Notes
2 In 1840 Nathaniel Hawthorne could not yet be labeled a celebrity and was not one of those famous men who were personally invited by Gouraud to one of his private sessions. But one can be sure that he attended one of the public lectures, as any Bostonian of that time did. BACK 3 Seymour L. Gross (ed.), Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables. An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Essays in Criticism. New York/London 1967, 176. Further page references will be given in parenthesis behind the quoted passages. The complete text of Hawthorne's novel can be found here: eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/sg.html. BACK 4 Cited in Carol Shloss, In Visible Light: Photography and the American Writer, 1840-1940. New York 1987, 42. BACK 5 Cf. Shloss, p. 32. Parenthetical remarks are mine. For a more detailed account of the technical side of daguerreotyping, see Newhall, Geschichte der Photographie, pp. 18. BACK 6 Cf. Cathy N. Davidson, "Photographs of the Dead: Sherman, Daguerre, Hawthorne". In: South Atlantic Quarterly 89:4 (Fall 1990), 667-701, here 681. BACK 7 Alfred H. Marks, "Hawthorne's Daguerreotypist: Scientist, Artist, Reformer". In: Gross, 330-347, here 333. BACK 8 Quoted in Shloss, In Visible Light, 36. BACK 9 New York Observer, 20. April 1839, quoted in Marks, "Hawthorne's Daguerreotypist", 332. BACK 10 New York Observer, 20. April 1839, quoted in Davidson, "Photographs of the Dead", 684. The Daguerreian Society has an excellent Webpage (www.daguerre.org/home.html) where one can not only find galleries of beautiful daguerreotypes but also a host of contemporary articles and essays which concern themselve with the new and fascinating medium. The ambivalence surrounding the new representational device (demonic machine vs. pencil of nature) pervades almost all of them. Take a look at: www.daguerre.org/resource/first2.html or www.daguerre.org/resource/anec.html. BACK 11 Davidson, "Photographs of the Dead", 675. BACK 12 Shloss, In Visible Light, 32. BACK 13 "Photographs of the Dead", 685. BACK 14 Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Sights from a Steeple", Twice-Told Tales. London /New York 1964, 139. Available online at: eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/steeple.html. BACK 15 Hawthorne, ibid. (emphasis mine) BACK 16 Marks, 340. BACK 17 Marks, 336. BACK 18 This is expressed by the formula "temporary suspension of disbelief" (the source of which I cannot trace), which describes an essential psychological mechanism involved in the reception of art. For a work of art to function, the recipient has, at least for the time being, to believe in the represented events. BACK 19 Throughout the novel Holgrave is called an artist. But why? He is a rather unsuccessful writer and not much is said about his literary works. Can his daguerreotyping be called art? If he has no influence upon the outcome of his pictures, where is his creativity located? I would suggest that the constant referral to Holgrave as an artist is supposed to further undermine his disavowal of his own role in the process. He is an artist simply because he is engaged in a representational profession ? thereby bending reality to his own needs. BACK 20 "Photographs of the Dead", 689. BACK |