Girault de Prangey's Multiple Exposure Daguerreotypes

After three years traveling throughout the Eastern Mediterranean (1842–45), Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey returned to France with more than one thousand daguerreotype—unique photographic images on silvered copper plates. Among these pictures are the earliest surviving photographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Jerusalem. Girault’s innovations were both technical and practical. Working with plates that were larger than the standard size at the time, he created a process to expose more than one image on a single plate, which he then cut down, carefully labeled, and stored in custom-built wood boxes, essentially creating the world's first photographic archive.

Featuring
Grant B. Romer, Founding Director, Academy of Archaic Imaging, Rochester, New York.

Produced in association with the exhibition Monumental Journey: The Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey, on view at The Met Fifth Avenue, January 30 through May12, 2019.

https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/monumental-journey-girault-de-prangey-daguerreotypes

Producer: Melissa Bell
Director of Photography: Jonathan Chekroune
Editor: Alex Guns
Additional Camera: Alex Guns
Production Coordinator: Bryan Martin
Production Assistant: Courtney Stith
Original Music: Austin Fisher

Images courtesy of:
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Photography © National Collection of Qatar