Remarkable Daguerreotype of an Academy Founder
| Autor: | Clare Flemming, Brandon Zimmerman |
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| Rok vydání: | 2013 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 162:208-209 |
| ISSN: | 1938-5293 0097-3157 |
| DOI: | 10.1635/053.162.0113 |
| Popis: | The Academy Library & Archives is home to millions of images on multiple media, from woodcut engravings on 16th century rag paper, to the famous hand-colored copperplate engravings of Audubon, to the photographs that span from photography’s 19th century invention through today’s high resolution X-ray Computed Tomography images. Here we share an early genre, the daguerreotype that features a subject of importance to the Bicentennial Year of the founding of the Academy of Natural Sciences: a photograph of Academy Founder Gerard Troost. Named for its inventor Louis Daguerre, the daguerreotype is recognized as the earliest form of publicly available photography and dates back to 1839. Each daguerreotype is a multi-layered work of art comprised of an emulsioncovered copper plate that is slowly exposed through a camera, sometimes requiring the subject to sit still for up to 20 minutes. Thereafter the resulting exposed plate is bathed in hot gaseous mercury. Typically the exposed plate might be hand-tinted, framed in a brass mat, protected by a sheet of glass, mounted in a delicate hinged wooden case lined with silk or velvet and covered with a thin sheet of tooled leather. This jewel-case display was meant to underscore the rarity and value of the photograph within, for each daguerreotype is a “one off.” Since no negative is involved, there is no potential for (contemporaneous) duplication. In 1812 seven natural philosophers founded the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia for the study of nature “divested of egotism” and pledged to remain“... unwarped by religious theses, views, and prepossessions” (ANSP Archives Coll. 527: Constitutional Act, 21 March 1812). They were Messrs. Gilliams, McMann, Parmentier, Say, Shinn, Speakman, and Troost. The lattermost, Gerardus Zacharius Troost (1776-1850), medical doctor and mineraling to December 1817. Troost’s natural-history interests are revealed in his publications, which include numerous descriptions of crystalline forms of minerals from apophylte to zinc, as well as a geological survey of the environs of Philadelphia. According to the Academy Library’s Online Public Access |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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