April 06, 2004
#60 :: Daguerrotype - Mother and Child
She might have been a stern widow, a pinched matron, a god-fearing churchgoer who distrusted photographers and was sitting only because her husband demanded a keepsake of her and his young son. More likely, she froze her face to meet the demands of modern daguerrotyping, which required subjects to sit still for a minute or two at a time. The baby, more animated, makes a happy blur of noncompliance. Daguerrotyping deposited silver directly onto a sheet of glass, making it permanent, lustrous and extremely difficult to re-photograph without getting a lot of reflections. A rainbow halo of heavy metals tinges the image, which rests in a velvet-lined, gilt-edged frame case, its mock-leather exterior of lacquered cardboard embossed with Gilded-Age curlicues.