Getty Museum

Barn in Hart's Location, New Hampshire

Creator

American Daguerreotypist · 1793–1881

Photographer

In 1840, after witnessing a series of lectures and a demonstration of the daguerreotype process given by a licensed representative for Jacque-Louis Mandé Daguerre's process and equipment, Boston dentist Samuel Americanus Bemis bought a top-of-the-line daguerreotype camera for fifty-one dollars and twelve daguerreotype plates at two dollars each.. Four days after his purchase, Bemis made his first

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Date: about 1840
Medium: Daguerreotype
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: cff215e7-91a6-41f4-a8ac-927077164855

From the Getty Museum record

In this view in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Mount Tom, one of the eastern mountains north of Crawford Notch, is visible in the distance, its peak echoing the roof of the plain barn in the center of the image. The photographer Samuel Bemis had come for a holiday visit in the summer, no doubt eager to experiment with his newly purchased daguerreotype camera outfit. One of the earliest surviving outdoor scenes of North America, its foreboding sky actually results from unintentional solarization of the daguerreotype plate, which caused the photograph's highlights to begin to "reverse" into a negative image.

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