By the middle of the nineteenth century, the most common method of photography was the daguerreotype—Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre’s miraculous invention that captured in a camera visual images on a highly polished silver surface through exposure to light. In this book are presented nearly eighty masterpieces—many never previously published—from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s extensive daguerreotype collection.

• Foreword
  Deborah Gribbon
• Preface
  Weston Naef
• Introduction
• Prologue
  • The Origins of Daguerreotype
    • The Magician of Light
    • Fortified Vision
    • The Dream Has Come To Pass
    • The Secret Is Disclosed
• Chapter 1
  • The World Poses for the Sun
• Chapter 2
  • Stealing From the Mirror
• Chapter 3
  • The Artificial Retina
• Chapter 4
  • An Intruder in the Realm
• Chapter 5