Daguerreotype imaging in the 21st century by Colombian nature photographer Camilo Sabogal

Páramo plants and landscapes through the eyes of a 21st Century master DaguerreotypIST

By Peter Rockstroh

1839 was a remarkable year. Charles Darwin was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Guatemala became a Republic, and the British captured Hong Kong from China. Yet these are all relatively trifling affairs to Camilo Sabogal, a very talented Colombian photographer who has a different reason to celebrate an event that occurred in 1839.

For that was the year the daguerreotype was patented and commercial photography became a reality.

**Laguna**
Although it takes some practice to view and appreciate Daguerreotypes, once you know how to look at them, it is amazing the level of detail they can pick up. Since there is no film "grain", but rather an almost monomolecular layer of metallic silver, it can reproduce very fine details and textures. ©Camilo Sabogal 2022.

A little over 180 years later, very few photographers celebrate that year much less know what a daguerreotype is. Today, when photography is dominated by rapidly evolving digital technology, there seems to be no reason anyone should remember anachronistic image capture techniques of the early 19th century, unless that person is a curator of photography at a major museum or a nerdy contestant on Jeopardy! (“I’ll take OBSCURE PHOTOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUES for 400 Dollars, please.”).

In 1991, Zone VI, a small company in New England that specialized in large format photographic equipment for Black and White (B&W), sold their business to Calumet Photo, then a large chain of retail photographic and photofinishing stores around the world. Little did the Zone VI owners know that this was the beginning of the end for many B&W printing materials. This venture eventually terminated Zone VI’s deal with French photographic paper manufacturer Guilleminot, who produced one of the world’s most outstanding photographic papers for them, aptly named “Brilliant”. Silver, the noble metal that B&W photographic images contain, was becoming ever more expensive and–unable to hike prices accordingly–Guilleminot chose to close rather than compromise their high quality standards.

So, they did.

As the digital format was inexorably taking over the market, almost all manufacturers of materials for the photo-chemical market gradually shifted gears or closed shop. Paper and chemistry production was downsized and moved to cheaper production sites, product lines were simplified, and the film photographer was left with an ever-shrinking palette of photographic materials.

In 2005, about when AgfaPhoto filed for bankruptcy, photographic materials for B&W suddenly became very scarce everywhere, including Colombia. The date was more a coincidence and a reminder than a consequence, but Camilo remembers it vividly. Seven years later, in what was to the largest casualty of the global shift to digital photography, the leading name and longtime giant of the photo industry, Kodak, also filed for bankruptcy. After over a century of owning the largest collection of patents in photo-chemistry, with this business failure, film photography appeared to be doomed.

"All my colleagues were already dabbling in digital", Camilo told me. "But I refused to accept that the traditional photo-chemical process was doomed", he commented in a tone that left no room for doubt that he had other ideas about the future of his craft.

"So, what did you do?", I asked.

"I went in the opposite direction. I started looking at photo-chemistry and became interested in all the early techniques, then started trying them out."

Not surprisingly, much of the world has discarded more than century old process (B&W) that produces very precise images that require a matter of hours (at least), in favor of a process that does the same in seconds, and with a lot more flexibility.

In the meantime, Camilo threw caution to the wind and chose a process that takes a week to see the final product, one with relatively unpredictable results; one that is also a lot more expensive and quite dangerous to anyone not wearing a hazmat suit and a respirator.

I had to see this technique up close and find out why.

**Sumapaz National Park**
On an overcast day, exposures can stretch into several hours. This image took most of an afternoon. Interestingly, the long exposure shows no blurred vegetation, as it was too long to register movement. ©Camilo Sabogal 2022.

The Process

Photography has become a very “loud” medium. Every day we are bombarded with hundreds or even thousands of images–many of exceptional quality–covering every imaginable subject matter. We see so many images a day that our visual impact threshold really needs something extraordinary to make us stop and contemplate it. In this era of loud images, it is the quiet whisper of Camilo Sabogal’s daguerreotypes that stop people in their tracks to gaze in wonder at these scenes, images that seem to be trying to escape their physical medium and hover slightly above the surface.

Every person with a cell phone is a photographer now, and it sometimes seems almost everyone today with image editing software considers themselves a talented graphic artist. The race for immediate gratification is always on. There is now in-camera editing software and WiFi technologies that allow you to take a photo at sunset while vacationing in Bali, give it a quick and dirty editing job, transfer it to your cell phone via Bluetooth, send it to your family two minutes later; all this before the sun has set. Someone’s cell phone will be passed around the dinner table, some muted “oohhs” and aahhs” will be heard, then life goes on. A fleeting moment shared across the globe within a few seconds that usually vanishes into the ether. This same event, a mere 40 years ago, would have taken two weeks to complete including courier services.

The daguerreotype was the first commercially viable photographic process. It was registered in 1839 by Louis Daguerre, and for a few decades, it had a significant following with daguerreotype parlors opening in many countries. Early on it mostly showcased portraits of the rich and famous as well as images of their estates and everyday life on them, but by the 1850s millions of daguerreotype portraits were being made annually around the world.

The reason for its popularity were manyfold. Although the process was long, tedious and risky, the results were visually stunning. The images it produced were incredibly detailed, with depth and a fantastic tonal scale. And they were the first of their kind!

From a practical standpoint, a daguerreotype’s equivalent of photographic film is a glass plate, cut to the film holder’s size, and then sanded, polished, and cleaned to hygiene standards that could have likely prevented the COVID outbreak. The plates are then placed in a contraption that looks like a miniature photo print washer. A solution of silver nitrate is converted to silver hydroxide and then neutralized with ammonia. This step requires patience, as it takes up to 30 minutes for the solution to clarify and the quality of the final image depends on a perfectly clear solution. It is then mixed with glucose and ready for coating. Between each step the solution is filtered. In this glucose solution the silver separates from the ammonia silver hydroxide and deposits the metallic silver on the glass surface.

Once the final solution is poured into the coating chamber, the glass plates will be mirror coated in about two hours. They are then removed, washed with distilled water and air dried. Once dry, they are buffed and polished with red iron oxide and carbon black, using an orbital sander. So far, all this work has been just to prepare the light sensitive surface.

The mirrors are then heated and introduced in a sealed box where they are exposed to iodine vapors that make the surface light sensitive. Now they can be loaded into a film holder in complete darkness, to be later exposed in a camera.

These photo-sensitized plates are about as touchy as an ex mother-in-law (and of similar toxicity) and require very long exposure times. Exposures are measured assuming a sensitivity equivalent to ASA 0,0006 and can take several hours.

Once the plate has been exposed, it is placed under a 300W Tungsten light that will generate a positive image after about two hours. The plates are then fixed in a Hypo sulfate fixer until the purple cast disappears and the image attains its proper contrast. Once fixed, it is submerged in alcohol and later washed with distilled water. Finally, the plate is dried and is ready for mounting and viewing.

The first daguerreotypes were developed with highly toxic mercury vapors. This is no longer the case, and today the visible image is produced by the long and intense exposure to light through a red filter that allows for contrast control, depending on the shade used.

The mirror must be polished and produced without blemishes, so that it can reflect light through the coating. This gives the finished image a sensation as if it floats above the surface. Traditionally, the mirrors were made by coating a copper plate with a silver emulsion. These plates are heavier than glass, but are more resistant during transport. Glass plates however, generate a wider tonal scale. Glass plates are also one of Camilo’s contributions to the craft, as he developed this technique and has been improving it over the past seven years.

The entire process is about as healthy as chain-smoking asbestos cigarettes laced with Fentanyl and–at a bare minimum–requires top-notch industrial masks, elbow length gloves and safety glasses in order to provide a modicum of safety during plate preparation.

Need it be said that, even if you can legally obtain all the materials discussed here, do not attempt any of this at home?

This was the short description of the process. Cutting, polishing, sanding and cleaning the glass plates takes about two days. Add a day to sensitize them and, theoretically, you could expose one plate that same afternoon. If you develop, fix, and wash it immediately, you might be able to dry it overnight and see it the next day.

Best case scenario: Four days from preparing your materials until having the end result in your hands.

**Sumapaz National Park**
Despite the crisp detail that these images display, they possess a definite dreamlike quality, perhaps stemming from the light and focus fall-off towards the edge of the plate. ©Camilo Sabogal 2022.

For display, daguerreotype images are normally sealed in a transparent box so that the viewer can look at them without risk of damaging the plates. They are best appreciated at very close range, adjusting one’s position relative to the ambient light source until the eyes are fully focused and the image appears to lift from the surface in an effect somewhat like a holographic illusion. This makes the viewing experience a rather intimate and personal affair.

What moves a photographer to choose this very complex and hazardous process as his favored expressive medium?

Photographers that dedicate their time and work to the traditional craft of making photo-chemical images, celebrate an old scientific discovery. These procedures require a great deal of knowledge, skill and precision to be able to produce an expressive, high-quality image. The organic nature of the process, the precision required to produce predictable results of chemical and physical reactions, etc. generate such complex conditions that each piece encloses a miracle of craftsmanship, science and alchemy.

**Sumapaz National Park**
One of the unpredictable effects of this technique are the densities where high- and low-density areas meet. Slight differences in exposure produce dramatic changes in those contact areas, reminiscent of solarization. ©Camilo Sabogal 2022.

In an extreme but apparently satisfying example of self-flagellation, Camilo decided that the culmination of this process of image creation should be matched with subject matter that is as fascinating and representative of exploration and discovery as is the production of a virgin daguerreotype plate: the floral inhabitants of Colombia’s páramos. This environment also means that it is matched with an equally challenging athletic achievement.

For the past four years he has been dragging a heavy plate camera, glass plates and sturdy tripod all over these cold highlands (11,500’+/3,800 masl+), capturing scenes of an increasingly threatened ecosystem that look quite as alien as are that of a man making daguerreotypes in the 21st Century.

The images of different species of endemic frailejones (Espeletia species) shown here echo daguerreotypes, tintypes and early B&W photographs taken of yuccas, nolinas and agaves during scientific exploration of the US southwestern deserts in the mid-1800s on into the early 1900s.

Film is definitely making a comeback. On social media, over 20 million photos are listed under #filmisnotdead and film photography has several million followers, a large number of whom are under 35 years of age.

Fuji, the owner of Polaroid, sold half a million Instamatic cameras in 2010. In 2021 they again sold 10 million Instamatic cameras. There is even a new film manufacturing company on the market, Silbersalz (Silver salt), that produces an accessibly priced, high quality B&W film. Meanwhile, trade magazines note that overall digital camera sales declined 90% from 2010 to 2019. One of the main reasons cited for this is the increase in image quality from cameras in mobile phones and the steep price increases of digital single lens reflex (DSLR) as well as high-end bridge and point and shoot (P&S) cameras.

I’m very pleased to note how enthusiastic many young photographers are about these recent developments. For many of them, film (like vinyl phonograph records) is the "new" thing, but rather than going along for the ride just for the novelty, they embrace the physical and tangible parts of the process. By many accounts, they also appear to enjoy to be able to mold the results in their hands until producing a fine print of high visual impact.

In that regard they are not far from what drove Louis Daguerre in the early nineteenth century: The pursuit of freezing a moment in time in a highly detailed and permanent image.

PR

El Verjón

Working mainly with a (2.25" x 3.5"/6 x 9 cm) plate camera, on a good day Camilo spends around 10 hours to produce three to four Daguerrotypes. This panoramic triptych of Lago El Verjón (2.25" x 10.5"/6 cm x 27 cm) took an entire day to expose the three plates. ©Camilo Sabogal 2022.