2023-04-23 09:00:05
it was thirty years ago. Jérôme Monnier took advantage of his holidays to explore the technique of the iodine daguerreotype, replacing mercury, which was too dangerous for health. A few minutes after its first shot, the image appears, and the emotion emerges. But almost immediately, the trace of the Italian landscape ebbs gently to vanish forever from the silver plate.
His 19th century workse century not mentioning any solution, the problem is repeated for months, to despair. Jérôme Monnier thinks of abandoning and sparing his family the transport of heavy equipment over hill and dale. But their encouragement carries him: he ends up finding, by dint of trial and error, the path of the first photographic process in history, or more precisely of its variants of 1840. Quite simply by developing its images four times longer (see our video below).
Since that time, Jérôme Monnier has produced a thousand daguerreotypes, but he is never certain of obtaining a satisfactory image. If the shooting methods of the 19e century are ungrateful, this one, precisely, is so to the point of absurdity. “Not all the colors are restored: the green is attenuated, the yellow disappears. Some stones don’t reflect light.” he lists. Not to mention the passage of clouds which sometimes sabotages the image.
Each image requires more than an hour of work, including two minutes of shooting during which the silver plate slowly absorbs the light. The passage of onlookers leaves at best only a fleeting trail. “For my shrink, their absence is not due to chance”he confides.
Holder of a diploma in photographic restoration which provides the bulk of his income, the man holds the weekend a small gallery in Saint-Ouen, in the Paris region, where he exhibits his works with fascinating silver reflections, as well as moving daguerreotypes from the 19the century. Fragile images: by removing their protective glass, it is often enough to run your finger over them to erase the image.
The collodion challenge
In France, the practitioners of the daguerreotype are counted “on the fingers of one hand”, believes Jérôme Monnier. But followers of wet collodion, a photographic process born around 1850, are less rare. Loïc Raux has produced around sixty, out of curiosity, but also out of challenge, he who quickly tires of what he has mastered. Each photo requires several tens of minutes of work (see our video below).
You have 72.66% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
#Guardians #Temple #19th #Century #Photographic #Processes