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Article: Early method of photography was America's type of portrait.(daguerreotypes; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.)
- Article from:
- Insight on the News
- Article date:
- July 31, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The great American photographer Abraham Bogardus called daguerreotypes 'the best picture yet made with the camera.' An exhibit at the National Museum of American Art supports his opinion.
The invention of the daguerreotype in Paris in 1839 was greeted with pomp and circumstance. But it was across the Atlantic in America that artists and enthusiasts took up the new gadget with gusto. More daguerreotypes were produced in the United States than anywhere else (particularly in New York, where daguerreotype shops proliferated in the 1840s), and it was American inventors who refined the process and improved on what painter Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre had wrought. Soon the ...