1840–1841 Camerae obscurae and plates for Daguerreotype called "Grand Photographe" produced by Charles Chevalier (Musée des Arts et Métiers)

L'Atelier de l'artiste. An 1837 daguerreotype by Daguerre, claimed to be the first to complete the full process.^[1]

The solar eclipse of July 28, 1851 is the first correctly exposed photograph of a solar eclipse, using the daguerreotype process.

The daguerreotype  /dəˈɡɛrətaɪp/ (French: daguerréotype) was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate. The raw material for plates was called Sheffield plate, plating by fusion or cold-rolled cladding and was a standard hardware item produced by heating and rolling silver foil in contact with a copper support. ^[2] The surface of a daguerreotype is like a mirror, with the image made directly on the silvered surface; it is very fragile and can be rubbed off with a finger, and the finished plate has to be angled so as to reflect some dark surface in order to view the image properly. Depending on the angle viewed, and the color of the surface reflected into it, the image can change from a positive to a negative.

The very first daguerreotypes used Chevalier lenses that were "slow", and the light sensitive material was silver iodide made by fuming the plate with iodine vapour. This meant that the exposure in the camera was too long to conveniently take portraits, and the first subjects taken were street scenes and architectural studies. When Petzval lenses were introduced, with lenses of a larger diameter and the plate was sensitized with iodine and bromine forming light sensitive crystals of silver iodide and silver bromide, the exposures were reduced so that portraits could be taken. Usually, it was arranged so that the sitters leant their elbows on a support, or else head rests that did not show in the picture were used to help the sitters sit motionless, and this led to most daguerreotype portraits having stiff, lifeless poses. There were exceptions with lively expressions full of character by photographers who saw the potential of the new medium, and these are represented in museum collections and are the most sought after by private collectors today.

Daguerreotypes were mounted in cases under glass with a cover, or else in a frame that could be hung on a wall. Photographic processes that were invented soon after: ambrotypes and tintypes were mounted in similar cases, but were made by the later wet plate process using collodion on glass or on a bitumen coated iron plate. These can be distinguished from daguerreotypes by the image quality. The polished silver surface of a daguerreotype gives a feeling of presence where the image appears to be floating in space.

The process was developed by Louis Daguerre together with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Niepce had produced the first photographic image in the camera obscura using asphaltum on a copper plate sensitised with lavender oil that required exposures as long as eight hours.

The image in a daguerreotype is often described as being formed by the amalgam, or alloy, of mercury and silver because mercury vapor from a pool of heated mercury is used to develop the plate; but using the Becquerel process (using a red filter and two-and-a-half stops extra exposure) daguerreotypes can be produced without mercury, and chemical analysis shows that there is no mercury in the final image with the Bequerel process. This leads to questioning the theory that the image is formed of amalgam with mercury development.

Exposure times were later reduced by sensitising the plate with other silver halides: silver bromide and silver chloride, and by replacing the Chevalier lenses with much larger, faster lenses designed by Joseph Petzval. A reduction in camera size and the size of the image will always result in more light reaching the image plane and consequently reduced exposures, and a small metal camera that produces small circular images was made by Voigtländer.

The image is formed on the surface of the silver plate (resembling the surface of a mirror) and is unstable; it can easily be rubbed off and will oxidize in the air, so from the outset daguerreotypes were mounted in sealed cases or frames with a glass cover.

When viewing the daguerreotype, a dark surface is reflected into the mirrored silver surface, and the reproduction of detail in sharp photographs is very good.

Although daguerreotypes are unique images, they could be copied by redaguerreotyping the original.^[3]

Invention[link]

Since the late Renaissance, artists and inventors had been looking for a mechanical method of capturing visual scenes.^[4] Previously, using the camera obscura, artists would manually trace what they saw, or use the optical image in the camera as a basis for solving the problems of perspective and parallax, and deciding colour values. The camera obscura's optical reduction of a real scene in three-dimensional space to a flat rendition in two dimensions influenced western art, so that at one point, it was thought that images based on optical geometry (perspective) belonged to a more advanced civilization. Later, with the advent of Modernism, the absence of perspective in oriental art from China, Japan and in Persian miniatures was revalued.

Previous discoveries of photosensitive methods and substances—including silver nitrate by Albertus Magnus in the 13th century,^[5] a silver and chalk mixture by Johann Heinrich Schulze in 1724,^{[citation needed]} and Joseph Niépce's bitumen-based heliography^[4] in 1822^[6]—contributed to development of the daguerreotype. In 1829 French artist and chemist Louis J.M. Daguerre, contributing a cutting edge camera design, partnered with Niépce, a leader in photochemistry, to further develop their technologies.^[4]

After Niépce's 1833 death, Daguerre continued to research the chemistry and mechanics of recording images by coating copper plates with iodized silver.^[4] Early experiments required hours of exposure in the camera to produce visible results. In 1835 Daguerre discovered—after accidentally breaking a mercury thermometer, according to traditional accounts—a method of developing the faint or invisible images on plates that had been exposed for only 20 to 30 minutes.^[4] Further refinement of his process would allow him to fix the image—preventing further darkening of the silver—using a strong solution of common salt. An 1837 still life of plaster casts, a wicker-covered bottle, a framed drawing and a curtain—titled L'Atelier de l'artiste—has been claimed to be the first daguerreotype to successfully undergo the full process of exposure, development and fixation.^[4]

The French Academy of Sciences announced the daguerreotype process on January 9, 1839. Later that year William Fox Talbot announced his silver chloride "sensitive paper" process. Together, these announcements mark 1839 as the year photography was born.^[7]

Daguerre did not patent and profit from his invention in the usual way. Instead, it was arranged that the French government would acquire the rights in exchange for a lifetime pension. The government would then present the daguerreotype process "free to the world" as a gift, which it did on August 19, 1839. However, on August 14, 1839, a patent agent acting on Daguerre's behalf filed for a patent in England. Consequently, Britain became the only nation on Earth in which the purchase of a license was legally required to make and sell daguerreotypes.^[8]

Daguerreotype process[link]

The daguerreotype, along with the Tintype, is a photographic image allowing no direct transfer of the image onto another light-sensitive medium, as opposed to glass plate or paper negatives. Preparation of the silver-surfaced copper sheet prior to exposure resulted in the formation of a layer of photo-sensitive silver halide, and exposure to a scene or image through a lens formed a latent image. The latent image was made visible, or "developed", by subjecting the exposed plate to the fumes rising from a quantity of heated mercury.^[9] Daguerre was first to discover and publish (in the publication of the process and the English patent of 1839) the principle of latent image development.

The mercury vapour condensed on those places on the plate where the exposure light was most intense (highlights), and less so in darker areas of the image (shadows). This produced a picture in an amalgam, the mercury washing the silver out of the halides, solubilizing and amalgamating it into free silver particles which adhered to the exposed areas of the plate, leaving the unexposed silver halide ready to be removed by the fixing process. This resulted in the final unfixed image, which consisted of light and dark areas of grey amalgam on the plate. The developing box was constructed to allow inspection of the image through a yellow glass window to allow the photographer to determine when to stop development.

The next operation was to "fix" the photographic image permanently on the plate by dipping in a solution of hyposulphite of soda,^[9] often called "fixer" or "hypo", to dissolve the unexposed halides. Initially, Daguerre's process was to use a saturated salt solution for this step, but later adopted Herschel's suggestion of sodium thiosulphate, as did W. H. F. Talbot.

The image produced by this method is extremely fragile and susceptible to damage when handled. Practically all daguerreotypes are protected from accidental damage by a glass-fronted enclosure. It was discovered by experiment that treating the plate with heated gold chloride both tones and strengthens the image, although it remains quite delicate and requires a well-sealed enclosure to protect against touch as well as oxidation of the fine silver deposits forming the blacks in the image. The best-preserved daguerreotypes dating from the 19th century are sealed in robust glass cases evacuated of air and filled with a chemically inert gas, typically nitrogen.

• 

  Daguerreotype camera built by La Maison Susse Frères in 1839, with a lens by Charles Chevalier

• 

  Boulevard du Temple, Paris, Spring 1838, by Daguerre (includes the earliest reliably dated photograph of a person). The image shows a busy street, but because the exposure time was at least ten minutes the moving traffic cannot be seen. However, two men at lower left, one apparently having his boots polished and the other the bootblack, remained motionless enough to be distinctly visible. The image is reversed (as were most Daguerreotypes) as is evidenced by the signage on a building in upper left.

• 

  The first authenticated image of Abraham Lincoln was this daguerreotype of him as U.S. Congressman-elect in 1846, attributed to Nicholas H. Shepard of Springfield, Illinois

• 

  Daguerreotype of Andrew Jackson at age 77 or 78 (1844 or 1845).

• 

  Ichiki Shirō's 1857 daguerreotype of Shimazu Nariakira, the earliest surviving Japanese photograph

Six daguerreotypes show a view of San Francisco, California, in 1853.

Proliferation[link]

André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri^[10] and Jules Itier^[11] in France, and Johann Baptist Isenring in Switzerland, became prominent daguerreotypists. In the United Kingdom, however, Richard Beard bought the British daguerreotype patent from Miles Berry in 1841 and closely controlled his investment, selling licenses throughout the country and prosecuting infringers.^[12] Among others, Antoine Claudet^[13] and Thomas Richard Williams^[14] produced daguerreotypes in the U.K.

Daguerreotype photography spread rapidly across the United States. In the early 1840s, the invention was introduced in a period of months to practitioners in the United States by Samuel Morse,^[15] inventor of the telegraph code. One of these original Morse Daguerreotype cameras is currently on display at the National Museum of American History, a branch of the Smithsonian, in Washington, DC.^[7] A flourishing market in portraiture sprang up, predominantly the work of itinerant practitioners who traveled from town to town. For the first time in history, people could obtain an exact likeness of themselves or their loved ones for a modest cost, making portrait photographs extremely popular with those of modest means. Notable U.S. daguerreotypists of the mid-19th century included James Presley Ball,^[16] Samuel Bemis,^[17] Abraham Bogardus,^[17] Mathew Brady,^[18] Thomas Martin Easterly,^[19] François Fleischbein, Jeremiah Gurney,^[20] John Plumbe, Jr.,^[21] Albert Southworth,^[22] Augustus Washington,^[23] Ezra Greenleaf Weld,^[24] and John Adams Whipple.^[17]

This method spread to other parts of the world as well. In 1857, Ichiki Shirō created the first known Japanese photograph, a portrait of his daimyo Shimazu Nariakira. This photograph was designated an Important Cultural Property by the government of Japan.^{[citation needed]}

The daguerreotype is commonly, erroneously, believed to have been the dominant photographic process into the late part of the 19th century in Europe. Evidence from the period shows that it was in widespread use for less than twenty years before being superseded by other processes:

• The calotype, introduced in 1841; a negative-positive process using a paper negative.
• The collodion wet plate process, introduced in 1851; a negative-positive process using halide-impregnated collodion poured from a bottle onto a glass plate and sensitized by immersion in a silver nitrate bath.

The collodion wet plate process was used to produce ambrotypes on glass and tintypes or ferrotypes on a coated iron plate.

• The ambrotype, introduced in 1854; a negative image on glass which appeared positive when on dark "ruby" glass or backed with a black varnish or cloth.
• The tintype or ferrotype, introduced in 1856; an image like the ambrotype, but on a thin blackened iron plate instead of glass.

Demise[link]

The intricate, complex, labor-intensive daguerreotype process itself helped contribute to the rapid move to the ambrotype and tintype. The proliferation of these simpler and much less expensive photographic processes made the costly daguerreotypes less appealing to the average person (although it remained very popular in astronomical observatories until the invention of glass plate cameras). According to Mace (1999), the rigidity of these images stems more from the seriousness of the activity than a long exposure time, which he says was actually only a few seconds (Early Photographs, p. 21). The daguerreotype's lack of a negative image from which multiple positive "prints" could be made was a limitation also shared by the tintype, but was not a factor in the daguerreotype's demise until the introduction of the wet plate photographic process. The fact that some of those to use the process suffered severe health problems or even death from mercury poisoning after inhaling toxic vapors created during the heating process also contributed to its falling out of favor with photographers.^[25] Unlike film and paper photography however, a properly sealed daguerreotype can potentially last indefinitely.

The daguerreotype's popularity was not threatened until photography was used to make imitation daguerreotypes on glass positives called ambrotypes, meaning "imperishable picture" (Newhall, 107).^[17]

Modern daguerreotypes[link]

Although the daguerreotype process is usually said to have died out completely in the early 1860s, documentary evidence indicates that some slight use of it persisted more or less continuously throughout the following 150 years of its supposed extinction.^[26] A few first-generation daguerreotypists refused to entirely abandon their beautiful old medium when they started making the new, cheaper, easier to view but comparatively drab ambrotypes and tintypes.^[27] Historically-minded photographers of subsequent generations, fascinated by daguerreotypes, sometimes experimented with making their own or even revived the process commercially as a "retro" portraiture option for their clients.^[28][29] The daguerreotype experienced a minor renaissance in the late 20th century and the process is currently practiced by a handful of enthusiastic devotees; there are thought to be fewer than 100 worldwide (see list of artists on cdags.org in links below). In recent years artists like Jerry Spagnoli, Adam Fuss and Chuck Close have reintroduced the medium to the broader art world. Its appeal lies in the "magic mirror" effect of light striking the polished silver plate and revealing a silver image which can seem ghostly and ethereal even while being perfectly sharp, and in the sense of achievement derived from the dedication and handcrafting required to make a daguerreotype.

Value in the marketplace[link]

The value of a typical small daguerreotype portrait ranges from as little as US $20 for a damaged or unappealing image with no case to a more normal average of US $50 to $100 for an undamaged portrait of a reasonably attractive or interesting sitter, a complete case usually being required for the high-end price. Elaborate molded or inlaid cases add significant value when in good condition. Identification of the sitter by some type of included old documentation adds modestly to the value. Larger "half plate" and "whole plate" size (the latter is 6.5 by 8.5 inches) portraits are uncommon and more valuable, as are portraits which have been hand-tinted with multiple colors rather than simple daubs of rouge on cheeks or touches of gold paint on jewellery, although these also add modestly to the value. The premium is proportional to the subtlety and quality of the coloring. Because the vast majority of daguerreotypes are simple, straightforward studio portraits of ordinary people, normally it is some unusual feature which elevates the value to a multiple of the average. Men in uniform, "occupational" portraits showing a sitter with the tools of the trade, and subjects shown with weapons or other unusual objects are in this category.

Daguerreotypes other than portraits, such as landscape or architectural views, are very rare and may safely be valued from an absolute minimum of US $500 steeply upward unless severely damaged or exceptionally uninteresting. Images with major inherent historical interest, such as Gold Rush and other pioneer or urban scenes, sell for many thousands of dollars even with significant damage.

Portraits of outstanding quality with the maker's marks of highly-regarded daguerreotypists such as Southworth & Hawes of Boston, George S. Cook of Charleston, Gurney, Pratt and others are now valued as photographic works of art rather than as antiques or curios, and they fetch corresponding prices when sold at auction. Most valuable of all, when the identity of the subject can be established beyond any reasonable doubt, are authentic original daguerreotypes of very famous people. A damaged daguerreotype copy of one of the nine original daguerreotypes known to have been made of Edgar Allan Poe was featured on the PBS show Antiques Roadshow and appraised at US $30,000 to $50,000. In 2006, Sotheby's sold it for US $150,000. The copy was made by William Abbott Pratt circa 1854 from an original he made two weeks before Poe's 1849 death.^[30]

In May 2007, an anonymous buyer paid 576,000 euros for an original 1839 camera made by Susse Frères (Susse brothers), Paris, at an auction in Vienna, Austria, making it the world's oldest and most expensive commercial photographic apparatus.^[31] The 2007 record was then bested by another daguerrotype camera, this time with Daguerre's signature on the device. It sold for 732,000 euros.^[32]

Footnotes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Gernsheim, Helmut, and Alison Gernsheim. L.J.M. Daguerre: the history of the diorama and the daguerreotype. New York: Dover Publications, 1968. ISBN 0-486-22290-X
• Rudisill, Richard. Mirror image: the influence of the daguerreotype on American society. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971.
• Coe, Brian. The birth of photography: the story of the formative years, 1800–1900. London: Ash & Grant, 1976. ISBN 0-904069-06-0.
• Sobieszek, Robert A., Odette M. Appel-Heyne, and Charles R Moore. The spirit of fact: the daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes, 1843–1862. Boston: D.R. Godine, 1976. ISBN 0-87923-179-3
• Pfister, Harold Francis. Facing the light: historic American portrait daguerreotypes: an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, September 22, 1978–January 15, 1979. Washington, D.C.: Published for the National Portrait Gallery by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978.
• Richter, Stefan. The art of the daguerreotype. London: Viking, 1989. ISBN 0-670-82688-X.
• Barger, M Susan, and William B White. The daguerreotype: nineteenth-century technology and modern science. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. ISBN 0-87474-348-6
• Wood, John. America and the daguerreotype. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. ISBN 0-87745-334-9.
• Wood, John. The scenic daguerreotype: Romanticism and early photography. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. ISBN 0-87745-511-2.
• Lowry, Bates, and Isabel Lowry. The silver canvas: daguerreotype masterpieces from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles: The Museum, 1998. ISBN 0-89236-368-1.
• Davis, Keith F., Jane Lee Aspinwall, and Marc F. Wilson. The origins of American photography: from daguerreotype to dry-plate, 1839–1885. Kansas City, MO: Hall Family Foundation, 2007. ISBN 978-0-300-12286-2.
• Kenney, Adele. Photographic Cases Victorian Design Sources 1840–1870, 2001 ISBN 0-7643-1267-7.
• Hannavy, John. Case Histories: The Presentation of the Victorian Photographic Portrait 1840–1875, 2005. ISBN 1-85149-481-2.

External links[link]

Look up daguerreotype in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Daguerreotype

• International Contemporary Daguerreotypes community (non profit org)
• The Daguerreian Society: History, and predominantly US oriented database & galleries
• The Daguerreotype: an Archive of Source Texts, Graphics, and Ephemera
• Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1836-1864: US Library of Congress
• The American Handbook of the Daguerreotype from Project Gutenberg
• The Social Construction of the American Daguerreotype Portrait
• Article on daguerreotypes from Discover Magazine
• A University of Utah Podcast on Daguerreotype Theories
• Daguerreotype Plate Sizes
• Library of Congress Collection
• Cased Photos The Boston Public Library's Cased Photo Collection on Flickr.com
• Daguerreotype collection at the Canadian Centre for Architecture
• Article by Malcom Daniel, Department of Photographs, The Metropolitain Museum of Art
• The first photograph

Jerry Spagnoli (New York, 1956), a photographer since the mid-1970s, is best known for his work with the daguerreotype process, a complex photographic technique invented in 1839 that produces images on highly polished, silver clad copper plates. Initiating his exploration of the daguerreotype in San Francisco in 1994, Spagnoli experimented with nineteenth century materials and studied the effects achieved by early practitioners to understand the technical aspects of the process, as well as its expressive and visual potential as a medium. He began work on an ongoing series entitled “The Last Great Daguerreian Survey of the 20th Century” in 1995, continuing the series upon returning to the east coast in 1998. The project features views of the metropolis as well as images of historically significant events including the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, the vigil following the disappearance of John F. Kennedy, Jr.., and Times Square at midnight on the eve of the new millennium. Considered the leading expert in the revitalization of the daguerreotype process, Spagnoli is also noted for his collaboration with artist Chuck Close on daguerreotype portraits and nudes.^[1][2]

Spagnoli’s interest in the characteristic qualities of photographic processes extends to other aspects of his work. In his “Photomicrograph” series Spagnoli explores how people, photographed at great distances onto a small piece of film and enlarged many times, are readable as human forms from the most minimal information. In “Pantheon,” a recent series of color photographs, Spagnoli placed a radiating sun at the center of each image, the effect of which is enhanced by his use of a pinhole camera. Recently this project has morphed into “Local Stories.” Exchanging the pinhole for a super-wide-angle lens the project has taken on a more documentarian agenda while retaining the preoccupation with the sun as a central motif. Of his work, Spagnoli comments, “Ultimately my use of various materials and methods is centered in my desire to make complicated stories out of the everyday world, which is my apparent subject matter. Photography allows me to engage viewers with images and ideas which are filtered through the abstracting apparatus of the camera and woven into the matrix of its rich history.”

Collections[link]

• The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
• The National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC
• The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
• The Fogg Museum, Boston, MA
• The High Museum, Atlanta , GA
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
• The Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO
• The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
• The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
• The New York Historical Society, New York, NY
• The Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY
• The Cleveland Museum, Cleveland, OH
• Musee Carnavalet, Paris, France

Books[link]

• Daguerreotypes, Steidl Verlag, (2006)
• American Dreaming, Steidl Verlag, (Spring 2010)

In collaboration with Chuck Close[link]

• A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, Chuck Close and Bob Holman, Aperture, New York, (2006)
• Chuck Close: Daguerreotypes, Demetrio Paparoni, Alberico Cetti Serbelloni Editor, (2002)

Other books featuring Spagnoli’s work[link]

• The Journal of Contemporary Photography VI, (2004), “Flesh and Spirit: The Photomicrographs of Jerry Spagnoli”
• Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-Garde, Lyle Rexer, Abrams, (2002)
• The Photographic Arts, John Wood, University of Iowa Press, (1997), “Passed, Passing or to Come: The Conceptual Songs of Jerry Spagnoli”

References[link]

External links[link]

• home page
• A podcast of a presentation at the University of Utah in 2006
• An interview with National Public Radio in 2001

Agnès Varda
Varda receiving an honour at the Guadalajara Film Festival
Born	(1928-05-30) 30 May 1928 (age 84) Brussels, Belgium
Occupation	director, screenwriter, editor, actor, producer, installation artist, photographer
Years active	1955 - present

Agnès Varda (born 30 May 1928) is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School.^[1] Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style.

Life and career[link]

The career of Agnès Varda is an important and often overlooked voice in the modern French cinema. Her career pre-dates the start of the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) , andLa Pointe Courte contains many elements specific to that movement that make it famous. ^[2]

Varda was born Arlette Varda in Brussels, Belgium, the daughter of Christiane (née Pasquet) and Eugene Jean Varda, an engineer.^[3] Her mother was French and her father's family were Greek refugees from Asia Minor.

Varda studied Art History at the Ecole du Louvre before getting a job as the official photographer for the Théâtre National Populaire in Paris.^[2] She liked photography but was interested in moving into film. After spending a few days filming the small French fishing town of La Pointe Courte for a terminally ill friend who could no longer visit on his own, Varda decided to shoot a feature film of her own. Thus in 1954, Varda's first film, La Pointe Courte, about an unhappy couple working through their relationship in a small fishing town, was released. The film is a stylistic precursor to the French New Wave.^[4] At the time, Varda was influenced by the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard, whom she once studied under at the Sorbonne. “She was particularly interested in his theory of ‘l’imagination des matières,’ in which certain personality traits were found to correspond to concrete elements in a kind of psychoanalysis of the material world”. This idea arrives in La Pointe Courte as the characters personality traits clash it is shown through the opposition of objects such as wood and steel. To further her interest in character abstraction Varda used two professional actors, Sylvia Montfort and Philippe Noiret combined with the residents of La Pointe Courte to provide a realistic element that lends itself to a documentary aesthetic, inspired by Neo-realism. Varda would continue to use this combination of fictional and documentary elements in her films.^[5]

Following La-Pointe Courte, Cleo from 5 to 7 follows a pop singer through 2 extraordinary hours in which she awaits the results of a recent biopsy. Superficially, the film is about a woman coming to terms with her relationships to those around her through self-awareness. On a deeper level, Cleo From 5 to 7 confronts the traditionally objectified woman by giving Cleo her own vision. She is unable to be constructed through gaze of others which is often represented through a motif of reflections and Cleo’s ability to strip her body of to-be-looked-at-ness attributes (clothing items, wigs, etc). Stylistically, Cleo From 5 to 7 borders documentary and fiction as La Pointe Courte had, which is regularly noticed as the film is to represent real time, between 5pm and 7pm. ^[5]

Despite similarities to the French New Wave, films by Varda belonged more precisely to the complementary Rive Gauche (Left Bank) cinema movement, along with Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Cayrol and Henri Colpi. The group was strongly tied to the nouveau roman movement in literature and politically was positioned to the Left. Like the French New Wave, its members would often collaborate with each other.

Varda was married to the film director Jacques Demy from 1962 until his death in 1990, with whom she had one child, actor Mathieu Demy. Jacques Demy also legally adopted Rosalie Varda, Agnes Varda's daughter from a previous union with actor Antoine Bourseiller, who starred in her early film Cléo from 5 to 7.

Varda was one of the five persons to attend Jim Morrison's burial in Paris at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

She was a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 and a member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1983.

Awards and accolades[link]

• For the 1985 documentary-style feature film Vagabond/Without Roof or Rule she received the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival.
• 2002 Agnès Varda was the recipient of the prestigious French Academy prize, René Clair Award.^[6]
• In 2009 The Beaches of Agnès won the best documentary film of the César Award.^[7]
• On April 12, 2009, she was made Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur.^[8]
• In May of 2010 Varda received Directors' Fortnight's 8th Carosse d'Or award for lifetime achievement at the Cannes Film Festival.^[9]
• September 22nd 2012 Varda received an honorary degree from Liège University Belgium.^[1]

Filmography[link]

Agnès Varda speaking at a retrospective series at the Harvard Film Archive

Publications[link]

• Les Plages d'Agnes Texte Illustre (2010)
• 4 by Agnès Varda: Essays (2007)
• Agnès Varda, l'île et elle, Actes sud (2006)
• Sans toit ni loi un film d'Agnès Varda (2003)
• La marginalité à l'écran(1999)
• Varda par Agnès (1994)
• La Côte d'Azur, d'azur, d'azur, d'azur (1961)

Further reading[link]

• How Agnès Varda "invented" the New Wave by Ginette Vincendeau, Four by Agnes Varda, Criterion, 2008
• Smith, Alison. Agnès Varda Manchester University Press, 1998. Pg 3.
• Neupert, Richard. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin. 2007. Pg 57.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Agnès Varda Faculty Page @ European Graduate School Biography, bibliography, films and quotes.
• Agnès Varda at the Internet Movie Database
• Biography on newwavefilm.com
• Ciné-Tamaris
• Jonathan Romney, The Beaches of Agnès (Sight & Sound 'Film of the Month')
• "A Talk: Agnès Varda ," 2009, (Frieze Foundation Talks)
• Agnès Varda talks about cinema and her work

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close (born July 5, 1940) is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits. Though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by museums and collectors.

Life and work[link]

Close was born in Monroe, Washington.^[1] His father died when he was eleven years old. Most of his early works are very large portraits based on photographs (Photorealism or Hyperrealism technique) of family and friends, often other artists. In an interview with Phong Bui in The Brooklyn Rail, Close describes an early encounter with a Jackson Pollock painting at the Seattle Art Museum: "I went to the Seattle Art Museum with my mother for the first time when I was 11. I saw this Jackson Pollock drip painting with aluminum paint, tar, gravel and all that stuff. I was absolutely outraged, disturbed. It was so far removed from what I thought art was. However, within 2 or 3 days, I was dripping paint all over my old paintings. In a way I’ve been chasing that experience ever since."^[2]

In 1962, he received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. After Yale, he lived in Europe for a while on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the US, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts.

Close had been known for his skillful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale University. As he explained in a 2009 interview with the Cleveland Ohio Plain Dealer, he made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before."^[3]

Close's first one-man show was in 1970. His work was first exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art in early 1973. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial. "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs. The everyday nature of the subject matter of the paintings likewise worked to secure the painting as a realist object."^[4]

One photo of Philip Glass was included in his black and white series in 1969, redone with water colors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982.

Close suffers from Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he is unable to recognize faces. By painting portraits, he is better able to recognize and remember faces.^[5] On the subject, Close has said, "I was not conscious of making a decision to paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing faces. That occurred to me twenty years after the fact when I looked at why I was still painting portraits, why that still had urgency for me. I began to realize that it has sustained me for so long because I have difficulty in recognizing faces."^[6]

Although his later paintings differ in method from his earlier canvases, the preliminary process remains the same. To create his grid work copies of photos, Close puts a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copies cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color (usually consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the cell a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense from a distance. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first picture with this method was Big Self Portrait, a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5 in by 83.5 in (2.73 m by 2.12 m) canvas, made in over four months in 1968, and acquired by the Walker Art Center in 1969. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted as saying that he used such diluted paint in the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single tube of mars black acrylic.

Later work has branched into non-rectangular grids, topographic map style regions of similar colors, CMYK color grid work, and using larger grids to make the cell by cell nature of his work obvious even in small reproductions. The Big Self Portrait is so finely done that even a full page reproduction in an art book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.

Close has also continued to explore difficult photographic processes such as daguerreotype in collaboration with Jerry Spagnoli and sophisticated modular/cell-based forms such as tapestry. Close's photogravure portrait of artist Robert Rauschenberg, “Robert” (1998), appeared in a 2009 exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, featuring prints from Universal Limited Art Editions.^[7] Close's wall-size tapestry portraits, in which each image is composed of thousands of combinations of woven colored thread, depict subjects including Kate Moss, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Lucas Samaras, Philip Glass, and Close himself.^[8] They are produced in collaboration with Donald Farnsworth of Magnolia Editions in Oakland, CA.^[9]

In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[10]

Close currently lives and paints in Bridgehampton, New York. He has been represented by The Pace Gallery, in New York since 1977.^[11]

Close appeared on The Colbert Report on August 12, 2010, where he admitted he watches the show every night.

Christopher Finch wrote a biography, Chuck Close: Life, which was published in 2010, a sequel of sorts to Finch’s 2007 book, Chuck Close: Work, a career-spanning monograph.^[12]

"The Event"[link]

On December 7, 1988, Close felt a strange pain in his chest. That day he was at a ceremony honoring local artists in New York City and was waiting to be called to the podium to present an award. Close delivered his speech and then made his way across the street to Beth Israel Medical Center where he suffered a seizure which left him paralyzed from the neck down. The cause was diagnosed as a spinal artery collapse.^[13] Close called that day "The Event". For months, Close was in rehab strengthening his muscles with physical therapy; he soon had slight movement in his arms and could walk, yet only for a few steps. He has relied on a wheelchair since.

However, Close continued to paint with a brush strapped onto his wrist with tape, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created by an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Although the paralysis restricted his ability to paint as meticulously as before, Close had, in a sense, placed artificial restrictions upon his hyperrealist approach well before the injury. That is, he adopted materials and techniques that did not lend themselves well to achieving a photorealistic effect. Small bits of irregular paper or inked fingerprints were used as media to achieve astoundingly realistic and interesting results. Close proved able to create his desired effects even with the most difficult of materials to control. He spoke candidly about the impact disability had on his life and work in the book Chronicles of Courage: Very Special Artists written by Jean Kennedy Smith and George Plimpton and published by Random House.^[14]

See also[link]

• List of Chuck Close subjects
• The Portrait Now

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Bartman, William; Joanne Kesten (editors) (1997). The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his subjects. A.R.T. Press, New York. ISBN 0-923183-18-3. 
• Greenberg, Jan; Sandra Jordan (1998). Chuck Close Up Close. DK Publishing. ISBN 0-7894-2658-7. 
• Wei, Lilly (essay) (2009). Chuck Close: Selected Paintings and Tapestries 2005-2009. PaceWildenstein. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/978-1-930743-99-8|978-1-930743-99-8]]. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Chuck Close

• The Pace Gallery
• Watch Chuck Close and Robert Storr in Conversation on BUniverse
• Watch/listen to full episode of KCRW's "Art Talk: Close-Up on Chuck Close"
• "Close Encounters," artNet Magazine, 8-05-08.
• "Close Call" By Jon Marmor
• Chuck Close at the Museum of Modern Art
• Chuck Close at the Walker Art Center
• Images of Chuck Close tapestries
• Chuck Close: Process & Collaboration
• Habits of Disbelief: Chuck Close by John Haber
• Book Review of "A Couple Ways of Doing Something"
• Images of Chuck Close Prints
• Antiques Roadshow segment with a Chuck Close abstract painting

Interviews[link]

• Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Interview, 1987
• Finding the Color World: Interview with Chuck Close, 2002
• Chuck Close and Bob Holman in Conversation, 2006
• One hour interview with Charlie Rose at Google Video (March 15, 2007)
• Chuck Close Q&A with Men's Vogue
• Chuck Close with Phong Bui The Brooklyn Rail, June 2008
• URBAN-MUSE.COM interview with Chuck Close at his NYC Studio (Young Artists and 9/11)
• "Close-Up," Chuck Close interviewed by biographer Christopher Finch in Guernica Magazine