Daguerreotype-Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre

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The media object selected for analysis is the Daguerreotype. Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre (1787-1851), a Romantic painter and printmaker, had introduced the Daguerreotype on 7th January 1839 and would forever change the perspectives of the visual experience through photography (Daniel, 2004). Ever since the advent of the Daguerreotype, people were able to view a detailed imprinting of a certain visual frame on a treated sheet of copper (which today is called the film) (Daniel, 2004).

The daguerreotype served as a medium for two fundamental forms of expression in the early days – in the field of both the arts and sciences (Daniel, 2004). Daguerre discovered that he could capture images of artistic sculptures so that people could appreciate art even though they were not physically present at the location of the art piece, he also realised that it could be used as a scientific tool where the daguerreotype could capture images through microscopes and other scientific devices so that people did not have to possess any scientific equipment to view the generated images (Daniel, 2004). The unprecedented ability to reproduce a certain image that once could only be viewed through the human eye and stored in the human brain made the daguerreotype a phenomenal invention.

Prior to the invention of the daguerreotype, the Camera Obscura was the main optical instrument that was used to project images onto paper. The Camera Obscura was a device in the shape of a box that allowed light, which was being reflected from the images that the user was intending to capture, to enter through an opening at one end of the box to form an image on a surface and an artist would then trace the image to form the most accurate impression of an image at that peri...

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