Frederick Douglass
1847-52
Medium
Daguerreotype
Dimensions
14 × 10.6 cm (5 1/2 × 4 1/8 in., plate); 12.1 × 8.8 cm (4 3/4 × 3 1/2 in., mat opening); 15.2 × 12 × 1.4 cm (6 × 4 3/4 × 1/2 in., plate in closed case); 15.2 × 24 × 2 cm (6 × 9 1/2 × 3/4 in., plate in open case)
Classification
daguerreotype
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
145681
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In 1839 Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre announced the perfection of the daguerreotype, a photographic process that employed a silver-coated copperplate sensitive to light. This new artistic process was celebrated for its remarkably sharp detail and praised as a “democratic art” that brought portraiture into reach for the masses. Within a few years, thousands of daguerrean portrait studios had sprung up all over the United States, among them the one that Samuel J. Miller owned in Akron, Ohio. Althou...