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Jay, Bill, Cyanide and Spirits, Munich: Nazraeli Press, 1991.
Krauss, Rolf H., Die Fotografi e in der Karikatur, Seebruck-am-
Chiemsee, Germany: Heering Verlag, 1978.
Scheid, Uwe, Als Photographieren noch ein Abenteuer war,
Dortmund, Germany: Harenberg Verlag, 1983.
HUMPHREY, SAMUEL DWIGHT
(1823–1883)
When the fi rst issue of The Daguerrean Journal ap-
peared on November 1st 1850, American photographers
experienced their fi rst specialist journal devoted to the
new art, and the world welcomed the fi rst commercially
produced photographic magazine.
The editor and publisher was Samuel Dwight Hum-
phrey, born in Hartland Connecticut, himself a daguerre-
otypist in New York with several years experience, and
already by that time, co-author with M. Finley of the
1849 manual on the process, A System of Photography
Containing an Explicit Detail of the Whole Process of
Daguerreotype. For the third edition of that book, 1851,
Humphrey became publisher as well as co-author. His
other two major books were both self-published—An
American Handbook of the Daguerreotype (1853) and
A Practical Manual of the Collodion Process (1856).
Both ran to several editions throughout the 1850s.
After two years of successful publication, The Da-
guerrean Journal name was changed to Humphrey’s
Journal of the Daguerreotype and Photographic
Arts—usually referred to as Humphrey’s Journal—a
title it retained until 1864.
Throughout his editorship, Humphrey continued
to operate a portrait studio in New York. He became
a founding member of the New York Heliographic
Association in 1851, possibly the fi rst professional
photographic union in the world—which later became
the American Daguerre Association—and remained an
enthusiastic supporter of maintaining fair prices and
high quality. A prolifi c photographer, in 1853, boasted
that he had made sixty-one successful daguerreotypes
in one day.
Renamed Humphrey’s Journal of Photography in
1864 Humphrey’s magazine continued to enjoy success
under the editorship of John Towler.
John Hannavy
HUNGARY
Throughout Hungarian newspapers were reports on
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre’s invention, the da-
guerreotype, scarcely but a few weeks after physician
and astronomer, Francois Dominique Arago’s announce-
ment of it at the French Academy of Sciences.
As early as 2 February 1839 the newspaper “Hasznos
Mulatságok” published an article on Daguerre’s inven-
tion, which “by light and rays refl ects a most accurate
image of objects and preserves the image true to life.”
The same newspaper in its September 4-issue revealed
the “secret of Daguerreian painting”; that is, based on
Arago’s August 19-speech, a paitning which provided
a detailed and clear description of daguerreotype like
production.
In 1839 count Antal Apponyi, the ambassador of
Austria-Hungary to Paris was given a daguerreotype
by Daguerre himself. This photo is currently in the
collection of Országos Müszaki Múzeum (Hungarian
Technical Museum) and unfortunately, the picture can
be seen only in reproduction.
University teacher József Petzvál constructed a high
sensitivity object-glass in 1840 with which he largely
contributed to the decrease of exposure-time. The Vi-
ennese company Voigtländer manufactured a camera
for this lens.
In May 1840 the description of Daguerre’s method
of “creating images” was published, translaed by Jakab
Zimmermann.
The ambitious people in Hungary were producing
daguerreotypes that same year, such as Antal Vállas,
an arithmetic teacher at the university of Pest, who in
August 1840 presented two of his earlier photographs
at a meeting of the Hungarian Society of Siences.
He later took two daguerreotypes on the spot of the
Danube’s bank and of the castle of Buda. Like many of
the photographs from the early period of photography
these daguerreotypes have not survived, and were only
mentioned in newspapers. In June 1841, the fi rst pho-
tographic studio opened in Pest. It belonged to Jakab
Marastoni, who was a painter and daguerreian artist of
Italian origin. According to our current udnerstanding, it
was he who took the only photograph of Lajos Kossuth,
the outstanding politician of Hungary’s 19th century,
during the period when Kossuth was still in Hungary
before being politically exiled. The plate still exists
but the picture has completely deteriorated and only a
reproduction from the 1930s resembles its former state.
In 2002 the Historic Photographic Collection of the
Hungarian National Museum managed to purchase a
daguerreotype which had been photographed by Jakab
Marastoni in 1842. The daguerreotype, depicting a ne-
atly-positioned biedermeier group of eight people, was
in good condition. Being the earlier works of one of the
fi rst masters of Hungarian photography, it represents an
extraordinary value.
After Marastoni a number of Hungarian daguerre-
otype-photographers started to run their own busines-
ses from 1842 onwards. The fi rst ones in Pest were
located in the cultural centre of the country.Amongst
other were Ferenc Tarsch and (N) Khogler (1842),
about whom we know only from newspapers. Lipót
Strelisky, immigrated from Galicia, and opened his