Louis Daguerre

In the early 18th century the only way to preserve an image was with a pen, paper, or other drawing tools. Though several people had made progress in the development of photography, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre is perhaps the most famous. Daguerre spent most of his life as an artist. He was used to manipulating light and working with the chemicals of his paints. He sketched the images from a camera obscura and created realistic drawings. Using the camera obscura, Daguerre made an early photograph. In partnership with Niepce, Daguerre sought to make a lasting image. Though Niepce died in 1833, Daguerre continued to experiment. Between 1835 and 1837, he perfected his process, an early form of photography. Book jacket.

The debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos reimagines the life of Louis Daguerre, the inventor of photography, who becomes convinced that the world is going to end when his mind unravels due to mercury poisoning. He is determined to reconnect with the only woman he has ever loved before the End comes. Louis Daguerre's story is set against the backdrop of a Paris prone to bohemian excess and social unrest. Poets and dandies debate art and style in the cafes while students and rebels fill the garrets with revolutionary talk and gun smoke. It is here, amid this strange and beguiling setting, that Louis Daguerre sets off to capture his doomsday subjects. Louis enlists the help of the womanizing poet Charles Baudelaire, known to the salon set as the "Prince of Clouds" and a jaded but beautiful prostitute named Pigeon. Together they scour the Paris underworld for images worthy of Daguerre's list. But Louis is also confronted by a chance to reunite with the only woman he's ever loved. Half a lifetime ago, Isobel Le Fournier kissed Louis Daguerre in a wine cave outside of Orleans. The result was a proposal, a rejection, and a misunderstanding that outlasted three kings and an emperor. Now, in the countdown to his apocalypse, Louis wants to understand why he has carried the memory of that kiss for so long.

Biographical And Science-Related Information, Examining The Life Of Louis Daguerre And His Invention Of Photography.

This book contains the definitive account of Daguerre and the daguerreotype. It covers Daguerre's early work as the perfecter and promoter of the diorama; his collaboration with Niépce, the first man to produce a photograph, imperfect though it was; his extension of Niépce's experiments after Niépce's death; and the eventual development of the daguerreotype : a remarkably sensitive positve on a metal plate.

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.