ABSTRACT
The initial success of the daguerreotype was based on its ability to fulfill a longstanding human desire for graphic representation, as expressed during ancient Roman times in Pliny’s myth about a young woman who outlined the shadow of her candlelit paramour on a wall as a mechanism of remembrance. The daguerreotype’s eventual failure was due to its inability to reproduce itself. People not only wanted an “automatic” way of directly capturing nature, they also wanted an easy and inexpensive method for sharing their pictorial remembrances with as many people as they pleased.1 It was this human characteristic, the wish to share something of personal importance with others, that led Niépce to first experiment with light to make images that could be printed in multiples by a press in ink.2 As England and France expanded basic public education laws during the 1830s, publishing grew to meet the needs of a newly literate industrial society. The rapid growth of cities that accompanied industrialization increased the demand for newspapers, illustrated books, and magazines. In 1842, The Illustrated London News became the first weekly magazine to favor images over text. It contained numerous full-page illustrations, including two-page bleeds, becoming a model other publishers would follow. The biggest
technical obstacle such publications faced was how to use ink to print pictures and text at the same time. Neither Daguerre’s nor Talbot’s processes could make enough high-quality, reproducible, and permanent images from any one exposure to compete with the vast economy of production and permanence of ink-based lithographs and wood engravings in this thriving picture market.
