Mormon Daguerre-o-type

A daguerreotype is an early form of photography. A daguerreotype is a silvered copper plate which was fumed with halogens, especially iodine, and then exposed to a reflection of light, then developed in hot fumes of mercury, and stopped by a bath of salts, before being gilded (toned with gold).

Astonishingly, a daguerreotype is a permanent mirror and therefore a mirror image—it is a reflection in a mirror, which was made permanent on the surface by halogens exposed to the reflection of light, reacting with the highly-polished silver surface to capture a silver chloride image strengthened by gold chloride.

Description of a daguerreotype © 2022-2024 John Hajicek.

John Hajicek is a church historian of Mormon material culture.  He specializes in the Joseph Smith family, Mormon origins in New England and New York, Mormon settlements in the Midwest, and Mormon prophetic succession.  For more than 44 years, Hajicek has acquired, conserved, curated, and cataloged 250,000 items in the fields of rare Mormon books, Joseph Smith papers, museum-quality church artifacts, early portrait paintings, historic photographs, and vernacular Latter Day Saint photographs.  He is also comments on Mormon current affairs related to the history of economic thought, agricultural economics, nonprofit rents paid by nonprofit businesses, contract law, copyright law, corporations sole, and constitutional liberties including religious liberty.