Daguerreian Society's 23rd Symposium and Trade Fair

The Daguerreian Society's 23rd annual meeting will be held in St. Petersburg, FL, Oct. 27-30.  Attendees will attend lectures, daguerreotype viewings, an auction and a trade fair that is open to the general public.  The events will be held in the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront (333 First Street South, the symposium headquarters) and the city's Museum of Fine Arts at 255 Beach Dr. N.E.  The symposium registration costs $129 for members and $149 for non-members.

The Symposium will open on Thursday, Oct. 27.  Rebecca Sexton Larson, a Tampa-based studio artist working with historic photographic processes, will speak on "Dry Plate Tintypes: History and Process," starting at 10 am. in the Bayview Room, Museum of Fine Arts.

Another behind-the-scenes event will have members going on a local private tour of collectors Dr. & Mrs. Robert Drapkin's home.

A gala reception officially launches the symposium at 7-9 pm on Thursday in the Marly Room of the Museum of Fine Arts.  Attendees will tour the museum's exhibition, "Sitter and Subject in 19th-Century Photography."

The Trade Fair will be held on Friday, Oct. 28, at the Hilton-St. Petersburg Bayfront, with thousands of antique photographs of all descriptions offered for sale.  The general public will be admitted starting 11 am through 5 pm. Cost for symposium registrants is free, and $8 for the general public.  A reduced student entrance fee of $5 is available upon presentation of a student ID.

Contemporary daguerreotypes will be on display in the hotel's hospitality suite beginning at 9 pm.

The Symposium lectures continue on Saturday, Oct. 29 in the Marly Room of the Museum of Fine Arts.

The morning sessions run from 9:30 am-1 pm.

Gary Ewer, a collector and expert from Denver, will speak on "A Complete Picture of California: The Three Hundred Daguerreotypes by Robert H. Vance."

Walter Johnson, collector of antique photography, will speak on "November 1968," the conference that started his interest in collecting photographica.

The topic of Dusan Stulik, senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, is "Niépce and Daguerre, Daguerre and Niépce: The First Scientific Investigation of all Niépce's Images from UK and US Collections."  Stulik will report on the first scientific investigation of all the Heliographic and Heliogravure plates created by Niépce in France that he brought with him to England in 1827.

The afternoon sessions run from 2:30-4:30 pm.

"Brady's Calhoun: The Recovery of an American Masterpiece" will be covered by Christopher Mahoney, vice president of photography at the Sotheby's. The daguerreotype was lost for over a century and then rediscovered, and then was sold at auction for $338,500.

A lively roundtable discussion will also be held, titled "The Daguerreotype Image: Who Owns It? Who Controls It?"  Ownership and reproduction rights will be examined from the standpoint of the collector, the author, the publisher and the photographic artists.  Who owns the rights to use a photograph?  What are the copyright restrictions and challenges for photographic researchers?  What are the dos and don'ts involving licensing?  What are the legal versus practical issues on controlling the digital reproduction of images?

Following the talks, the day's activities conclude with a cocktail party, silent auction, a buffet banquet and a live benefit auction.