Popularity
Work demands have kept me away from daguerreotypes for a few days except for regularly checking into ContemporaryDaguerreotypes and DagForum. I never miss a daily dose there. :) While I was waiting for a project to compile the other day though I came across a new (to me) tool from the cool folks at Google called GoogleTrends. This amazing little statistical research device lets you compare the relative frequency/poularity of various google search terms over time.
True to my obsession I typed in the term daguerreotype and was able to see a graph of how popular the search term daguerreotype was from 2004 to 2008. If you look at the graph you will see that searches were sporadic in 2004 and 2005 but that interest became steadier after the October 2005 Daguerreian Society show of contemporary daguerreotypists. There is a somewhat declining trend of interest from that point forward with various peaks corresponding to events such as the sale of an antique daguerreotype of John Brown. There are also lists of cities in rank order showing use of the search term. I was a little confused about why Salt Lake City was a hotbed of daguerreotype interest until I realized that a purported image of the Mormon church founder Joseph Smith had created some controversy. Fascinating (to me anyway).
Feeling in a competitive mood, I did a comparison search on daguerreotype, tintype, calotype and ambrotype (graph) and learned that searches about daguerreotypes far outstrip the other early processes. I’m not really sure what that means, but it makes me happy in some sort of obscure fashion.
Which leads to a question – are daguerreotypes growing in popularity? Do enough people understand/know about them that artists are able to sell their work from time to time? I’m a long way from being a selling artist, but it is something I aspire to. What is your experience?
Daguerreotype Process | andy | June 25, 2008
antique, artist, daguerreotype, google, historical, popularity, sales
The BBC aired a photography documentary recently in the UK and it generated a great deal of traffic to my site. As I’ve said before, it certainly seems like there are more people making dags then ever before (since the 19th century anyway).
Those are some fascinating graphs! I did one of my own comparing daguerreotype to collodion:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=daguerreotype%2C+collodion&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
I’m sure there are far more people working with collodion (wet plate, ambrotype, tintype, etc) than with the daguerreotype but still there is more interest in the daguerreotype! Here’s another interesting graph comparing the daguerreotype with film photography:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=daguerreotype%2Cfilm+photography&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1
You can see the downward trend of film but the daguerreotype is holding steady. Perhaps one day their paths will cross…