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February 24, 2010
Pioneers of Photography part I
They were heady days, holed up in a dusty Parisienne loft above the Boulevard du Temple, with Daguerre, inhaling the strong cocktail of chemicals we used to make our images come to life. Days when exposures were measured in hours not fractions of a second.
First we experimented with jam spread on tinfoil, but these early jamtypes produced little by way of a result. We tried marmalade and honey in various consistencies with no success and the camera got in a frightful state.
Moving from the larder to the cupboard under the sink we used bleach and washing up liquid on a chopping board and were amazed by a crude, dark, outline of a cat that appeared on the surface after a few days. But we subsequently discovered that the grubby boy next-door, who comes in to fix the leaking chimney, had drawn it with his sooty finger.
My late grandmother was a stickler for cleanliness and she would polish the tea things until they shone. Her silver tea-tray was no exception and it was now to this that we turned for a flat surface to further our experiments.
Though it reflected our faces perfectly, we just couldn’t capture the image. Shining a torch on the tray with a variety of Quality Street wrappers in front of the lens proved fruitless and in a rare outburst of rage Daguerre threw the torch at me. It caught me only a glancing blow on the forehead, but sufficient to draw blood. As soon as Louis saw this he fell to remorse and fumbled about in the medicine cabinet for some Tincture of Iodine to dress my, albeit minor, blessure.
Leaving the Iodine bottle standing open, the better to tend my abrasion, Louis suddenly froze. I looked at him quizzically and gaining no recognition, followed his gaze. My eyes fell to the tray propped up behind the open bottle, a shaft of light, bent through the window pane, glanced upon it and there, before our startled faces, a faint image was forming.
The winter of 1835 was bitter and our draughty loft afforded scant defence against the cold. We soldiered on, in woollen mittens and thick scarves, frustrated by the faintness of the images we were producing and searching for a way to increase the contrast. Soot, burnt toast, boot polish, all served only to destroy the fragile image.
Daguerre came down with the influenza and in a fevered state broke his thermometer on the stove. The spilt mercury danced and hissed on the hot-plate above which we were drying a recently exposed traytype.
Imagine our surprise when, as the mercury vapour rose from the stove, the image on the tray began to darken and Louis whispered under his breath – “Daguerreotype”.
Boulevard du Temple, an early Daguerreotype
Posted by john at February 24, 2010 10:38 AM