# Daguerreotype portraiture

> Small, unique portraits on silvered copper plates, so sharp that every hair and thread shows and the sitter seems held in a mirror. Sitters sit or stand perfectly still for seconds to a minute under a skylight, heads braced, faces grave, centred in the gilt mat of a hinged case or a frame. The silver greys turn negative at an angle, the image is reversed left to right, tarnish creeps in from the edges, and some plates carry a touch of pigment.

- Period: 1839–1860
- Where it began: Paris, 1839
- Kind: Early processes
- Also called: Daguerreian portrait, Cased daguerreotype, Mirror with a memory
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/daguerreotype-portraiture/

## How the look is made

- Seat the sitter close to a skylight or high window and keep them completely still: brace the head, rest an arm on a table and expose for seconds, not an instant.
- Centre one sitter, or a couple or family pressed close together, at half or three-quarter length against a plain backdrop, facing the lens at eye level.
- Resolve every hair, thread and fold with full sharpness and long silver greys; add no grain and no retouching.
- Make one unique, laterally reversed image and treat it as a keepsake: under glass in a gilt mat, in a hinged case or a small frame.
- Let faces stay serious and direct; the gravity of the long exposure is part of the look.

## How it is lit

- A skylight or large window high to one side of a rooftop daylight studio, shaped with screens and blinds.
- The sitter close to the light against a plain dark or mid-grey backdrop, the shadow side left to fall away.

### The rendered set-up

One large skylight high to the side and close to the sitter, screens holding it off the far side, a dark backdrop (the light of the studio, not the silvered plate). Rendered in Blender Cycles on a synthetic clay figure or still life, with the lights exactly where the plan on the page puts them.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: a window, about 60° to the camera’s left, soft.
- Reflector: a white card or reflector, about 55° to the camera’s right, soft.

## Camera settings

45–70 mm · f/3.6–f/5.6 · 5 s–1 min · ISO 0.005–0.05 (on quarter-plate), documented. Petzval portrait lens (150 mm, f/3.6) used wide open under a skylight; bromine-accelerated plates (about ISO 0.05 at best) needed 15–30 s in good light, a few seconds on the brightest days. Focal equivalents for sixth to whole plates are inferred.

## Directing people

Seat the sitter upright, shoulders square to the lens or turned slightly, an arm on a posing table and hands folded in the lap, or stand them beside a chair with a hand on its back; brace the head and hold still for many seconds. Faces stay grave and unsmiling, eyes on or just past the lens. Couples and families sit close, a hand on a shoulder.

## Styling

Best clothes for the studio: dark silks, shawls, bonnets and lace collars, or a dark coat, patterned waistcoat and cravat; a brooch, earrings or a watch chain; hair neatly parted, no make-up. A plain dark or grey ground, a posing chair or table, at most a column or a book.

## Before you shoot it

Daguerreotypes show real people, many of whom left no other likeness. Mourning and post-mortem plates show the dead, often children, and some plates were coerced 'type' images, such as the 1850 daguerreotypes of the enslaved Renty and Delia Taylor made by Joseph T. Zealy for Louis Agassiz; never imitate those. A generated image in this style must show an invented, living, clothed sitter, be labelled as AI-generated, and never be passed off as an antique plate or as anyone's ancestor.

## Photographs

- Samuel J. Miller, Frederick Douglass, 1847–52. Art Institute of Chicago, Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment. Shown on the page: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/145681
- Southworth & Hawes, Untitled (A Woman in Bonnet and Shawl, with her Seated Son), c. 1850. Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of the Leonian Charitable Trust. Shown on the page: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/241942
- Artist unknown, Untitled (Married Couple), 1852. Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of The Estate of Carl A. and Helen Pelon Walvoord. Shown on the page: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/207451
- Carl Ferdinand Stelzner, Portrait of an unknown woman, 1845–60. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Shown on the page: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-F14347

## Sources

- Daguerreotype, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype (19 August 1839 gift to the world; process with iodine, bromine, mercury and gold-chloride gilding; mirror surface and lateral reversal; unique images; cases, union cases, preservers, passe-partouts; Petzval lens 1841 and exposure times; rooftop daylight studios with screens and blinds; head rests and posing tables; three million a year in the US by 1853; Brady, Whipple, Gurney, Augustus Washington; superseded from about 1856)
- Southworth & Hawes, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southworth_%26_Hawes (Boston studio, 1843–1863; whole-plate format; Boston society and public figures)
- Untitled (A Woman in Bonnet and Shawl, with her Seated Son), Southworth & Hawes, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/241942 (Southworth & Hawes as leading daguerreotypists; full plates; their lens and plate-holder innovations)
- Frederick Douglass, Samuel J. Miller, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/145681 (sharp detail; 'democratic art'; thousands of US studios; mostly formulaic likenesses; Douglass guiding his own image)
- Untitled (Married Couple), Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/207451 (millions made by operators in the 1850s; lateral reversal; 'mirror with a memory'; great tonal range)
- Untitled (The Coit Family), S. L. Holman, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/250076 (family memorials and mourning; 'Secure the shadow, ere the substance fade')
- Portret van een onbekende vrouw, Carl Ferdinand Stelzner, Rijksmuseum: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-F14347 (Hamburg daguerreotypist; paper passe-partout mount)
- Hand-colouring of photographs, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-colouring_of_photographs (pigments fixed on daguerreotypes from the early 1840s; Isenring, Beard's 1842 patent)
- Renty Taylor, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renty_Taylor (1850 Zealy daguerreotypes commissioned by Louis Agassiz; Lanier v. Harvard; transfer to the International African American Museum)
- Daguerreotype, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype (Chevalier lenses about f/14; Petzval working aperture about f/3.6, and Voigtländer's camera with an f/3.5 Petzval lens; Petzval exposures about one-fifteenth of Chevalier ones; bromine or chlorine cut exposures to 15–30 s in favourable light; portraits needed several seconds on the brightest days; Voigtländer's guidance of 40–45 s in direct sun and 1½–2 min in shade, for iodine-only plates)
- History of photographic lens design, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_design (a 150 mm Petzval lens on Voigtländer's conical metal camera for circular daguerreotypes, 1841; at f/3.6 the first wide-aperture portrait lens; Chevalier's landscape lens with an f/16 stop)
- Sensitometric Study of Io-bromized Daguerreotype Plates, Mark Stebbins, Rochester Institute of Technology thesis (1978): https://repository.rit.edu/theses/5288 (optimum speed at an exposure index of about 0.05, about 1 s at f/4.5 in bright sun)
- Untitled (A Woman in Bonnet and Shawl, with her Seated Son), Southworth & Hawes, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/241942 (full plate, 21.5 × 16.5 cm; Southworth and Hawes patented lenses that eliminated distortion and a swinging plate holder)

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/daguerreotype-portraiture/#sheet