Artist: Augustus Washington (USA/Liberia). Untitled (portrait of John Brown) (1846-1847). Quarter-plate daguerreotype. Case Open: 11.4 x 19.7 x 1.1cm (4 1/2 x 7 3/4 x 7/16″).

PRIMARY MATERIALS FOR September 17

View the photograph: Augustus Washington, Portrait of John Brown

Download a high-resolution jpg of the daguerreotype from the Smithsonian Institution/National Portrait Gallery.

Read a short biographical sketch about Washington and take the visual tour of the 1999-2000 exhibition, A Durable Memento: Portraits by Augustus Washington, African American Daguerreotypist.

RESEARCH ACTIVITY (Complete BEFORE you come to class):

Research and curate 5 photographs by Washington/other early daguerreotypists; bring in to share

As part of your curated image collection, write and bring in a short paragraph (approx. 150-200 words) explaining why you chose the photographs you did. Your reasons may be connected with any aspect of the photograph/s.

Intertexts/dialogues:

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (inventor/daguerreotypist)

Matthew B. Brady (daguerreotypist)

Samuel F.B. Morse (daguerreotypist)

Southworth and Hawes (studio)

John H. Fitzgibbon (daguerreotypist)

Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet (daguerreotypist)

Orientalism (Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet and Horace Vernet, Voyage en Orient)

American Civil War photography (transition to photography on paper)

Frederick Douglass (as a photographic subject, also his lectures on photography)

Additional resources:

For your curatorial research, see also this useful additional digital resource (published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York).

For technical information about the daguerreotype process, watch this video (created by the Victoria & Albert Museum, in London).

Disassembled daguerreotype:

Photograph showing a disassembled daguerreotype…