Scenic Daguerreotype in America 1840-1860
Invented in France by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in the 1830s, the daguerreotype rapidly became the first widely practiced photographic process worldwide. By 1853, photographers in the United States produced an estimated three million a year, mostly portraits. But between 1840 and 1860, an innovative language of scenic outdoor daguerreotypes developed despite the technical challenges of the process. Gain an incredible view into mid-nineteenth-century American life and the beginnings of American landscape photography that emerged concurrently with the Hudson River School of painters. These forgotten but pioneering daguerreotypes laid the foundation for the scenic and urban landscape tradition that would dominate American photography in the twentieth century.
