A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DLouis Jacques Mandé Daguerre : 1787-1851
Biographical studies Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (b. Nov 18, 1787, d. July 10, 1851) was first known as a painter and successful theatre decorator during the first third of the 19th Century. After exhibiting his paintings at the Paris Salon in 1814 he created the incredible Diorama show eight years later. The Diorama was truly his invention with spectacular optical and even sound effects over huge painted canvasses which visitors admired crowding in a gigantic exhibition room on the Grand Boulevards in Paris. (see note below) With the Diorama, Daguerre established himself as a pioneer of what was to become the movie industry 70 years later. Viewers were placed in front of very large realistic scenes painted over canvasses, each measuring 20 x 14 metre and carrying two pictures on both sides. Using lighting effects, Daguerre transformed scenes at will and created a truly magical world. Meeting considerable success the Diorama exhibition lasted 17 years after Daguerre constantly developed his show with new effects but he progressively became obsessed with the use of the camera obscura and went on to carry out scientific researches. One should note that the camera obscura, a simple chamber with a hole to view a scene in its right proportions had been invented even before the Renaissance period. Many artists then used it, notably Vermeer of Delft while scientists tried at the beginning of the 19th Century to project and fix images on paper with that instrument, notably professor Charles who realised silhouettes with images fixed on silver-chlorate coated sheets of paper. Around 1826, the optician Charles Chevalier, who was also specialised in the sale of scientific instruments, informed his friend Daguerre that he had learned of the existence of a man called Nicephore Niepce who was trying to find ways of capturing images near Châlon sur Saône. Niepce used quite a prehistoric camera to capture some images and managed to produce true photos after hours of exposure and the use of many scientific recipes, which remained to be much improved. However, he was the first man ever to have produced what looked like a true photograph around 1824. Niepce, a former naval officer, was already aged 60 while Daguerre was just under 40 when both men decided to form a joint partnership in 1829 and to share the fruit of their findings. Niepce had produced blurred images of houses in his village but his invention was certainly not fitted for general use. In fact, it was Daguerre who invented what was to be called the Daguerreotype, a photograph fixed on a silver-coated copper sheet , using Niepce's findings as a basis of his process. Niepce had died in 1833 and Daguerre issued his first daguerreotype around May 1837. Two years later he and Niepce's son accepted to sell their licence to the French State after they had failed to find financial backers and also as a result of a lack of interest shown by the public. The State awarded in 1839 annual pensions of 6000 francs and 4000 francs to Daguerre and Isidore Niepce respectively while the Diorama was destroyed by fire the same year. The daguerreotype process only survived until 1860 after researchers had found new and convenient techniques to reduce the time of exposure (between 15 and 35 minutes for a daguerreotype) as well as more suitable developing methods as photographs on salted paper or on glass proved much cheaper to produce. Still without Daguerre and Niepce the history of photography would have started at a later date and probably elsewhere than in France. "AD" http://www.artcult.com/dag.htm The author of the main Diorama pages on this site R. Derek Wood (see next entry) rightly points out that "AD"s statement: "The Diorama was truly his invention with spectacular optical and even sound effects over huge painted canvasses which visitors admired crowding in a gigantic exhibition room on the Grand Boulevards in Paris", puts Daguerre's Diorama in the wrong place. The Diorama was sited behind Place du Château d'Eau on rue des Marais, well away from "the Grand Boulevards". Also "Exhibition room" is a strange term to use for the Diorama auditorium and possibly "AD" has confused Daguerre's Diorama with Charles Langlois' s Panorama which moved into a new rotunda on the Champs Elysées in May 1839.
Daguerre's Diorama The key items in this anthology of the work of Louis Daguerre, his Diorama and photography are two excellent, illustrated essays generously donated to this site by R. Derek Wood. The Diorama in Great Britain in the 1820s and Daguerre and his Diorama in the 1830s
The following are a number of other smaller essays which may be more useful to the general researcher or student
Daguerre's Diorama A large exhibition of scenes. front and back lighted to change or dissolve the image, designed and operated by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. This was a large (40 x 72 feet) version of Leone Battista Alberti's 1451 "enlarging and reducing machine," as described in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (Muratori, 1738), and in Giambattista della Porta's Magica Naturalis (1558). Daguerre made extensive use of the camera obscura in design of the scenery for the Dioramas.
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre Best known for the early photographic process that bears his name, the daguerreotype, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was a French stage designer. As a scene painter he made many experiments with light to create spectacular landscapes with coloured filters. Daguerre was scene painter at the Paris Opéra from 1819 to 1822, where he and fellow designer Pierre-Luc-Charles Ciceri (1782 - 1868) did the settings for Nicolo Isouard and Angelo Banincori's Aladin, ou La lampe merveilleuse in 1822, the first production to use gas lighting. Daguerre invented the diorama, "drama of light", usually backdrop paintings on transparent cloths lit by movable coloured filters. Dioramas became a feature of 19th.century decor, particularly at London's Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
Daguerre's Diorama [The] Diorama [was an] entertainment invented by the photography pioneer Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, in which spectators in a dark, circular auditorium viewed huge transparent paintings through a large aperture in the wall. The pictures were seen to change as they watched. Daguerre's diorama shows opened in Paris in 1822 and in London in 1823. The pictures showed changing effects of light. For example, in The Valley of Sarnen the opening scene is still and clear, then clouds pass across the lake, and at the end a storm gathers. By painting on fine cloth in transparent and opaque pigments, and by controlling the intensity, colour, and position of the source of light, features were made to appear or disappear gradually. Technique Light was controlled by screens and shutters on windows behind, and skylights above, the picture. Coloured light was exploited so that features in that colour were rendered invisible, while those in a complementary colour were strengthened. When light changed colour, new effects emerged; both sides of the cloth were painted. This anticipated modern colour separation in the camera for colour printing. Moving panoramas Diorama effects were incorporated with panoramas on rollers by theatre designers, as in Clarkson Stanfield's Moving Dioramas. C. W. Gropius in Berlin in 1832, in a building designed by Karl Schinkel, showed a moving panorama with lighting effects called a Pleorama. The diorama and panorama are today together regarded as the forerunners of the cinema.
Daguerre's Diorama "...March 8, 1839. Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, a French painter and inventor, for some seventeen years had been the proprietor of one of the most popular spectacles in Paris. It was a theatre of illusions called the Diorama.
"No actors performed in Daguerre's Diorama theatre. It consisted of a revolving floor that presented views of three stages. On each stage was an enormous canvas (72'x 48') with scenes painted on both sides. Through the clever play of light, Daguerre could make one scene dissolve into another. Parisians were treated to the sight of an Alpine village before and after an avalanche, or Midnight Mass from inside and outside the cathedral, accompanied by candles and the smell of incense."Bruce Sterling comments:
"This strikes me as a very early precursor to Heilig's Sensorama machine, due to the sensory augmentation of candles and incense. As a side note, as Daguerre went to meet with his colleague Samuel Morse to discuss his new device called the telegraph, the Diorama burnt to the ground."Pat Lichty Adatto, Kiku, Picture Perfect: The Art and Artifice of Public Image Making, Basic Books, 1993 Newhall, Beaumont, The Daguerreotype in America, New York, Dover, 1976.
Daguerre's Diorama In 1822, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) opens the first diorama in rue Sanson, Paris. Daguerre provided scenes of The Interior of Trinity Chapel (painted by Charles Bouton), along with the Valley of Unterwalden and Canterbury Cathedral (Daguerre). The scenes consisted of elaborate landscapes and places well known to the public. The large scale paintings on canvas were huge, measuring 14 metres by 22 metres. These translucent paintings were lit from behind and could be made brighter or less, according to the mood or atmosphere the operator wanted. A review of the event is as follows; "The visitors, after passing through a gloomy anteroom, were ushered into a circular chamber, apparently quite dark. One or two small shrouded lamps placed on the floor served dimly to light the way to a few descending steps and the voice of an invisible guide gave directions to walk forward. The eye soon became sufficiently accustomed to the darkness to distinguish the objects around and to perceive that there were several persons seated on benches opposite an open space resembling a large window. Through the window was seen the interior of Canterbury Cathedral undergoing partial repair with the figures of two or three workmen resting from their labours. The pillars, the arches, the stone floor and steps, stained with damp, and the planks of wood strewn on the ground, all seemed to stand out in bold relief, so solidly as not to admit a doubt of their substantiality, whilst the floor extended to the distant pillars, temptingly inviting the tread of exploring footsteps. Few could be persauded that what they saw was a mere painting on a flat surface. The impression was strengthened by perceiving the light and shadows change, as if clouds were passing over the sun, the rays of which occasionally shone through the painted windows, casting coloured shadows on the floor. Then shortly the lightness would disappear and the former gloom again obscure the objects that had been momentarily illumined. The illusion was rendered more perfect by the sensitive condition of the eye in the darkness of the surrounding chamber." Daguerre was a larger-than-life painter who seriously desired the real thing in his art and through the diorama he could achieve this effect by actually bringing the scene to the theatre (almost). Daguerre began his early working years as an architect, and soon after became an assistant stage designer for a theatre. Daguerre was a gifted illusionist in terms of his ability to design sets which dazzled audiences. These designs he would later coin as a 'Diorama'.
Virtual Reality as the end of the Enlightenment Project Excerpt from the essay by Simon Penny, March 1992, relating to the pre-history and history of the Diorama and similar immersive 'theatrical' entertainments of the 19th C. Virtual Reality, as curently formulated, is a direct continuation of the tradition of illusionistic pictorial representation which was already in evidence in Pompeii. It was developed in the renaissance in concert with the development of humanistic philosophy and optics in the west and gained a time dimension with the development of cinema. Along the way it became technologized, first through the use of optical drafting devices (cameras lucida and obscura) through the development of photography, both mono- and stereo-scopic; and the projection of moving pictures. It is also a sucessor to the long tradition of grand theatrical spectacles and of world's fairs, amusement piers and theme parks: a Coney Island of the mind. The pneumatic automata of Hero of Alexandria are an example from the late Greek world of the utilisation of the most sophisticated contemporary technology to realize a persuasive and articulated simulation of reality. [7] Grand theatrical spectacles were regular occurences through the renaissance and the baroque. In 1548 the Queen of Hungary welcomed Phillip II of Spain with a grand two day event spectacle which began as a dance tournament. 'Savages' attacked the dance and carried off a number of the women when repelled. The next day `knights' attacked the castle in which the `savages' had barricaded themselves. During the battle that ensued, Phillip was served a banquet by nymphs and niaids in the centre of the battlefield. Baroque ceiling painting must properly be included in this history of technologies of simulation. The vertigo inducing draftsmanship constructs for the viewer the sense of `peering up into heaven', while simultaneously dissolving the physical architecture. This presentation of a reality other than the one immediately visible is a recurrent idea in christian art . This historical utilisation of advanced simulation technologies by the church prompted my invention of the Church of Virtual Space, of which these paintings are clear precursors. The latter part of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary explosion is invention in technologies we might call proto-cinematic. It was not until 1838 that the British scientist Wheatstone built the first stereographic image projection system. The first multiple user stereographic projection system was exhibited in Lyons on 1890. Along with the well known time lapse photography of Marey and Muybridge, Edisons' kinetoscope and the cinematograph of the Lumiere brothers; numerous more or less bizarre optical/mechanical theatres were constructed. Daguerre's Diorama was one such mechanized theatre, in which the audience was propelled on a revolving viewing platform, past enormous scene paintings which were painstakingly painted with differing degrees of transparency, such that by controlling lighting from the front and the back, the illusion of the transition from daylight to dusk to night, could be effected. After a faltering career as a hack realist and theatrical scene painter, Daguerre found great sucess in this invention, the revenue from which funded his photographic experiments. The World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 sported several of these optical mechanical theatres. The Mareorama simulated a sea voyage from Nice to Constantinople via Venice. During the simulation, two screens, 40ft high and 2500 ft long were to be unrolled while the viewers stood on a pitching ships deck. The inventor of this system was yet another minor realist painter, Hugo d'Alesi, who spent a year on board ship painting the sections of the screens. A contemporary newspaper report trumpets: "Few visitors to the Exhibition will be able to resist the temptation ... to make an inexpensive voyage which involves no hazards whatsoever, yet is so natural... even on the high seas, amid raging elements, one can get out and tread on terra firma at any moment. "[8]Other mechanical theatres at the Exhibition included `Stereorama' or 'Poeme de la mer' and a simulated Trans-Siberian Railway. The railway was placed strategically nearby the Russian and Chinese pavilions and was built by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Simon Penny, 1992 Footnotes 7. cf my The Intelligent Machine as Anti-Christ for a further investigation of this theme. SISEA 1990 proceedings Groningen, Netherlands 8. Quoted in Victorian Inventions Leonard DeVries. John Murray 1971 p126 Virtual Reality as the End of the Enlightenment Project was first presented at Ideologies of Technology Symposium, Dia Foundation NY 1992 and first published in Culture on the Brink: the Ideologies of Technology. It was also published in Virtual Reality Casebook, Eds. Anderson and Loeffler, Van Nostrand, 1994
and finally...two Essays to be sourced from the Magic Lantern Society
When the Moon Shines
How did Daguerre' s Moon Shine?
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and Photography
 L. J. M. Daguerre's camera, section Encyclopedia Britannica, 1897 You may wish to download a 600 pixel version of the above image
 L. J. M. Daguerre's camera, section and plan L. J. M. Daguerre, An historical & descriptive account of the Daguerreotype and the Diorama reprint, Winter House, 1971 printed in various editions (incl. contemporary and modern facsimiles), publishers, languages etc. see Gernsheim, p.198 You may wish to download a 600 pixel version of the above image
 Samuel F. B. Morse's 'Daguerreotype' camera You may wish to download a 600 pixel version of the above image
Samuel F. B. Morse with his 'Daguerreotype' camera Albumen print c.1860 http://www.txdirect.net/~imagine
An "albumen print" is a positive photographic print produced from a glass negative on paper coated with egg whites and sensitized with silver nitrate. After contact exposure of the negative the latent image is developed in pyrogallic acid. The albumen print was invented by L. D. Blanquart-Evrard and was introduced in 1850. Albumen prints are found mounted on CDV's, Cabinet Cards, Stereoviews and other cardboard mounts as well as in albums and "tipped" into books. Examples can be found in size from 1"x1" to 20"x24".  Samuel F. B. Morse, c.1865 Carte de Visite, (CDV), Inscription: Gurney & Son http://www.txdirect.net/~imagine
Carte de Visite, (CDV) : Photographic print measuring 2.5" by 3.5" mounted on a card measuring 2.5" by 4". It was first introduced in 1854 by Frenchman Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi, shortly after the invention of the collodion wet plate. He used the collodion wet plate process and a multiple exposure back on his camera to produced a negative with eight small images (2.5" by 3.5") on the single plate. He then contact printed the negative on albumen paper and after developing the prints, cut them into eight separate images and mounted each on a card. Portraits of Daguerre
 L. J. M. Daguerre, 1848 Daguerreotype by J. E. Mayall Gernsheim Collection, University of Texas, Austin, Texas © http://www.corbis.com Image ID: HU023045 You may wish to download a 450 pixel version of the above image
 L. J. M. Daguerre, c.1815 You may wish to download a 450 pixel version of the above image
 L. J. M. Daguerre, c.1848 From a photograph possibly taken by J. E. Mayall (see above) It is shown in a reversed aspect on the source site (www.digitalcentury.com) and righted here based on the side on which Daguerre's hair was parted and the small ribbon on his left lapel. You may wish to download a 450 pixel version of the above image
There are also some unusual similarities with the Meade Brothers image below. The ribbon is different but the cover on the table on which he is resting his elbow seems to be similar although no book is shown. He has also reversed his position to be looking to the right of the camera rather than to the left. The artist, not stated on the source site may have indeed created a composite image based on both photographers work. Dr Russell Naughton would welcome your comments here
 L. J. M. Daguerre Cabinet Card, (CC), Inscription: Compliments [of] G. Cramer, Dry Plate Works, St. Louis, Mo. Albumen print of a painting of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and based on a whole plate daguerreotype by Charles R. Meade. The card was issued on the 50th anniversary of the invention in 1889 as a tribute to the "Inventor of Photography." http://www.txdirect.net/~imagine
Cabinet Card : (CC), Photographic print measuring 4" x 5.5" attached to a cardboard mount 4.25" x 6.5". Intoduced by Windsor & Bridge in Britain in 1863. Many different types (processes) of photographic prints of were mounted on cabinet cards such as albumen, bromide, carbon, gelatin, platinum, mezzotint and Velox as well as photomechanical prints such as Collotypes and Woodburytypes.  Daguerreotype Promotional Tokens Meade Brothers' studios You may wish to download a 600 pixel version of the above image
 L. J. M. Daguerre Engraving by N. Orr The Christian Parlor Book, New York: George Pratt, 1851 450 pixel version of the above image
 L. J. M. Daguerre, 1844 Jean-Baptiste Sabatier Blot http://www.txt.de/spress/foto/museum You may wish to download a 450 pixel version of the above image
 L. J. M. Daguerre, 1844 by Jean-Baptiste Sabatier Blot L. J. M. Daguerre, An historical & descriptive account of the Daguerrotype and the Diorama reprint, Winter House, 1971 printed in various editions (incl. contemporary and modern facsimiles), publishers, languages etc. see Gernsheim, p.198 You may wish to download a 600 pixel version of the above image
Bibliography : Daguerre and his contemporaries Online Daguerre's work in photography is, unlike the Diorama, well documented online. Though quite 'American' in its subject coverage, the most authoratative site is www.daguerre.org which includes on its pages, amongst much else, M. Daguerre : A brief biography of the inventor as published by London Illustrated News on July 26, 1851 also from Scientific American, Volume 6, Issue 47 August 9, 1851 http://cdl.library.cornell.edu also see articles on Daguerre in the online encyclopedias britannica.com, Comptons and encyclopedia.com also see Daguerre related material on the content specific sites...
Daguerre's Manual: A Bibliographical Enigma, by Pierre G. Harmant
Hand Book of the Daguerreotype, American
Harvard Daguerreotype Exhibition
Holding back the years, "...restoring 'fading daguerreotypes'"
Secrets of the Dark Chamber
Social Construction of the American Daguerreotype Portrait
Today in History - November 18, "Daguerre, ...born near Paris, France on November 18, 1789."
Contemporary photographers associated with Daguerre and or who promoted the Daguerreotype
Offline - General Gernsheim, Helmut & Allison, L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, Dover Publications, NY., USA., 1968 Mentienne, Adrien. La Découverte de Photographie en 1839, Paris, Fr., 1892, pp. 99-143. and notably, Daguerre's own words... Daguerre, L. J. M., Histoire et description des procedes du daguerreotype et du diorama 'Daguerre's Manual' (sic.) various publishers 1839 cont. and discussed in detail in Daguerre's Manual: A Bibliographical Enigma, by Pierre G. Harmant
Articles on Daguerre and the Daguerreotype
Finale
 Daguerre, Obituary Scientific American Volume 6, Issue 47 August 9, 1851 http://cdl.library.cornell.edu
 Monument to L. J. M. Daguerre at Bry Sur Marne Gleason's Pictorial (Boston) Vol. 6, No. 6 (11 February 1854) pg. 88 You may wish to download a 600 pixel version of the above image
Back to the Top | Biographies A - G | Quit | eMail: Dr Russell Naughton |
