Jerry Spagnoli

Book excerpt: Jerry Spagnoli is one of the world's foremost daguerreotypists and this book brings together the last decade of his work, including selections from his Western Landscape and Anatomical Studies series and a comprehensive presentation of his documentary series The Last Great Daguerreian Survey of the Twentieth Century. Adopting a narrative form which unifies what at first appears to be disparate subjects, the viewer is led on a journey through a world distilled through the idiosyncratic perspective of the daguerreotype, a world which is both familiar and uncanny. Daguerreotypes have long been noted for their accuracy and veracity. In the hands of Spagnoli the technical limitations of the medium, the long exposures, odd tonalities, shallow focus and the necessity of large cumbersome cameras, are exploited to produce images which are at once completely objective yet intensely personal.