Daguerreotypy in Spain a decade after its presentation in Paris: A hemerographic analysis of 1849

Abstract

This article examines the degree of implementation and reception of daguerreotypy in Spain in 1849, ten years after the public presentation of Louis Daguerre’s invention in Paris. The study is based on a hemerographic analysis conducted using the Digital Newspaper Archive of the National Library of Spain, through a keyword search for daguerreotype chronologically limited to that year. This process resulted in a stable corpus of 220 advertisements and news items drawn from twenty press titles. The research combines quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to identify the main fields of daguerreotype use, its geographical distribution, the profiles of active practitioners, and the cultural discourses associated with this new technique. The findings reveal a clear concentration of daguerreotypic activity in Madrid, followed by Barcelona, Valencia, and Palma de Mallorca, as well as the predominance of commercial advertisements related to photographic portraiture. This evidence confirms the consolidation of daguerreotypy as a professional  practice within Spain’s urban context. A total of seventeen daguerreotypists active in 1849 are identified, allowing for an expanded and more nuanced understanding of the first generation of photographers in Spain. In addition to this productive dimension, the analysis of press content highlights the incorporation of the daguerreotype into the cultural imagination as a metaphor for truthfulness, accuracy, and faithful reproduction of reality, while also documenting relevant technical debates concerning photography on paper and image reproducibility. Overall, the study demonstrates that by 1849 daguerreotypy was fully integrated into Spanish society, not only as a technical procedure but also as a cultural phenomenon and a subject of communication within the periodical press