Curious Objects: Camera Ready - The Magazine Antiques

In this Curious Objects episode, host Benjamin Miller is joined by New York Times photo editor and writer, Anika Burgess to discuss a very significant daguerreotype and the history of photography.

Anika Burgess joined the New York Times in 2018 to work on the archival storytelling initiative Past Tense, which produced stories that centered on photos from the Times’s photo archive.

A series of images showing the daguerreotype, circa 1852, that Anika Burgess bought at an auction. The identities of the subjects and the photographer have been lost to history, but the image itself is still vibrant. The gold, highlighting their jewelry, would have been painted onto the finished image by the daguerreotypist or someone in their studio.

Burgess studied history and law at the University of Sydney and is the author of the book Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History.