Finally, a biographical novel about Daguerre!
The Italian historian Ennery Taramelli has just produced the first biographical novel of the great Daguerre. Today the artist and inventor is unfairly maligned by many French people, who wrongly believe that he manipulated Nicéphore Niepce into letting him, Daguerre, lay false claim to the invention of photography.
The author spent over ten years visiting the same places where Louis Mandé Daguerre lived, in Paris, in Thiers, in Bry-sur-Marne. She recreates not only the excitement of the early 19th century, a time of major scientific discoveries, including the invention of photography, but also the irresistible attraction to the esoteric and alchemical felt by Daguerre and so many writers of the time, including Balzac, Victor Hugo and Gérard de Nerval.
Through a host of colorful characters, we follow the complex plots and conflicts among scholars that preceded Arago’s unveiling of the daguerreotype at the Académie des Sciences in 1839.
Le Roman de Daguerre
L’artiste qui fixa le temps
by Ennery Taramelli
Contrejour
368 pages,
22 euros
