Early Photography (Daguerreotype) Southworth and Hawes: Daguerreotype masters in Flickr Commons
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Tags: Daguerreotype, Flickr, Flickr Commons, History of photography, Southworth & Hawes
The George Eastman House published historical photographs as Flicks Commons, and thus for free use. One of their focus areas are the daguerreotypists Southworth and Hawes, real masters of their art.
The George Eastman House
The George Eastman House, named after Kodak founder George Eastman, is a museum in Rochester, New York. Is is famous as one of the most important photography and film museums of the world. Its collection covers the most influential photographers of the medium’s history: Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and many more.
From the collection: Daguerreotypes by Southworth and Hawes
The Boston-based photographers Southworth and Hawes, who I covered already as portrait inspirations, specialised in portraits as daguerreotypes. Daguerreotypes (one of the two early photography methods) uses a silver plate as medium, giving the works a special aesthetics that is only truly available in the originals. Photographers used daguerreotypes especially for portraits intended to remind the viewer of deceased or far away people. Walter Benjamin describes the medium’s role in his famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”:
In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty.
In this context, it is not essential to fully understand Benjamin’s idea of the aura which distinguished between pieces of art (like paintings) and technical pieces of art (like photography). More important in this context is the role that he assigns to daguerreotypes: photography as a memory of other people. Thus, photography is not only information, but has a cultural value. This does not only explain the popularity of the young medium of daguerreotypes, but also why daguerreotypists like Southworth and Hawes worked so meticulously. They intended to capture the nature of the person behind what is visual, using various means like the environment or facial expressions.
Short explanation: Flickr Commons
Flickr Commons is a collection of photographs from different museum without copyright. This makes them an excellent source to learn about early photographical styles.