Tom Stammers
Light Fantastic
Speculating Daguerre: Art and Enterprise in the Work of L J M Daguerre
By Stephen C Pinson
University of Chicago Press 424pp £42 order from our bookshop
Lithographer, draftsman, theatre decorator, painter, entrepreneur, scientist: these are just some of the many labels that Louis Daguerre (1787–1851) has invited and eluded. For most readers today, Daguerre will be remembered primarily as the father of the daguerreotype, which was unveiled to the French Academy of Sciences with great fanfare in 1839. Yet as Stephen Pinson’s spirited book suggests, there is much to be gained in liberating Daguerre from the prehistory of photography. He is uninterested in who got there first with the photographic process – Fox Talbot, Niépce or Daguerre – or in retracing a lineage of technical breakthroughs. Rather, he modestly situates Daguerre and his restless, multi-media experiments within the wider spectrum of nineteenth-century visual culture. And the results are very refreshing.
Pinson relishes the strange byways and unexpected detours in the development of optical experimentation from the end of the eighteenth century. Whether the transparencies devised for aristocratic gardens, the Claude mirrors endorsed by landscape painters, the physics cabinet set up in the Louvre, or the shimmering sets at the Opéra:
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/