Louis Daguerre was born on November 18, 1787, in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, France. His family was middle-class, and he grew up during a time of great political upheaval with the turmoil that was the French Revolution. The revolution involved the common people versus the bourgeoisie, brought on by King Louis XVI’s poor economic policies. The poor wanted to improve their standard of living, and the ruling class wanted to hold onto the feudal regime. These events often affect the arts, as they inspire artists to create work that encapsulates the era, and for young Daguerre, that was drawing.
In 1800, despite having a limited formal education, Daguerre was a natural artist, and at 13 he became apprenticed to an architect, where he learned hands-on the mechanics of the art and the science of designing structures. This created the foundation for his understanding of how objects were built. Just four years later, Daguerre moved to Paris to study and practice scene painting for the opera.
In the early 1820s, Daguerre made a breakthrough. He and his fellow collaborator invented giant, translucent paintings illuminated to simulate movement and other effects, and it was known as the diorama. Crowds would gather and watch these displays of landscapes and colors, but in the next decade, he fell on hard times and lapsed into bankruptcy because of the costliness of his invention.
Daguerre had known Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who had produced the world’s first permanent photograph in 1825 to incorporate into his dioramas. Niépce died in 1833, and Daguerre continued experimenting with photography and his dioramas. After combining chemicals and silver plates, he came up with the daguerreotype process and patented it in 1839 as a “gift to the world”.
After this bold union, photography continued to evolve and capture moments of our lives. In 2010, professional photographer Korske Ara founded World Photo Day to inspire people to take photos that mean something to them.
Under The Harvest Moon 