Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851) was a true nineteenth-century visionary—a painter, printmaker, set designer, entrepreneur, inventor, and pioneer of photography. Though he was widely celebrated beyond his own lifetime for his invention of the daguerreotype, it was his origins as a theatrical designer and purveyor of visual entertainment that paved the way for Daguerre’s emergence as one of the world’s most iconic imagemakers.
In Speculating Daguerre, Stephen C. Pinson reinterprets the story of the man and his time, painting a vivid picture of Daguerre as an innovative artist and savvy impresario whose eventual fame as a photographer eclipsed everything that had come before. Drawing upon previously unpublished correspondence and unplumbed archival sources, Pinson mixes biography with an incisive study of Daguerre’s wide-ranging involvement in visual culture. From his work as a commercial lithographer to his coinvention of the Paris Diorama—a theater in the round in which Daguerre employed natural light and special effects to simulate time and movement in large-scale paintings—here we are given access to Daguerre the artist, whose tireless experimentation, entrepreneurial spirit, and exceptional talent for popular spectacle helped to usher in a new visual age.
Filled with more than one hundred illustrations and including the first complete catalogue of Daguerre’s paintings, works on paper, and daguerreotypes to appear in print, the publication of Speculating Daguerre will be a much-heralded event for anyone with even a passing interest in one of the most fascinating characters in the history of photography.

Speculating Daguerre: Art and Enterprise in the Work of L. J. M. Daguerre

Arts & Photography

Pinson, Stephen C.

Photography & Video

University of Chicago Press

Eminent Domain

Ligon, Glenn

New York Public Library

The New York Public Library

The first extensive exploration of the groundbreaking daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey, whose work features the earliest known images of the great monuments and sites of the eastern Mediterranean In 1842, the pioneering French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804–1892) set out eastward across the Mediterranean with a custom-built camera to explore ancient lands that were largely unknown to the Western world. This book is the first to fully consider the hundreds of daguerreotypes that resulted from his three-year journey, many of which were made using innovative techniques that fascinate photographers to this day. The images, including the first-known photographic documentation of significant locations, offer tangible evidence of historic sites, many of which have since been destroyed, in places such as Greece, Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Jerusalem. They are remarkable and unparalleled portraits of a world gone by. Copiously illustrated and featuring a geographic glossary of the sites and images, Monumental Journey sheds new light on the arc of Girault’s career, the vibrant orientalist milieu of 19th-century France that shaped his work, and his inventive contributions to the nascent field of photography. It introduces modern audiences to a brilliant yet enigmatic talent, as well as the stunning images, many published here for the time, that make a major contribution to the histories of both photography and eastern Mediterranean.

Monumental Journey: The Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey

Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Books by Pinson, Stephen C.