Le daguerréotype français

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On January 7, 1839, at a session of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, the physicist François Arago presents a new method to reproduce mechanically and chemically, without manual intervention, the images that form in the dark room: the daguerreotype, marking the official birth of photography. Single image, on copper plate covered with silver, the changing reflections, polished and often reflective as a mirror, Daguerre's invention was to permanently change the gaze on the world and its representations, artistic as scientists. It is this "new art in the middle of an old civilization", in the words of the scientist Gay-Lussac in 1839, the exhibition and the book intend to discover, focusing on French production, all its diversity.