The Age of the Daguerreotype. Early Russian Photography

The exhibit entitled The Age of Daguerreotype. Early Russian Photography is the first exhibit at the Hermitage to explore such an interesting and ultimately vanished phenomenon as daguerreotype, as well as the stages of its development, so widely and deeply.

After Daguerre announced his discovery in 1839, it became possible to speak of the “great daguerreotype fever,” which no one escaped. In Moscow and Saint Petersburg, crowds of people gathered in front of the display cases of art stores in the hopes of seeing pictures created with the light of the sun. The devotees of this new technological achievement, busily occupying themselves by experimenting with daguerreotype plates, were not deterred by the expensive materials, or by their rarity in Russia. The sales of cameras and plates were sold by intermediaries, usually optometrists; Schedel in Saint Petersburg and the Beckers brothers in Moscow. In October of 1839, Beckers placed daguerreotype views of Moscow in his store’s display case, having put their production on firm commercial basis.

By the mid 1840s, the term daguerreotype could claim to be the most important phenomenon in public life, and was sometimes used as a synonym for “reality”, “naturism” or “physiology”.

The curator of this exhibit is Natalya Yurievna Avetyan, academic associate and custodian of the photography collection of the Photography Fund of the Department of Russian Culture of the State Hermitage. An illustrated scholarly catalogue for this exhibit has been prepared by the State Hermitage Museum’s publishing house.