Researchers and artists have brought again to light the old technique of the daguerreotype to produce unique pieces of an exquisite beauty.

The daguerreotype is a process from which you get a positive image from a copper plate covered with Silver Iodide. After being exposed to light, the image is developed with Mercury steam. The result is a detailed image with a delicate surface that must be protect and sealed with a glass to avoid the air blackens it.

At the beginning, the process invented by Daguerre, was not very sensitive to light that is why the exposure time could be even 30 minutes. However, advances in Austria, England and the United States reduced it and in the early 1840s big European cities had at least one photography studio and traveling photographers walked the smaller towns.

One of the main problems of this process was that each image was unique which differed from William Henry Fox's kallitype. With it, it was possible to make many positive copies from a first negative.

In the mid 1850s the daguerreotype was almost obsolete because the wet colodion process over a glass plate combined the refinement of the daguerreotype with the ease to make copies from the kallitype.

Too many hours of work are needed to obtain what you are looking for. Each daguerreotype is a unique piece because there is not negative from which you can get never-ending copies from it. This piece represents in its uniqueness the photographed time, space and model. This fact is very relevant. Intrinsically, each photo has these qualities, but the daguerreotype has the burden of image's exclusivity and the intimacy that that represents.

It is very important in photography the invisibility of the object that contains the image, but when you start working with old processes, mostly with daguerreotypes, the object acquires a particular dimension. You start to consider as part of the work the artifact container of the image. This is what I felt with processes such as gum bichromate, kallitype and cyantype, but above all, with daguerreotype.

To have control over the totality of the process is very exciting; to work with actual process, negative-positive, analogical or digital, means speed but with old techniques more time is needed. A daguerreotype takes too many hours of preparation and needs lots of seconds, even minutes, so it can be printed. That means that, when there are people posing, they must be ready to stay still and trust the photographer. On the other hand, the model's attitude is essential, that is why he/she must be relaxed and must show us that in his look. There are no hard or forced expressions. There are no smiles nor tighten foreheads. There is tranquility.

Finally, between the observer and the portrait a special and intimate communication is established because the daguerreotype needs that the person comes close for its total appreciation.

Dags Argentina Project

This project is directed towards those people that want to live the experience of the daguerreotype's creation, being part of the different steps of it: from the preparation of the plate to the shooting obtaining, then, a unique object. There is no chance to make more than one copy because each daguerreotype is unique, made to last through time.

For those who cannot travel to Tucumán or Buenos Aires I am working with the photographer Martín García Olivares to create daguerreotypes from digital photos. Even if we want it, it would be impossible to create two exact copies from the same image.

Imagine having the chance to capture a moment forever and at the same time turn it into a unique and unrepeatable piece of art or give a new dimension to an already taken image. Imagine, for example, having a daguerreotype of your parents' wedding or your son.


The idea of this project is to bring to the present the daguerreotypes from the past so they stop being objects only seen on books.
At the same time, I have decided to exhibit and sell my work as well to give courses and seminars for those interested in photography and old processes, preservation of images and analogical and digital copying at Fundación CeCAAF.

I invite you to visit my website.

Carlos Darío Albornoz