How Daguerreotype Photography Reflected a Changing America
The National Portrait Gallery brings the eerie power of a historic medium into focus
By Ryan P. Smith
smithsonian.com
As denizens of the digital world, most contemporary Americans are exposed daily to dozens of photographs of friends, loved ones, celebrities and strangers. We capture and distribute images of ourselves and others with shockingly little effort, rarely if ever stepping back to marvel at the power we wield.
Our smartphones enable us to immortalize moments in our lives with crystal-clear fidelity—defying the inevitability of time’s passage whenever the whim strikes us—yet we go about the assembly of our collective visual history not with awe and zeal, but with the detached blitheness that so often comes with too much of a good thing.
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-daguerreotype-photography-reflected-changing-america-180969389/#xW3kKYmfHIWOJAP4.99
