{"id":6567,"date":"2016-04-21T11:34:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T11:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/?p=6567"},"modified":"2022-02-23T09:57:40","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T09:57:40","slug":"the-reial-academia-de-ciencies-i-arts-de-barcelonas-daguerre-giroux-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/the-reial-academia-de-ciencies-i-arts-de-barcelonas-daguerre-giroux-camera\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reial Acad\u00e8mia de Ci\u00e8ncies i Arts de Barcelona\u2019s Daguerre-Giroux camera"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mart\u00ed Llorens and Rebecca Mutell<\/h6>\n
\"<\/a>

Rafel Forga carrying out the restoration work of the camera. Fotograf\u00eda: \u00a9 Mart\u00ed Llorens \/ Factor\u00eda Heliogr\u00e1fica. 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

“I have found a way of fixing the images of the camera!
\nI have seized the fleeting light and imprisoned it!
\nI have forced the sun to paint pictures for me!”<\/p>\n

One day in 1824, uttering these words, the painter and businessman Louis-Jacques-Mand\u00e9 Daguerre<\/a> (1787-1851) rushed into the shop in the Quai de l’Horloge in Paris of his regular lens supplier, the optician Vincent Chevalier and his son Charles, both well known for building microscopes and telescopes.<\/p>\n

Years later, Charles Chevalier was to write in his memoirs that Daguerre had perhaps spoken too soon. It was not until 1835, in a publication called the Journal des Artistes<\/em>, when the fact that Daguerre had found the way to capture the image produced by the camera<\/strong> on a plate that he himself had prepared <\/strong>was mentioned for the first time. It was then two years since the death of the inventor Joseph Nic\u00e9phore Ni\u00e9pce (1765-1833), with whom Daguerre had worked on the possibility of fixing camera images.<\/p>\n

\"Retrat<\/a>

Portrait of\u00a0J.M. Daguerre by Jean-Babtiste Sabarier-Blot.1844. George Eastman House Collection, International Museum of Photography and Film<\/p><\/div>\n

The official account of the complete Daguerreotype<\/a> process, the first operational and commercially viable photographic process in history, was given on 19th<\/sup> August 1839 at the Acad\u00e9mie des sciences in Paris by the scientist and politician Fran\u00e7ois Arago (1786-1853). Three months later, the first photography session in Spain took place at a public event organized by the Reial Acad\u00e8mia de Ci\u00e8ncies i Arts de Barcelona (RACAB). Using a Daguerre-Giroux camera purchased in Paris, the engraver Ramon Alabern i Moles (1811-1888) obtained a Daguerreotype showing a view of two buildings in the Pla de Palau in Barcelona. The role played in this historic photograph by the scientist and doctor Pere Felip Monlau i Roca (1808-1871), a member of the RACAB, was fundamental, as it was he who organized the purchase of this device from Alabern.<\/p>\n

In 2014 the 175th<\/sup> anniversary of that first photograph was celebrated. It was the theme of the exhibition The Daguerreotype: the Beginnings of Photography<\/em>, organized by the Arxiu Fotogr\u00e0fic de Barcelona (Barcelona Photographic Archive).<\/em> New information about the event and Ramon Alabern was published in its catalogue. Ever since 1839 the RACAB has conserved the camera with which that first Daguerreotype \u2013 now lost \u2013 was obtained.<\/p>\n

From the camera obscura to the photographic camera<\/h3>\n

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the portable camera obscura, an optical instrument well known since the seventeenth century, was converted into the photographic camera. With this new device, it was no longer necessary to watch the world go by in motion through a polished glass screen and then trace a sketch with a pencil on a thin sheet of paper. The aim now was to capture that scene on the glass, its light reflected. It was necessary to know how to expose a photosensitive plate, capable of fixing the light and thus obtaining a detailed and permanent image of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n

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\"213618-000_084212\"<\/a>

Portrait of children<\/a><\/em>. 1839-1860, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya<\/p><\/div><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Not only did this revolutionary new operation require the study and careful application of chemistry and optics, it was also the result of another way of conceiving the world, of a new way of thinking, of looking, which converged in Europe in the early nineteenth century. This new period also required a new optical instrument designed to take photographs and not do drawings. The first model of a camera to go on sale was Le Daguerreotype<\/em>, in 1839.<\/p>\n

Le Daguerreotype<\/em><\/h3>\n

Le Daguerreotype <\/strong>was the first piece of photographic equipment to be marketed in the world<\/strong>. Designed by Daguerre himself, it was sold in Paris by Alphonse Giroux et Cie.<\/em> and Susse Fr\u00e8res, with a lens built by Chevalier and later also by Lerebours.<\/p>\n

\"Daguerreotip.<\/a>

L’Atelier de l’artiste<\/em> (the artist’s studio) , 1837, Louis Daguerre [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>Daguerre\u2019s invention was an immediate success, even though the camera along with its full set of equipment was quite heavy and cost 400 francs, a sizeable sum at the time. Apparently, not many more than 12 cameras of this type have survived, and they are all exhibited in museums and scientific institutions.<\/p>\n

\"Coloured<\/a>

Molin\u00e9 y Albareda. Portrait of two women<\/a><\/em>. Coloured daguerrotype, circa\u00a01860, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya<\/p><\/div>\n

The Daguerre-Giroux camera no. 178<\/h3>\n

The RACAB\u2019s camera includes the guarantee stamp of the seller Alphonse Giroux et Cie. It is signed by Louis Daguerre and numbered 178, and it is in quite good condition. Of the rest of the equipment, the chemical products box and the box in which the plates were stored have been preserved. Other circumstances converge to make this equipment, fundamental for the history of science, technology and photography, unique:<\/p>\n