talented individuals who are making dags for the art market today. Some sell or display the original dags, while others will use a more conventional means to reproduce them for distribution or display. Within the rather narrow confines of the fine art market or for ones personal enjoyment, they are viable and competitive, just as wet plates, dry plates, albumen prints and other historical processes are viable and competitive. One reason they are viable and competitive in this setting is that they are unusual or different from standard photographic processes.

But I don't think they are "viable and competitive" in a broader industrial sense. As Jason points out, the inherent problems of dags makes them ill suited to wide spread use or to industrialization simply because the entire process must be carried out by the individual photographer. To me, this issue goes back to the formation of Kodak and the industrialization of the photographic process: "You take the picture, we do the rest." I suppose one could set up a dag store where you sold pre-polished plates and supplied all the chemicals and apparatus to individual photographers, but the plates would still have to be sensitized and developed by the photographer. Doing this would basically recreate the distribution system that existed in the US in the 1840s and 50s. There may be a small market for such a system, but I doubt it would be "viable and competitive" in any broad way. I suppose the analogy here would be with wet plate photography, where several internet stores exist to supply all things wet plate. But the original question remains, does the existence of such stores (which stay in business and make the wet plate photographer's life much easier) make it "viable and competitive?"

[duckarrowtypes]

Daguerreotypes are actually pretty miserable stuff. Their only saving grace seems to be that today they are relatively rare, and (in some people's eyes) quite beautiful.


Miserable? How do you mean? Everyone I've shown my work to is completely blown away. Most of the time the vintage pieces, by the way, just suffer from deteriorated glass and often look stunning with new glass. Ya gotta take care of antique furniture too, ya know?


They are difficult to visualize, easily destroyed just by touching them
Partially true on the first point and very true on the second point


have very, very poor resolution, and impose a serious personal and environmental hazard when they are made.

DEAD wrong on the first point and debatable on the last point. Dangerous chemicals, yes but very small quantities. Hardly a concern for the EPA.



My question is, was the Daguerreotype truly a dead-end process, or could it have been (or still could be) developed into a viable and competitive image-making system?
(This is just a possibly provocative thought, not a proposal.)

Obviously I'm passionate about Daguerreotypes. I make them and I'm very good at making them. By necessity I've had to learn a LOT about the process which is messy, somewhat dangerous, and a total pain in the ass. I do NOT think that it is in any way a practical or competitive image-making system. It is perfectly viable but it's a far cry from being a competitor to anything we have today.

Other than being a unique curiosity in this modern age I don't see any commercial usefulness of it. I make them because they're far and away the most beautiful photographic ever developed (no pun intended!).

[Bill_1856]

1) Just to make it clear, personally I love Daguerreotype images!
2) My touting of Fox-Talbot's Calotype was because (once Sir John Herschel "invented" the fixer) it was the initiating step for evolution of the negative/positive process.
3) I may have a false impression about their "resolution." My experience has been that about a 2x enlargment is all that can be made before they begin to look fuzzy, but this may the effect of those early lenses rather than a defect of the process if made with modern optics.
4) The Jerry Spagnoli image of Mr. Obama's inauguration appears to be in color (blue sky and the red stripes of the flags). Could anyone explain this to me, please. (PS, thanks, Kerik Kouklis for the link.)

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

The blue color of the sky is certainly solarization--mercury developed plates turn blue when over-exposed. I don't see any red.

[eddie]

1)
4) The Jerry Spagnoli image of Mr. Obama's inauguration appears to be in color (blue sky and the red stripes of the flags). Could anyone explain this to me, please.

i can not say about the red but jerry told me that the skies go blue because they are overexposed and when dags are over exposed they go blue. cool artifact if you ask me.