This comes from a Daguerreotype taken by Daguerre himself in 1838. It is probably a picture of a man (on the left) getting his shoe shined by a shoe shiner (in the right, less distinct). The image would have been exposed for about ten minutes, so the crowds wandering around on the street, carriages, etc. would be visible in this photograph as nothing other than a virtually undetectable fog as the occasional photon-chemical interaction would occur.
To see the original photograph, of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, and learn more about this photo, visit The Hokumburg Goombah.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
I remember studying this image as part of an art history class back in university — looking at the entire thing is actually rather surreal, because you can see this big, seemingly empty street, with just two people (one of whom has invisible hands) and nothing else.
Entire image is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boulevard_du_Temple_by_Daguerre.jpg
The lecture was surrounding the idea of photographs as being more “true” than art; obviously photographic imaging can miss things that the eye can see (or sometimes pick up things that the eye doesn’t see). Made for some interesting discussions about the nature of “truth” and “proof” in photographs.