[Painted portrait, unknown sitter]

Whitehurst was a successful and prolific daguerreotypist, largely in the South, establishing studios in Baltimore and Washington, through Virginia and into North Carolina. This work is a hand-colored daguerreotype of a painted portrait, and as such it tells a part of the story of photography’s role in the life of images: though each daguerreotype was one of a kind, the medium was capable of making accurate copies of a preexisting image so that many people could share it, just as today one might make copies of an ancestor’s photograph for many members of the family. With its presentation in a brass mat and leather case, just as one would see on a true daguerreotype portrait, and with the touches of reddish pigment enlivening the face, this image is momentarily convincing as a photographic image of a living person. In a postmodern age of appropriation—images of images—this work prompts us to question the nature of representation.