Modern-day Daguerreotypes

Jerry Spagnoli has resurrected one of the oldest mediums in photography and adapted it to suit a contemporary clientele. Now museums are starting to pay attention

- Kathrine Anker

Like many other photographers in New York, Jerry Spagnoli has a studio and earns a living shooting portraits and commissioned projects. But unlike most photographers, his pictures are daguerreotypes.

Just like the first photographers did in the mid-1800s, Spagnoli produces ethereal, holographic images on silver-coated copper plates, using techniques he has developed to optimise the process for the 21st century.

That makes him a member of a rather exclusive club. The Antiquarian Avant-Garde counts photographer Sally Mann and artist Chuck Close as members, and they all use photographic methods that many people consider to be relics of the past such as tin types, collodion prints and carbon dichromates.

“We don’t have meetings, it’s not like that. That would be very 19th century. We’d have endless banquets and then fist fights would break out,” laughs Spagnoli. “But the thing about all these processes is you take on a very substantial challenge. I think everyone who works with this appreciates everyone else who does, because we understand the difficulties. It’s quite a crazy thing to do.”

It appears that museums and galleries are starting to appreciate it too. “There was a lot of resistance early on among the museum people,” says Spagnoli. “I think a lot of museums saw these processes as just hobbyist things for people who have an obsession with chemistry. They didn’t take them seriously as art. Now I’ve noticed that there’s a new generation of curators coming in who are less inclined to think in that way, more inclined to see the potentials.”