The daguerreotype is a one-of-a-kind, highly detailed photographic image on a polished copper plate coated with silver. It was the first popular photographic medium and enjoyed great success when it was introduced in 1839. Although primarily a nineteenth-century medium involving a painstaking process, daguerreotypy is still practiced today by an active -- and avid -- group of devotees. Watch a video about the process.

The calotype process was created by William Henry Fox Talbot, and introduced in 1840. His invention, which shortened exposure times and allowed multiple prints to be made from a single negative, became the basis for photography as it is practiced today.
 Read Talbot’s biography and explore some of his photographs in the Getty Museum's collection.

Scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute need your old photographic papers, film, negatives, and prints to build an archive of knowledge and materials from the era of classical photography. This archive will become a reference collection for future generations of photo conservators and scholars, and will allow them to research and authenticate the treasures of the classical photography era. Learn more about what you can do.

William Henry Fox Talbot was still experimenting with the negative/positive process in photography when he made this negative of a painting on glass. Examine William Henry Fox Talbot’s The Head of Christ from a Painting on Glass, 1839.

Browse a selection of albumen prints in the Getty Museum’s collection.

Learn how to view, analyze, and write about photographs in this curriculum.