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THE POWER OF THE TAKING

Another exceptional energy radiating from daguerreotypes of greatest beauty amplifies both power of the presence and power of the moment. This third type of energy might be called the power of the taking.

Power of the taking is evident when a certain image expresses the lifetime achievement of a daguerreian artist. His vision of beauty is contained seedlike within one image which is not perhaps his greatest achievement, but which contains elements of his greatest achievements.

SIXTH PLATE DAGUERREOTYPE
Subject: Maria Lambert, cousin of T. W. Hendee
Artist: JOSIAH J. HAWES. 19 Tremont Row, Boston c1865




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JOSIAH JOHNSON HAWES (1808-1901)
One of the most innovative and skilled artists to utilize the medium of the daguerreotype, Hawes began as a miniature portrait painter in Boston about 1838-39.

In 1840 he learned the daguerreian process from the visiting Frenchman Francois Gouraud. Hawes opened his first gallery in 1841. He formed his famous partnership with Albert S. Southworth in 1843. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s Southworth and Hawes photographed many famous people and specialized in relaxed portraits of children.

Hawes continued taking daguerreotypes after dissolving his partnership with Southworth. After 1864, the street # of his gallery at 5 ½ changed to 19 Tremont Row, Boston. Late in his life, Hawes once again revived the daguerreotype process. He was a true master of photography.

After dissolving his famous partnership with Albert Sands Southworth, Hawes continued in business attempting new perfection, techniques, and adaptations of daguerreian art. For over twenty years Hawes had excelled at portraits of children. He had often experimented with vignetting. This image of Maria Lambert incorporates such hallmarks of his work ripened into mature artistic expression.

The style of this portrait also bears similarity to a famous idealized vignetted bust portrait of Albert Southworth, probably also taken by Hawes at approximately the same time. Both images may represent "an attempt to create an ideal type through such classicizing motifs as the lilt of the head, the distantly gazing eyes, and the bust terminating at mid-chest and upper arms".


[Robert Sobieszek and Odette Appell with the research of Charles Moore. The Daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes, (New York: Dover Publications, 1980), 16.]

THE POWER OF THE TAKING (continued)

Numbers of Southworth & Hawes daguerreotypes survive, but no great body of work exists by which to judge most daguerreian artists. Power of the taking can nevertheless pour from just one image--IF it draws energy from the operator's lifework of past study, diligent practice, and complete mastery of all technological and artistic skills achievable in daguerreian art. Everything must come together in one spectacular burst of exceptional accomplishment.

A superb example of daguerreian art. The aesthetic perfection of this daguerreotype is simply beyond description. The artist has even signed the daguerreotype plate in the lower left corner as an artist might sign a great painting. This Rembrandt of photographers not only achieved artistic perfection in the daguerreian process but has added an exquisite blue and red tinting. The boys stand out in vivid life, frozen in time for as long as the image survives.

"THEIR EXQUISITE PERFECTION TRANSCENDS THE BOUNDS OF SOBER BELIEF."
[A newspaper reporter's description of the first daguerreotype he had ever seen c1839]
QUARTER PLATE DAGUERREOTYPE
Subject: The "Blue Boys"
Artist: R. E. CHURCHILL. Albany, New York c1851


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THE POWER OF THE TAKING (continued)

A few artists left behind a large body of work of varied accomplishment. Some images are merely ordinary. Others achieve power of the presence and power of the moment. One specialized style of portrait from the far-flung Whitehurst Galleries of Virginia has already been considered. No one now knows which images from these galleries are attributable to Whitehurst himself or to any one of his illustrious operators. Power of the taking can soar above all such limitations of attribution. It requires only that a photographer brought all possible achievement into play at the exact moment of the taking of a daguerreotype. Such a result passes beyond any normal accomplishment into the realm of authentic artistic genius.


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WHOLE PLATE DAGUERREOTYPE
Subject: Three children of the Tyler family of Caroline County and Richmond City, Virginia.





Artist: JESSE HARRISON WHITEHURST or one of his operators. Probably Richmond, Virginia c1850
THE POWER OF THE TAKING (continued)

Great daguerreians occasionally projected their power of the taking into daguerreotypes of beauty. Great poets cast similar spells that freeze shadows of beauty into words:

"For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still
are able to endure
and we are so awed because it serenely
disdains
to annihilate us."

Rainer Maria Rilke


Rilke's genius puts a name to at least one glimmer in the unspeakable. Terror ripples through daguerreotypes of great beauty; terror that deepens with the perfection of the human presence reduced / trapped / left behind in the cold, dead silver. We gaze with Rilke's awe into the same archetypal annihilation that ancients named "Medusa".


CONCLUSION

The power of the presence. The power of the moment.
The power of the taking.

Perhaps each particularize an ideal Platonic state of beauty. They crystallize great daguerreotypes out of some flowing liquid absolute. Our human gaze intermittently breaks through an icy surface solidity of such images and threatens to drown our soul in the maelstrom of beauty within.

Or perhaps in a more Aristotelian sense, no transcendent state of beauty extends beyond what can be derived from material embodiment. Beauty only exists when concrete things that are beautiful exist.

Then our world would be immensely impoverished without the daguerreian process, for nothing else can replace the experience of viewing a great daguerreotype held and turned in light.
"When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shall remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

John Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn



FINIS




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