Font-Reaulx D. The Daguerreotype

Musee d'Orsay, 2008. — 98 p.This book has been conceived for the exhibition Le daguerreotype francais, collection du musee d'Orsay at Musee d'Orsay, 27th May - 7th September 2008, curated by Dominique de Font-Reaulx.A unique photograph obtained on a metal plate, simultaneously positive and negative, the daguerreotype, with its bright, mirror sheen, has its own aesthetic. The exactness of the lines and precise rendering of the details seduced the Academy of Science and soon an increasingly wide public. The collection in the Musee d'Orsay, one of the richest in the world for the variety of its subjects, enables us to follow the development and rapid but short-lived spread of Daguerre's invention. The collection's latest acquisitions are reproduced here, sometimes for the first time.