Louis Daguerre. View of the Boulevard du Temple. (1838)
Have you ever seen Louis Daguerre's View of the Boulevard du Temple?
Like, take a time to really see it.
I have to say, I am #TeamTalbot to the innovation drama of photography very first day but I always appreciate Louis Daguerre's View of the Boulevard du Temple. It is so fun to look at. The buildings, ambient of the morning city, a bootblack and his customer on the street and a kid staring back on the opposite window.
It's take around 5 minutes to make this picture, so it is very successful innovation compare to Niepce's 8 hours that Daguerre develop from and the black window that Henry Fox Talbot got from his 'camera' at that time. With the trial-and-error and development of the chemical process, the picture finally fix on plate.
When Louis Daguerre exhibit this picture as an evidence of photography successful innovation at the science academies and courts. The artist Paul Delaroche was one of people who gather to astonish by it, he lamented, "from this day, painting is dead".
Of course, now we know that photography is not substitute of painting. (In any means, idea was what replace academia painting of that day.) and of course, we know that trying to replicate painting is not an art-pass for photography. (In any means, yes, idea was.)
Today we not astonish by Daguerrotype clarity and details then have to compare it to the nearest thing we understand anymore. Photography grow is for us to understand in its uniqueness as a medium which is; a medium to hold the freezing moment in 2 dimension flat surface. Maybe 5 minute as Daguerre, maybe seconds, or milli seconds.
photography is incomplete and complete in its own, without necessarily to compare with any goddamn other kind of medium.
