Among the earliest photographic discoveries, daguerreotypes were primarily employed for portraiture.  These daguerreotypes of books and other collections honor that history.

Assembled possessions stand in for their owners, offering traits of their collector – interests, tastes, sentiments, aesthetics, areas of expertise and curiosity.   The pictured books mark their collector’s world view.  After all, what one reads structures one’s perception such that what one sees is what one has learned to look for.

Daguerreotypes themselves are luscious, weighty, gilded objects, encapsulating seemingly three-dimensional worlds. Simultaneously hyper-real and oddly strange, daguerreotypes have a distinctive authority and authenticity.

A technical question … Why is the type reversed in my images? As through the eye, light lands on the daguerreotype plate upside down and backwards. Our brains automatically flip information transmitted by rods and cones; the daguerreotype plate, however, can only record what it receives.