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Traditional arts and crafts in extinction Installation of contemporary daguerreotypes This work was funded by a grant from the Simon Guggenheim Foundation that I was awarded in 2004. These are 14 daguerreotypes of 9 x 12 cm. mounted on lighted wooden artifacts. These are portraits of craftsmen that still practice trades that are on the verge of extinction due to new technologies and new ways of marketing. It has been a long process of losing old knowledge and traditional tools. These formerly common activities are increasingly disappearing. Some of these characters are the only remaining practitioners of their trade, like the photographer of the plaza or the milkman, who have been driven out of business by the growing demand or the death of the tradesmen themselves.
Are these portraits a response to my own disappearance as a daguerreotype photographer? Is using this old technique a symbol of the struggle for an almost extinguished photographic tradition? I ask myself those questions. I must state that this is not about confronting the new technologies, but about accepting them. It is about integrating an old process to the modern ways of photographic expression.
These portraits feature men that posses techniques that are known to few and are directed to a market that has almost vanished. Each daguerreotype is unique and cannot be copied many times except when there is a negative or a digital back up; each one is homage to a disappearing breed. These photos are not a cold record of a curiosity but the portraits of living men, who are proud of their trade, even if they are not aware of the historical importance of their work, we can be. I need to participate of their time and space.
This work is not complete as an anthropological record or even pretended it to be. My intention never was to pry into the lives of these people, but to experience and to witness the passing of time, their struggle for survival and the energy they transmitted to me. Carlos Darío Albornoz May 2005
Daguerreotypes | Installation of contemporary daguerreotypes |