ABSTRACT
Daguerre, the most publicised inventor of photography, built his career by mounting realistic spectacles which employed the most advanced technical means he could develop. The considerable fame and fortune he had amassed before his announcement of the photographic process between January and August 1839 was built upon a combination of artistic, technical, theatrical and entrepreneurial achievement. A gifted draughtsman, Daguerre first gained note as a scene painter for the Paris Opera. His sets, which themselves got notices and sometimes dwarfed the productions, used lighting and tricks with backdrops to simulate dramatic and moody events (starlit scenes, storms). From 1800 he operated panoramas: ‘circular skylighted buildings lined with immense murals of cities, battlefields and historic events’ (Newhall 1971:10). In 1822, however, came the culmination of his career in theatrical illusion: the diorama, which added to the panorama’s suggestion of three-dimensional monumentality the illusion of transition and movement. By painting different scenes on the front and back of a huge screen, Daguerre could alter the lighting to dissolve from one scene to the next. The dissolvemuch like the cinema fade-could be experienced by the audience as both magical and technological, a wonder of scientific know-how which could transport the audience realistically from one place or time to another. The technology was a commercial secret: mysterious science producing spectacular magic. In 1839, Daguerre and his partner were awarded a lifetime pension by the French government in exchange for revealing the secret not only of photography but also of the diorama.
