John Quincy Adams

Created in March 1843, this daguerreotype is the earliest known photographic portrait of an American president. John Quincy Adams completed his single presidential term in 1829 and was serving as a congressman from Massachusetts when he visited the Washington, D.C., studio of Philip Haas. Intrigued by daguerreotypy, which Haas had described to him as “a chemical process upon mercury, silver, gold and iodine,” Adams noted in his diary, “The operation is performed in half a minute but is yet altogether incomprehensible to me.”