Cdags may be soon be transitioning to some new ownership soon but will remain the online spiritual home of many a modern daguerreotypist and an archive of modern daguerreotypy that we have detailed over the years.

Macabre: dwelling on the gruesome, tending to produce horror in a beholder

Chimacabres come out at night.  They are around during the day too of course, but the night is when they really thrive.  In the dark it’s harder to tell if you’re face to face with a fellow person, or if it’s a chimacabre in front of you, and they don’t even have faces.  No, they are vicious, purely instinctual, unforgiving. They read you with the speed of a car commercial disclaimer, immediately sniff out the soft spot, and burrow in mercilessly.  Once under their spell, escape is a struggle, as they are as alluring as dangerous. They vary greatly in their ranks.  Some feed often, while others only need one hit to fulfill their life purpose.  Some may leave you in shambles just minutes upon encounter, while others plant pernicious seedlings, which will erode your foundation decades later.  It takes a while to build up immunity to chimacabres, and one is never fully safe, as they keep evolving and following trends.

            These gruesome creatures are actually our own off-shoot.  Through eons, their essence has been shaped by the foul sludgy runoff from the continuous spiritual distillation of humanity.  Our communal subliminal fears and basic desires, refined, enlarged, and reinforced by existential self-perpetuation, remain their favorite delicacies. 

Although chimacabres evolved alongside human species in such a way as to be visually indistinguishable with the naked eye, by pure chance, I discovered that spectral sensitivity of daguerreotype technique, when combined with special lighting, allows for photographic capture of their inner core.  Presented here are five 4x5in plates of first clear specimens I was able to portray.  I hope to find and succeed in capturing more in the future.

I strongly believe that these images represent the first time ever that daguerreotype technique has been combined with light painting.

Thank You,
Anton

  Daguerreotype, the first truly successful and, in the eyes of many through history, the most beautiful photographic technique, was introduced to the world in summer of 1839, so this year marks 180^th anniversary of Photography.  Congratulations.

  After two major technical improvements were added to the original process as announced by Daguerre, improvements aimed at reducing exposure times and strengthening the adherence of image to plate, the following basic procedure of making each image was set henceforth. A plate of copper coated with pure silver is buffed to an absolute mirror surface, sensitized with fumes of elemental iodine and bromine, exposed in camera, developed in fumes of mercury, fixed with hypo, and then coated with gold by gilding.  The elegant simplicity of chemistry involved should not however be mistaken for ease of overall procedure, pitfalls are a plenty and too much can depend on the smallest seemingly unimportant and thus overlooked stop.   Some of the chemistry is also highly toxic, and should be treated with extreme respect and caution.  However, it’s all worth it, as when properly made and examined, a truly fine daguerreotype plate has never failed to bring a sense of awe to viewers of today as in early middle of 19^th century.

  I have been working with Daguerreotype medium for about 4 years now.  After having worked with other analog photographic methods for about quarter of a century prior, I fell in love with this technique for its incredible physical presence and appearance, and the possibilities I saw in taking that further.  In the fall of last year that I spent some length of time in the darkroom making 4-10 images per day.  Erasing, buffing, fuming, developing, erasing, repeating…  A few ideas were tested and tested again, a few new ones emerged, merged with others, opened possibilities.  As things got more and more complex, I decided to slow down a bit, and to produce a few small bodies of work, which would be built upon single variations of Daguerreotype process I’m planning to combine and utilize as part of my work with in the future.

  Below is the first such illustrative body of work, completed in early April.  First an introductory ‘straight’ plate, made with all traditional methods as have been practiced since 1840s, and appearing as representational as any semi-abstract daguerreotype can be. The other 5 are variations of same subject, which explore possibilities of color within this traditionally monochromatic medium.  The aim was to control placement of cool and warm tones and keep them interspersed within the same plate, and to be able to switch around their placement like in Variants #2 and #3.   In addition to color, I wanted to explore the possibility of creatively using the inherently reflective quality of the daguerreotype plates in areas void of image particles.

  There’s no way to accurately and fully convey via a screen how these 4×5 plates appear when one is holding them, letting the light reflect from different angles, paying attention to the color and pattern changes.  Daguerreotype colors shift their hue and saturation with angle of view and lighting.  There can also be observed a pattern of double mirror effect between plate and bottom of cover glass, which moves around behind the image like a holograph.  Viewers are asked to rely on their experience with handling and viewing daguerreotypes live.

For more information or purchase inquiries, please write to thephotopalace@gmail.com

Anton

“Alan,
Thank you very much for your email. I was about to send one to you with a similar message. When I decided to create a dag forum I wanted a single place for daguerreotypists to meet and discuss. When I saw you also had a forum I just about fell over. I had no intention whatsoever of having a competing forum and have been vexing all day about the problem. Your idea of pooling our efforts is great and I would very much like to team up with you on a single online daguerreian community and resource. I was also planning on having a gallery, links, etc. in my site but hadn’t gotten very far into the code.

I could have my dagforum.com domain redirect to your contemporarydaguerreotypes.info and my forum would then be linked in your site. Also, I could inbed links to your site in mine so they’d act more like one site. I’m not sure what sort of web background you have but I do a considerable amount of web programming at work (mostly PHP, MySQL, and Javascript) and would be willing to help you on your site if you would like the help.

Thanks again for emailing me first and I’m so sorry I popped up a site while you were working on essentially the same thing!

I look forward to working with you,
Jon

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 6:12 PM, Alan Bekhuis <alan@casedimage.com> wrote:
Dear Jon Lewis

Great minds think alike, I have been working on setting another website so
there would be a forum for contemp. daguerreotypists.  When I saw yours
today I felt like being in WHF Talbots position when he heard about this
photo process in France in early 1839!  I am thinking now what to do, as
its been rather taxing getting contemporarydaguerreotypes.info up and
going, espicially getting the galleries functioning so i’d like to see
something come of it.

What do you think about pooling our efforts somewhat? I could delete my
forum but change the forum link in contemporarydaguerreotypes.info to your
forum? To get everyone talking in the same space  (at my count there are
35 modern daguerreians) rather than two competing forums.  A return
arrangement might be me putting up the static stuff on
contemporarydaguerreotypes.info – artist images, links, resources, images
of equipment. You could send me stuff and I will post it.

I plan to be travelling to Daguerreian society this year in DC, if your
going I look forward to meeting you.

Best regards
Alan Bekhuis”

Cicada photogram

Leesvillle Dam

Chicago Skyline

“The Bean”

I’ve admired the daguerreotype process for quite some time now, though the idea to “take the plunge” was always a bit out of the question.  The plates and equipment tend to be fairly expensive, and working with the chemicals involved can be daunting.  After reading about making daguerreotypes on glass, as well as the vague idea that iodine tincture could be used instead of iodine, I figured I’d bite the bullet and see how far I could get.  Somewhat to my disbelief, with some silvered glass set on a soy sauce dish full of tincture, I was able to see the plate go through 1st and 2nd cycle colors!

First success

I won’t pretend that I don’t have a lot more to learn, but I’ve come a long way in the last year, and wanted to share what I’ve learned with others interested in daguerreotypes.  I hope that this guide helps make it it easier for people to “get their hands dirty” with the process, and start making daguerreotypes for themselves.  The guide can be found here and as a link on the resources page.  As always, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions, concerns or comments.  Enjoy!