Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
In an era of digital photography, computer-generated animation, and high-definition TV, a mid-19th century invention still has the power to enthrall.
The first time I held a daguerreotype, I was beguiled. I’d seen countless daguerreotypes before, but these were images reproductions in books, and that, it turns out, is hardly the same thing as seeing one in the flesh.
I saw those real daguerreotypes years ago at the Vermont Historical Society’s library in Barre. They were in several small boxes, each containing perhaps a dozen daguerreotypes. They are small, ranging from two or three inches on a side, but had surprising heft. Each is sheathed in an embossed leather case. Release the latch and the case opens like a book.
Inside, one side is covered in velvet, like an antique chair. The velvet protects the precious object facing it. The other side seems to contain a small mirror or a slab of silver. But turning the object to catch the light just right, I found that a picture of a couple in fine clothes suddenly emerged. The image didn’t seem to be part of the silvery surface; it seemed to rise above it. It seemed almost 3-D.
The daguerreotypes I was examining were portraits of Vermonters, all of whom probably died more than a century ago. But here were their images, etched in silver plate, floating wondrously before me. If these likenesses could captivate a person ensconced in the digital age, how did people in the mid-1800 react when they first saw one?
Daguerreotypes were a sensation. Samuel B. Morse reported from Paris in 1839 that his new telegraph that he was there to unveil was not the only talk of the town. The new invention by French artist and chemist Louis Daguerre was vying for the public’s attention.
People knew of the camera obscura (Latin for “dark room”), which was a forerunner for today’s camera. The camera obscura could range in size from a small tabletop device to a full-size room. Whatever its size, the camera obscura had a tiny hole in one side through which light would pass and project a perfect, though inverted, image of the outside world on the opposite side.
Daguerre developed an elaborate, and rather toxic, process to fix that image permanently. He took a piece of silver-plated copper and exposed it to the fumes of iodine and then of bromine. The process rendered the silver plate light sensitive. The plate would then be placed immediately into the camera. A lasting picture could now be produced. The daguerreotypist would then open a small hole in the camera and let light pour into it for 10 to 20 seconds. (The long exposure time is one reason people always seem so serious in old photographs; a straight face is easier to maintain than a smile.) The plate would be taken into a dark room and exposed to mercury fumes for two or three minutes. The image of whatever had been in front of the camera would be etched into the silver.
The process, however, wasn’t finished. The daguerreotypist still had to immerse the plate in hypo-sulfate to fix the image, then wash it in distilled water to remove excess chemicals. The plate was washed with gold chloride and heated to harden the surface. Finally, the daguerreotypist would place a piece of glass over the one-of-a-kind image (the process didn’t allow for duplication) and mount it in a leather and velvet case.
The whole process, including posing, shooting and processing, took no more than 45 minutes, a mere instant to a world used to the hours and days it would take to have a proper portrait painted. It was a revolution that literally changed the way people looked at themselves.
It also drove countless itinerant portrait painters out of business. But daguerreotypes also created opportunity. Young men eager to make a decent living learned the process. Some were artists, creating memorable images, others merely technicians who were going through the motions to make a living. Large cities soon had numerous studios. Smaller communities often boasted at least one. The new technology was affordable even to people who were not part of the elite. Surviving daguerreotypes include portraits of laborers posing with the tools of their trade and free Blacks living in the North.
The Vermont Historical Society’s collection includes members of the elite, including Gov. Erastus Fairbanks and a U.S. congressman from Vermont, Dudley Chase Denison, who posed on his wedding day in 1846 with his bride, Eunice Dunbar.
Though portraits were the most common subject of this new media, Vermont’s most famous daguerreotypist was more interested in landscapes. Thomas Martin Easterly was born in 1809 in Guilford, near Brattleboro, the son of a tradesman. As a young man, he traveled around Vermont and in New York state as an itinerant calligrapher and penmanship instructor. In 1839, he returned to Brattleboro and bought a house. He hadn’t completely settled down, however. Easterly worked for a time in Albany. It was perhaps there, or in New York City, that he learned the art of making daguerreotypes.
He made money making portraits, and posed for some himself. An undated image of Easterly shows him to be a striking figure, a handsome man with a square jaw, a crazy, thick mop of hair standing almost on end, and piercing, pale eyes. He is dressed stylishly, in a dark silky coat, patterned vest and cravat.
Work continued to take Easterly away from Vermont. In 1844, he traveled down the Mississippi by steamer, recording his travels with his camera. He returned to his home state, however, and created what are probably the earliest photographs ever taken of Vermont. He took the photographs while traveling between Brattleboro and Burlington, probably in either 1845 or 1847. The surviving daguerreotypes include an image of the Old Mill building at the University of Vermont, a panoramic shot of the Winooski River with a lone top-hatted figure in the foreground, and an intriguing shot of the Vermont Asylum for the Insane in Brattleboro (now the Brattleboro Retreat), showing several children in bonnets and hats milling about in the foreground.
The pictures are unsettling and exciting. We are used to thinking of photographs starting about the time of the Civil War. These images of Vermont are from nearly a generation earlier. It is almost as if someone had found a photograph of Ethan Allen. Indeed, daguerreotypists did manage to capture images of the sixth and seventh U.S. presidents, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, late in life.
Sadly for Vermont, these are the only known photographs Easterly ever took of the state. Like many other ambitious people, Easterly moved west. He settled in St. Louis, where his early daguerreotypes of the growing city are cherished today. In addition to the many portraits he created, Easterly is also remembered for taking what might be the earliest photograph of lightning, which he captured in Missouri in June 1847.
Like a bolt of lightning, the heyday of the daguerreotype was short-lived. By 1860, it had been overshadowed by less-expensive photographic techniques that made images on tin and glass.
Though he knew that technology was passing him by, Easterly stuck doggedly to his medium. He just couldn’t abandon the magic he could perform on those shiny silver plates. He didn’t want others to either. Writing late in his career, in 1865, he warned the public: “Save your old daguerreotypes, for you will never see their like again.”
Note: You can see a collection of Thomas Easterly’s daguerreotypes of Vermont scenes here. The Missouri Historical Society has a large collection of Easterly’s work, mostly portraits:
