'Like a Bird Before a Snake'

Résumé du livre

The daguerreotype has been a controversial issue among scholars ever since its germination in America in the 1840s. The thesis of this paper is that the daguerreotype is a step in the evolution of American portraiture and as such, is influenced by artistic trends in painting. It is the aim of the paper to help determine the truthfulness of this claim through analysis of nineteenth-century photographic journals, contemporary scholarship on nineteenth-century tastes, and through a brief overview of eighteenth and nineteenth-century portraiture. The second, third, and fourth chapters focus on the painted miniature, traditional portrait, and folk portrait with emphasis placed on the changing style and social meanings. There is a summary of their relationship to the daguerreotype. The fifth chapter concludes that the daguerrerotype is indeed influenced by other areas of art. The daguerreotype basically echoed the prevalent philosopies present in the other art mediums researched.