Untitled [portrait of a young couple] 1852 - 1858

This portrait of a young couple is a daguerreotype, made by Jeremiah Gurney, a prominent New York photographer. It is a direct positive image created on a silver-plated copper sheet, polished to a mirror finish. The plate was then sensitized to light with iodine fumes, exposed in a camera, and developed with mercury vapor. The resulting image is incredibly detailed, with a unique sense of depth and presence. The reflective surface of the silver gives the photograph a luminous quality, almost as if the couple is illuminated from within. The daguerreotype was a cutting-edge technology at the time, but it was also a labor-intensive process. Each image was unique, and required great skill and precision to produce. This made daguerreotypes relatively expensive, and therefore accessible only to a certain class of people. Considered in light of the immense labor involved, this image is a potent reminder of the social and economic context in which it was created.