Reviews for The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre

The average rating for The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-02 00:00:00 Jason Keesecker "'I consider myself a scientist as much as an artist,....' Louis said, placing the phials beside each other. 'And this is science? Asking strangers to pose naked for you?' 'I'm a student of light,' Louis said. 'And a poet.' 'No, I leave that to Charles Baudelaire. My job is to capture things before they disappear.' 'Am I going to disappear, Monsieur Daguerre?' 'No, I meant---capture things in their essence.' Daguerreotype of Louis Daguerre. Louis Daguerre is a lonely, brilliant man. He has never married, and as this tale unfolds, we will discover that he did fall in love once at the age of fourteen and never fell out of that love. He sustained it, remained steadfastly loyal to it, and never looked for it elsewhere. He checked the box for unrequited love and spent a lifetime trying to become famous so that the woman he lost would know he was worth losing. He was always a strange lad. "I see things others don't; I always have." It is hard to be someone who sees a miracle in the mundane or beauty in the grotesque or a revelation in a particle of dust caught in a beam of sunlight. A conversation with Daguerre is a non-linear experience. "We're having a conversation that moves from leeches to marriage. That's what I've missed about you. The fact that everything is linked to everything else---love to insects, dirt to heaven." I don't know when I first realized that I was seeing things that other people didn't see. I'm not talking about...I see dead people, nothing that strange. Everything has always been more of a source of mystery to me than it was to other people. I see connections in novels that other people don't see. I don't know how many times I've had people say on one of my review threads that I saw much more in a book than they did. Some of that is due to how old I am. I've logged a lot more hours of reading than most people on GR, so there are a lot more points of reference in my head. I do have to accept that I'm always going to see things differently. Fortunately, I'm not a crazy genius like Daguerre or I would have, over the years, become more and more removed from "reality." A daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe. The daguerreotype of photography is named after him, of course. With the help of another scientist, he discovered how to chemically etch images into plate. A revelation! I think one of the things that I really like about Daguerre the most is that he was a scientist with the heart of a poet. Speaking of poets, Charles Baudelaire shows up a few times in the novel as a friend of Daguerre, but if you are a Baudelaire fan, don't expect any insights into his character. If this were a movie, the actor playing Baudelaire would be demanding more lines. Daguerre is beginning to have health issues, and a lot of that has to do with the poisonous chemicals he uses to make his photographs. "This metal that would not yield to form, that resisted the clutch of the human hand and yet was absorbed by the skin upon touching. A gift from the cinnabar mines of Spain. A metallic sonnet, a love letter written by God and veined through the earth for millennia, fissured through slate and sandstone, waiting for its highest calling." He has absorbed too much mercury. He has this growing sense of doom, as if the earth was truly about to stop spinning or explode. Illusions, delusions, prophecy, or just too many chemical wrapped thoughts? With a French revolution destabilizing Paris, he decides that it is now or never if he wishes to see his life's love one more time. I was really taken with the unexpected poignancy of the novel. Dominic Smith managed to convinced me that a 14 year old's love for a another was not just an infatuation, but actually true love. Nudes of course were very popular. One of Daguerre's bucket list items was to photograph a beautiful nude woman. Daguerre not only changed photography, but he was also the inventor of dioramas. He was a gifted canvas painter and also used those skills to bring theatre backdrops to life. His name is one of the 72 great French people inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. I've contemplated many daguerreotypes. They were very popular during the Civil War. Almost every soldier paid to have himself immortalized in uniform. I would pay good money to see a picture of my ancestor Thomas Newton Keeten in his Confederate uniform, but if one ever existed it seems to be lost to history. The daguerreotype was the original selfie. Self-obsession is not a new concept, though I do feel that self love may have reached an all time high if the pictures of my friends I see in the Facebook feed every day is any indication. Narcissus doesn't stare at himself in a pool of water anymore, but rather into the lense of his phone camera. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit I also have a Facebook blogger page at:

Review # 2 was written on 2008-09-22 00:00:00 Sherrie Vangaalen I'll admit it. I cried. To write some back-cover copy, "This is a finely wrought tale of love lost, found, and then lost again." And then misplaced somewhere in that damn garage. No, seriously, this is quite a lovely book. I chose The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre because I thought it was going to be the portrayal of an artist (the inventor of photography, Louis Daguerre) going mad, wandering Paris and experiencing hallucinations. Something I hope to do someday. I was mistaken. The "mercury visions" in the title are primarily referring to the surreal quality of the Daguerreotypes, the photo imprinting method Daguerre invented, which use mercury as a fixative. Daguerre does in fact go a bit mad from mercury poisoning, but he doesn't hallucinate so much as fall into a state of mild to moderate dementia. Even so, I wasn't disappointed. This is a well-crafted book. An example Daguerreotype: The story takes place in the first half of the 19th century in France. Smith manages to conjure this period convincingly and imbues it with a rich atmosphere. Baudelaire plays a supporting role, and I even believed that characterization. Other than exploring love'specifically what happens when love is abandoned for needs that are more practical'the primary subject matter of the book is the place of photography in the world of art, and art's value in general. For Daguerre, photography was a way to achieve fame and even immortality for both himself and for moments in time. Many artists consider art to be their route to immortality. And yet ironically, believing the world is about to end, Daguerre is driven to capture a final list of photographs in order to stash them in the crypts under Paris to preserve them after the Apocalypse. (As you might suspect, the Apocalypse is cancelled due to lack of advertising.) Who thinks of Daguerreotypes now? The implication is that art is a rather inadequate means to immortality. There is no way to achieve immortality when life is so fleeting. Instead, we're better off pursuing love because that at least might fulfill us during our existence. A rather romantic notion, certainly. However, Smith indicates several times that Daguerre would not have achieved the success and fame that he had if he hadn't been scorned early in life by his great love. The implication is that love can actually make us complacent and less successful. We throw ourselves more aggressively into "achievement" perhaps if we fail at love. Some might; I suspect others give up pursuing their goals when they find misery in love. For Daguerre, it was like revenge'look how great I became. You could have had me yet chose not to. I appreciate the mixed messages about love, but one of the clear suggestions in this novel is that choosing financial gain over love is a sure route to life-long emptiness. I can't say that I agree with any one portrayal of love as representative for all'for others love fulfilled can also lead to lifelong misery'but it's believable for the characters portrayed within this work and it's a worthwhile cautionary tale to ponder. The ending is rather tragic and beautiful and unexpected, too. Despite this being the type of book that I don't seek out (realist, historical, and in some ways a love story), I looked forward to picking it up and got lost in it. Recommended.