Anonymous Identity:
The Daguerreotype in Antebellum America

by Tami René Philion

The daguerreotype process, named after its French inventor Louis-Jacques-Mande´ Daguerre, produced more visual images from the 1840s to 1860s than any other medium in America, yet the significance of the relationship between the daguerreotype and antebellum American society has rarely been addressed. When photography in the form of the daguerreotype was introduced to America, a young, increasingly mobile and urbanized nation embraced the new medium with ardor. The daguerreotype provided pre-Civil War America with a means of defining itself. As an important historical and cultural artifact, the daguerreotype contributed to the characterization and development of an American personal sense of self and family and a national sense of identity.

At the time of the daguerreotype's popularity two dominant views existed about the new medium. One held that the daguerreotype revealed the true inner character and hidden soul of the subject, the other took the view that the daguerreotype, far from highlighting the individual, made its subjects indistinguishable.

This essay will explore the space between these two positions. Is the daguerreian portrait about revealing individual inner character, or does it make its subjects look alike, instead depicting a certain sameness? Perhaps a fusion of the two positions is more accurate. In the examination that follows of the conventions of early photography and the "likenesses" captured in the daguerreotype, we will find that the spaces between the image's truthful illumination of individuality and its standardized depiction of antebellum Americans overlap and beg definition. Revealed in this indefinable space between inner character and image is the daguerreotype's ability to serve as a memorial. As part of this analysis of the two positions vis `a vis the daguerreotype, I have also contextualized the daguerreotype as an historical and cultural artifact that participated in defining a, still inchoate, nation and which serves today as documentation of the antebellum experience in America.

The daguerreotype, while introduced in France, is a particularly American phenomenon. Both a product of the period and a reflection of it, the daguerreotype provides a particular insight into the views, beliefs, philosophy, and nature of the country in the mid-nineteenth century. As an affordable means for the middle class to document family and loved ones, the daguerreotype served a function not adequately addressed previously. The images contained in daguerreotypes were superior in detail and accuracy as compared to previous means of portraiture, but the daguerreotype did more than merely improve the state of fashioning likenesses. The daguerreotype captured not just the images of loved ones but also their shadows, features somehow more tangible than those conveyed by painted miniatures or silhouettes. Through the daguerreotype, one could have a tangible and treasured reminder of loved ones and feel a connection to the family at large and the society in general.

the form and face of the american child >>