Denise,+student+within+the+student

Doing [|Viola's Assignment]

A French man named Louis Daguerre invented Daguerrotypes. According to Malsom Daniels' [|youtube video], posted by Viola, the neato invention of photographs arrived January 7th, 1939. They are images taken on highly treated copper plates sensitized by iodine and then exposed by mercury fumes. The [|Wikipedia article] goes into more depth as to the process and the history - the initial concept that led towards the discovery of photography being found in 1724 by Johann Heinrich Schulze, when he mixed silver and chalk and exposed it to light. Daguerre received a pension rather than a patent from the French government for his discovery --> I found this tidbit interesting: " In Britain, Miles Berry, acting on Daguerre's behalf, obtained a patent for the daguerreotype process on August 14, 1839. Almost simultaneously, on August 19, 1839, the [|French government] announced the invention as a gift "Free to the World."" The [|Daguerrian Registry] includes a list of daguerrotype photographers from 1839-1840, which was interesting to stumble upon. Each name has whatever bibliographical and professional information, though most of the entries are brief.
 * __Step One: Researching Daguerrotypes__**

The 19th century invention made photography widely accessible - portraiture was not just for the rich. People could have images of their loved ones to pass down through generations. On a macro level, photography paved the way for the realist movement. In Roger [|Gaddis's article, "The Impact of Photography on Art,"] the lower steps of society was exposed as, "early photographers captured real life of the time with gritty, unforgiving photographs of the downtrodden underbelly of society. In doing so, they made bold social statements about the inequality, social ills and issues of the day." Thus, daguerrotypes functioned for the individual by being able to create and preserve one's likeness, and for the public by influencing realism and exposing society's unexposable, so to speak.

Like Whitman's "Song of Myself," daguerrotypes opened arms to everyone - anyone could get a portrait taken. Whitman's poem is partly about the inclusion of everyone in society as well as the self - "I celebrate myself..." The two instances daguerrotypes are mentioned in the poem are amongst lists. The first among people doing //things//:

P.22 "The pedlar sweats with his pack on his back—the purchaser higgles about the odd cent, The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype, The bride unrumples her white dress, the minutehand of the clock moves slowly," P. 62  "The cylinder press . . the handpress . . the frisket and tympan . . the compositor's stick and rule The implements for daguerreotyping . . . . the tools of the rigger or grappler or sail- maker or blockmaker, Goods of guttapercha or papiermache . . . . colors and brushes . . . . glaziers' implements,"  On page 22, there's a pedlar, lady and a bride engaging in typical activities according to their role. On page 62, the list is about tools that were typically used during the 19th century, including those needed to make daguerrotypes. These images are democratizing because ordinary people are represented and ordinary people create them - they're the constituents as well as the subjects.

__**Step Two: Class Discussion Re Representative Daguerrotypes (I'm just going to briefly answer the questions)**__  " I hear the sound of the human voice . . . . a sound I love, I hear all sounds as they are tuned to their uses . . . . sounds of the city and sounds out of the city . . . . sounds of the day and night; "
 * Who is the subject?
 * The portrait in each photograph is the subject.
 * What do the pose, expression, gesture, etc., tell us about the subject?
 * The expressions of the subjects seem somber and serious. I know that exposure times could take up to 15-30 minutes with the early model cameras so holding a smile for that long would have been tiring.
 * How do the material objects contextualize the picture, and what do they tell us about the subject or time period?
 * The materials in the two non-Whitman pictures seem to be representative of their work - the man is a soldier and thus wearing a uniform, the woman is a seamstress, and is sitting by what looks like a sewing machine. The majority of the Whitman daguerrotypes are singly of him, no props or telling background. One exception is[| image 064], where Whitman is casually leaning upon a rock in a nature setting - being a nature lover, this is very apropos.
 * What can we tell about Whitman from these early daguerreotypes? Can we relate the //stories// within his daguerreotypes with the stories "Song of Myself"?
 * There are so many Whitman daguerrotypes! He "celebrates himself" - the poem is as much about the individual as it is about otherness, he seemed quite content to repeatedly create his likeness. There are a few photos where he is [|not looking at the camera] or it's a [|profile shot of his face] . Those are interesting because the majority of these photographs are forward-facing portraiture - I think he was making more of an art out of daguerrotypes.
 * How does the level of precision involved with taking the daguerreotype affect the way subjects are represented?
 * The [|process] involved in taking these photos was very intricate, not to mention hazardous to one's health. Not only was the mechanism complicated and the exposure methods laborious, subjects had to work hard to stay still - Posing stands held subjects in place for however long the camera would take.
 * __Step Three: "My Picture Gallery"__**
 * Can we relate what we have learned and discussed about the daguerreotype with the ideas in "My Picture-Gallery"?
 * After doing the first two steps, I've learned that Whitman was fascinated and excited about daguerreotypes. "My Picture Gallery" seems to be about this particular style of photo taking (also being the only kind), kind of like an ode. The poem seems to be about how something so small, simple and contained as a collection could be so revealing -about " the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death..."
 * What do "Song of Myself" and "My Picture-Gallery" tell us about the role of the visual in society? Can we see "Song of Myself" as more than a textual construction, as a form of visual media?
 * "Song of Myself" is a visual poem. So many parts are descriptions about various people, nature, and even just plain old objects like a rigging tool or a paintbrush. I can imagine images from "Song of Myself" as individual portraits in the house in "My Picture Gallery" - It's all-encompassing and involving. Especially if the pictures are actual representations of what one does (soldier wearing uniform), then the images can speak for themselves.
 * What do "Song of Myself" and "My Picture-Gallery" tell us about the relationship between the textual and the visual?
 *  "My Picture Gallery" is short. It's a poem about pictures - yet it's not very visual, no details of any particular photos in the house, just that it spans from everything from life to death. Conversely, "Song of Myself" is a huge, American epic of a poem that is very vivid and visual. And the way that these poems are aligned in this assignment, I can see that the textual and visual can blend.
 * __Final thoughts, Blog style, My Own Picture Gallery__**

This is a daguerreotype of a city. I've been calling "Song of Myself" and urban pastoral, despite the plenty of attention nature gets - it just spoke to me as a big conglomeration of diversity and when I think of diversity, I think of cities. The passage above is about sound, not very visual, but it's about city sounds. City sounds are very distinct and are aurally visual, so to speak. I live right in the middle of San Francisco so I hear everything from drug addicts screaming to cars honking during commuter hours, to school children walking home (there's an elementary school next to some projects around the corner). Whitman experienced city sounds, that I can't imagine were very too different from the sounds I hear (except for cars honking). This passage just seemed to have a sense of timelessness that I liked, and opens the door to what we hear, in addition to what we read and see - this poem can be for the blind as well as the deaf!

This was a really cool cultural object. The assignment was a bit confusing because there was backward design-teacher stuff interwoven with the student stuff. Otherwise, I learned a lot about daguerreotypes and found that it's [|still used today]. I felt like this assignment would have been spread out for more than one class period, including homework - one day for research, one day for discussion, then a homework blog assignment. I liked the online component of the assignment because linking to information was much more efficient than having to write a research report - I could cover more ground this way.
 * __Thoughts on the assignment...__**