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Bringing Daguerreotype Photography Back in Style

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“When you look at a 19th century portrait, there is a palpable sense of the person actually being there in the image,” photographer Jerry Spagnoli tells TIME. “It’s still an image. It’s in your hand. But the daguerreotype is so persuasive that you can actually suspend your disbelief and feel like you’re looking at the person because of that sense of values in the image.” The first time Spagnoli saw a perfectly preserved daguerreotype, he says he was amazed by the “presence of it.” The early photographic process, in which photographs are printed on a polished silver plate, captured something “essential about photography,” he says.

The photographer’s interest in this ancient method has driven him to curate a new exhibition, A New and Mysterious Art, featuring a selection of contemporary photographs using 19th century photographic processes. The works employ techniques ranging from daguerreotypes to photogenic drawings, and tintypes to camera obscuras.

Spagnoli says that the show came about as part of a larger push for a dialogue with contemporary artists, encouraging them to contemplate a range of processes when deciding how they will depict their ideas of the world. He believes, to an extent, that people are “under the misapprehension that these are obsolete and inaccessible processes.” The show, on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery through Oct. 29, presents work from artists Takashi Arai, Stephen Berkman, Dan Estabrook, Adam Fuss, Luther Gerlach, Vera Lutter, Sally Mann, Matthias Olmeta, France Scully Osterman & Mark Osterman, and Craig Tuffin.

Their works, he says, develop the “latent potential” of earlier processes that were never “fully recognized as an art” due to the rapid technical acceleration in photographic processes, which became fully industrialized by the 1880s. “This early stage, this primitive stage of photography was passed through much too quickly and in fact, in that period it wasn’t really recognized fully as an art. It was always considered just to be a documentation technique.”

Spagnoli himself pursued the antiquated daguerreotype technique in his own photography, piecing together the ancient process through reprints of 19th century materials, trying to “make heads or tails” of what they described in now dated vernacular. “There were a few people here and there who had a handle on how to produce a daguerreotype in at least some rudimentary fashion. So it took perhaps a dozen years to really, finally put together a way of making daguerreotypes,” Spagnoli tells TIME.

Spagnoli estimates there are only 15 to 20 people working seriously or routinely with the process, but predicts that daguerreotypes will endure as an art form into the future. “There will always be people who want to make still photographs for artistic purposes, just like there are still people who want to make oil paintings,” he says. “When you make the material from scratch and you produce all of the equipment, it gives you the ability to control the image that you don’t have with industrialized photography. And I think that there are going to be artists who find that very attractive.”

Chelsea Matiash is TIME’s Deputy Multimedia Editor. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @cmatiash.

Sally Mann Untitled (Self-Portraits), 2012. Unique collodion wet-plate positives on metal, with sandarac varnish.
"Untitled (Self-Portraits)", 2012. Unique collodion wet-plate positives on metal, with sandarac varnish.Sally Mann—Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery
v"Yahna Ganga (Yahna: To sit or sit down, Ganga: To hear, to listen, to understand)," March 20, 2014. Wet plate collodion ambrotype.
"Yahna Ganga (Yahna: To sit or sit down, Ganga: To hear, to listen, to understand)," March 20, 2014. Wet plate collodion ambrotype. Craig Tuffin—Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery
"'Pablo',Letters to my grandchildren," 2016. Ambrotype, wet collodion on acrylic glass, varnish, paint, gold leaf.
"'Pablo',Letters to my grandchildren," 2016. Ambrotype, wet collodion on acrylic glass, varnish, paint, gold leaf. Matthias Olmeta—Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery
"Campo San Moise, Venice, VII," March 4, 2006. Unique gelatin silver print.
"Campo San Moise, Venice, VII," March 4, 2006. Unique gelatin silver print.Vera Lutter—Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
"A Maquette for a monument for T33-A," 2014. Daguerreotype
"A Maquette for a monument for T33-A," 2014. DaguerreotypeTakashi Arai—Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery
"SUB," Feb. 15 2014. Wet plate collodion tintype
"SUB," Feb. 15 2014. Wet plate collodion tintype Craig Tuffin—Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery
Conjoined Twins, undated. Albumen print from wetplate negative.
"Conjoined Twins," undated. Albumen print from wetplate negative. Stephen Berkman—Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery
"A Wandering Jewess." Albumen print from wetplate collodion negative.
"A Wandering Jewess." Albumen print from wetplate collodion negative.Stephen Berkman—Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery
Breakfast at the Refectory, 2010 Pigment print from photogenic drawing,
"Breakfast at the Refectory," 2010. Pigment print from photogenic drawing. France Scully Osterman & Mark Osterman—Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery

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