Untitled (Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA) 1850

This haunting image was made by the photographic team of Southworth and Hawes, using the daguerreotype process. This was photography’s first commercially viable form, a unique image created on a silvered copper plate, painstakingly polished to a mirror finish. You see the monument to Amos Binney, partly shrouded. This almost theatrical touch enhances the daguerreotype’s own aura of mystery. The process involved a lot of hand work, from preparing the plate, to carefully calculating the long exposure time, to the dangerous work of developing the image with mercury vapor. Because of this complexity, early photography was practiced by highly skilled, technically adept artisans. The daguerreotype was a luxury object, accessible only to the well-to-do. Its popularity coincided with the rise of industrial capitalism, and a new awareness of the world as seen through a lens of mechanical reproduction. So, in a sense, the daguerreotype helped to usher in the modern age. And thanks to its exquisite detail, we can still appreciate this early photographic method today.