Have a story to tell? Your fellow members want to hear it!

Propose a talk for The Daguerreian Society Symposium, Oct. 17-19 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Based on member comments from previous Symposiums, there’s interest in a wide range of topics, including:

• Collections management – including appraisals, insurance, conservation, archival storage, cataloguing
• Pivotal figures in daguerreotypy/19th-century photography
• Hidden gems/Overlooked collections/Discoveries
• Market trends:  how values have changed and what’s likely to happen next

Please keep in mind: 

• All talks must be illustrated with compelling images. Members tend to be visually-oriented people – we’d rather sit through 25 minutes of images without narration than endure a talk of the same length with only a few pictures.
• Shorter talks will be given preference.
• You do not need any special credentials – our speakers, like our members, come from all walks of life.

To submit your idea for a Symposium presentation, email a summary, estimated running time, and 3 to 5 sample images to diane_dagsoc@comcast.net.

See you in Houston!

As reported in the latest Daguerreian Society Quarterly, Board Member Carlos Vertanessian and the graphic designer Fabio Massolo have created a new poster to promote the Society and inspire appreciation of early photographic images and technologies.

The poster features a dazzling display of 19th-century photographs and early photographic literature, drawn from Carlos’s own collection and those of several other Society members.

Two high-resolution versions of the poster are available for free download and self-printing.

A3 version - 11.7 x 16.5 inches / 297 x 420 mm
A4 version - 8.3 x 11.7 inches / 210 x 297 mm

To print at home, download the A4 version and select “fit to paper” in the settings under “scale.”

To print on A3 or Tabloid/Ledger paper at a copy center such as FedEx, UPS or Staples, download the file to your computer or a portable storage device (i.e., flash drive) and then upload the file online or take the drive to a copy store. Be sure to tell them to fit to paper. You might also want to choose a heavier-than-usual paper stock.

The goal of this combination of images was to achieve a visually attractive depiction of the wide scope of interests — scholarly, collecting, historical — that The Daguerreian Society covers, from the invention of photography until the end of the 19th century.

Looking at the poster, how many photographs can you recognize? Can you spot works by Julia Margaret Cameron or Francis Frith? Who made that lunar stereo? Which pioneer of photography appears twice?

Happy hunting!

* * *

Paper Size Primer

• A3 paper is twice the size of A4 and is commonly used for larger documents, such as posters.
• A4 is the standard paper size used in most countries, including the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and many other parts of the world.
• In North America, the most popular paper sizes are Letter (8.5 × 11 inches), Legal (8.5 × 14 inches) and Tabloid/Ledger (11 × 17 inches).

If you are a member and would like to help publicize the 2024 Symposium in Houston, we have marketing materials that can help.

The Society has created two printed postcards for distribution at trade fairs and in dealer mailings to customers.

One of the cards promotes the 19th-century Photo Fair on Saturday, Oct. 19.

The other is for the Symposium overall from Oct. 17-19. It features on the front a daguerreotype of Sam Houston from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston - our host institution.

If you’re interested in receiving a shipment to share with clients and anyone else you think would be interested, please reach out to Business Director Diane Philippi at diane_dagsoc@comcast.net. 

The latest edition of the official yearbook of The Daguerreian Society has been published. The 280-page book includes a range of studies that reveal the artistry, technology and cultural impacts of 19th-century photography.

Editor Stephen Perloff and Assistant Editor Sarah Weatherwax note, "The editors would like to thank the authors for all their contributions to this year’s Annual and to the Publication Committee for all their help in shepherding this publication along from its inception to its final printing."

The book includes 13 feature stories and a portfolio section with four more stories, each focused on single images.

• "Cardomania Comes to America: Utility, Social Media, and Artistry in the 1850s and 1860s" by Ronald S. Coddington
• "A Shared Journey: The Photographs of Leavitt Hunt and Nathan Baker" by David R. Hanlon
• "'Imperceptible Objects Reproduced in all their Details': the Journal des Jeunes Personnes Announces Daguerre’s 'Opérations'” by Karin J. Bohleke
• "New Jersey’s First Female Daguerreotypist: Charlotte Prosch and Her Family" by Gary D. Saretzky
• "What Causes Ephemeral Colors in Daguerreotypes" by John R. Hurlock
• "Art and Soul: Southworth & Hawes, Reconsidered in the (Heavenly) Light of New Documentary Evidence" by Jeanne Schinto
• “'...on Broadway': New York City emerges as a center of photography" by Kenneth E. Nelson and Jeremy Rowe
• "Traveling Photographers in 19th-Century America" by Carl Mautz
• "The First Private Photographic Trip to the Grand Canyon: E. O. Beaman Betrayed 'In a Lonly Country'” by Joe Bauman
• "Further Excursions: A Beaman Portfolio" by Joe Bauman
• "Colgate Confesses! The Spirited College Portraits of William Hoyt Colgate" by Wm. B. Becker
• "John Plumbe, Jr.: Innovative Daguerreian Printmaker" by Cliff Krainik
• “'Mrs. Genung and Miss Cary, Artists of Established Merit': Two Pioneering California Photographers" by Sean William Nolan
• Portfolio: "South Carolina Gentry" by Ken Habeeb
• Portfolio: "A Man Displaying the French Fourierist Newspaper, La Démocratie pacifique" by Wm. B. Becker
• Portfolio: "Martha T. Mitchell" by Robert W. Caldwell
• Portfolio: "Love Unremitting, Emotions Unrelenting by Philippe Maurice

The Daguerreian Annual encourages submissions of new research and criticism in the field of 19th-century photography. Authors are responsible for providing publication-quality images, together with permissions from the appropriate owners or rights managers to publish those images in print and in future digital distributions. The Editorial staff selects and reviews submitted materials in conjunction with members of the Publications Committee of The Daguerreian Society.

Before submitting an article, authors are advised to send a brief inquiry describing their topic, approach, anticipated length of text, and supporting images. Send your submission to Sarah Weatherwax.

The Daguerreian Society's Publication Committee is actively seeking proposals for this year's Annual. Available in print since 1990, The Daguerreian Annual features over 250 pages of unique research. Every year, we call for submissions to showcase unique and distinctive research about all aspects of 19th-century photography.

If you have an subject in mind, answer our 2024 call!

Submitting is easy: Email a 300-word abstract and 3-6 images to Assistant Editor Sarah Weatherwax. Deadline is May 1. Your submission will be reviewed and considered for inclusion by the full Publication Committee.

Contact us with questions.

Members may access the latest Quarterly from the Quarterly and Newsletter Archive page in the site's members-only section. The "compact" version is suitable for reading on screen or printing at home. The "print-quality" version is much larger and designed for high-quality printing.  

Inside this issue...

• Jeremy Rowe shares a tale of two daguerreotypes that came with surprises
  
• Latest details on the next Daguerreian Society Symposium & Photo Fair Oct. 17-19 in Houston
  
• First look at a new poster promoting the Daguerreian Society and 19th-century photography...and the story behind it
  
• Stephen Perloff previews highlights of upcoming auctions
  
• A postscript to Sean Nolan's 2023 Daguerreian Annual article on Amanda Genung, a pistol-packing pioneering photographer

Just in time for the holiday season, when many people review their annual plans for charitable giving, the Daguerreian Society has created a new page on the website to facilitate donations. 

The new Donations page can be found at www.daguerreiansociety.org/Donate.

In 2024, the Society plans to develop the page further to suggest various levels of giving and to enable additional payment methods to make giving as easy as possible. 

For U.S.-based members, donations are tax deductible to the full extent of the law because the Society is a 501(3)c nonprofit organization. 

Members may access the latest Quarterly from the Quarterly and Newsletter Archive page in the site's members-only section. The "compact" version is suitable for reading on screen or printing at home. The "print-quality" version is much larger and designed for high-quality printing.  

Inside this issue...

• Coverage of the 2023 Symposium in Boston – from private institution visits and expert talks to the photo fair and auction results
• Initial details on next year's Symposium in Houston
• Mystery solved: Sean Nolan cracks the code on a hard-to-identify moniker placed in an anonymous artist's early images
• The National Gallery of Art acquires the Ross J. Kelbaugh Collection of 19th- and early 20th-century American vernacular photographs
• Highlights from Swann's and Hindman's recent auctions

It's official: The location and date of next year's Daguerreian Society Symposium will be Houston from October 17-19. 

The following details were shared at the Board of Directors' latest meeting in late November.

• Our host institution will be the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Museum’s photography collection comprises more than 35,000 items spanning the full history of the medium. Its strengths include American photography, with extensive holdings of civil-rights photography, Texas photography, and the Photo League; avant-garde photography between the two World Wars; photojournalism; 19th-century European photography; and Japanese photography. (Below, an untitled stereo daguerreotype by Antoine Claudet in the collection.)

• The hotel will be the InterContinental Houston. Located at 6750 Main Street, this modern, AAA Four Diamond Award hotel is close to Houston's Museum District, the renowned Rice University, NRG stadium and the downtown. The room rate is expected to be $165 a night. 
• The distance from the hotel to the MFA, where Thursday's opening reception and Friday's talks will be held, is 1.8 miles. That's an eight-minute cab ride,  12-20 minutes by bus, and a 35-minute walk, partially along Hermann Park. See map. 
• We have some parties who are interested in serving as sponsors. If others are interested in sponsorship opportunities, please contact Diane Filippi at info@daguerreiansociety.org. 
• A special exhibition on contemporary daguerreotypes is planned at the hotel.

Stay tuned for further details!

Board Member Jo Ann Kraus has put together a short video of highlights from last month's Daguerreian Society Symposium & Photo Fair in Boston.

For those who attended, enjoy this four-minute multimedia memento. For those who didn't, see what you missed! We hope to see you at next year's event October 17-19 in Houston!

https://vimeo.com/876449585

Thanks to Carlos Vertanessian, Dave Fondiller, Mike Robinson, Bill Becker, and Jeremy Rowe for contributing images and videos.