Daguerreotype to Digital

The State Archives of Florida collects, preserves and makes available for research many significant records of our state’s history. As we prepare to celebrate the semiquincentennial of the United States of America in 2026, we also celebrate all of the citizens, innovators, and artists who have participated in the life of this nation over the last 250 years. Those people who have left records are the reason archives exist, from the Founding Fathers and the treasured civic records of our republic to all the keepers of diaries and photo albums. One of the most impactful events in American history is invention of photography in 1839; no one could have predicted its effects on the way we think about the world. Before 1839, paintings, engravings and silhouettes represented the likenesses of loved ones or scenes of nature, but these were not true to life. Photography captured reality exactly as it appears.

While the first photographic process was invented in France, it quickly crossed the Atlantic and became popular throughout the United States. In the subsequent decades, Americans participated in an international community of inventors striving to perfect this new technology. Photography is both a scientific process and an artform; early methods had many shortcomings. Since the first photographs, there have been many technologies for taking photos and for developing or printing them. This history is not a single story of progression; many of these technologies can be used together. The Florida Photographic Collection at the State Archives of Florida contains examples of most photographic processes, as well as many common methods of printing.

As cameras became more portable, photographers left their studios and headed into the field to photograph history as it happened. Families began recording moments in their lives – picnics, days at the beach or vacations – to share them with friends. However, new was not always better, and nuances of quality, toning, or ease of printing were factors in considering what kind of photo to take. The invention of a new photographic process and its popularity were sometimes decades apart. This exhibit presents photos from the State Archives’ collections in the general order of when the technique was popular.

Photographic Processes