Part of an intermittent series featuring "occupational" images that have appeared online. People were undeniably the focus of nineteenth-c...

This group is dedicated to the past and present art of the daguerreotype. Please do not post photographs that are processed in Photoshop to look like daguerreotypes. Past Developed by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, the daguerreotype was presented to the public in 1839 as the first commercially viable photographic process. The daguerreotype quickly gained popularity and photographic studios were established across Europe and the United States. This popularity was relatively short lived however and by 1860 the daguerreotype process was replaced by safer, easier, and less expensive processes. Although brief in existence, the impact of the daguerreotype was immense. It is the process that formed the basis for the art of photography. Present The art of the daguerreotype was abandoned for nearly 100 years and only recently have photographers dared to attempt the process again. Most of the old methods were lost and only general descriptions of the process have survived. Much trial and error has gone into developing new methods to reproduce daguerreotypes with the same stunning quality as those created in the mid nineteenth century. Upcoming Events Resources Forum Contemporary Daguerreotypists