The Silver Canvas : Daguerreotypes Masterpieces from the J. Paul Getty Museum - Hardcover

Lowry, Bates; Lowry, Isabel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892363681 ISBN 13: 9780892363681

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

In the Getty Museum's collection are nearly two thousand daguerreotypes, including such notable examples as John Plumbe's The United States Capitol, one of the earliest known photographs of the building; an 1849 image of Edgar Allan Poe; and the documentation of the first public demonstration of ether for surgery. This beautiful book's prologue, based on document and letters, traces Daguerre's search for a way to produce a permanent and exact image of the natural world through a camera lens. A series of six essays discloses the tremendous impact of the daguerreotype on the worlds of science and art, and includes discussion of individual daguerreotypes that amplify the essay's theme.

About this title

From Library Journal:

The Lowrys, a former museum director and a photographer, respectively, have produced a useful and well-crafted addition to the literature of early photography. Ample text, neither dense nor too spare, apprises the interested reader of the significant role of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in the progress of photography toward an enduring, approachable medium. Daguerre schemed within the parameters of early photography, stretching them a bit to invent the process that would bear his name. There is much charm in the daguerreotypes that illustrate this book, which the Lowrys chose carefully from the large and exceptional collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Their selections illustrate how the process preserved images of people, places, and things on "the silver canvas" and how these works, often intended to be more documentary than artistic, built an aesthetic within constraints of light, equipment, and subject. Recommended for general collections.?David Bryant, New Canaan P.L.,
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0892363681
• ISBN 13: 9780892363681
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256