Daguerre Photographs Paris, 1838

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) was an artist and chemist who invented the Daguerreotype process of photography. His most famous photograph, taken in 1838 or 1839, shows a Paris street. While the street was full of people, exposure time was so long (over ten minutes) that the street appears empty except for a man having his boots polished by a young boy. “Boulevard du Temple” is the first photograph to show a person.

I

The wind arcs

down the column of his spine

from where

the collar stands up stiff, the hair

rises on the back of his neck.

His nails are dirty, the cuticles bleeding.

From his perch on the hill he sees

storefronts, figures

heaving in and out of sight, scuttling

through the dust and the stone—

cockroaches pinned by daylight.

Standing, he adjusts the lens.

A boy polishes

an old man’s shoes, his quick hand

thickened by distance, arm raised as if

staving off a blow.

Daguerre aims the camera at the dirty street,

his lens the eye without vision, the choice

which cannot choose, blind finger of light,

salvation of time.

II

Even the houses look like ghosts now.

The darkroom reveals

an absence, the expected

disappointment:

noon, but the street is empty.

Windows and doors wide as question marks,

the city distilled and freed of people—

but wait,

he tightens his silver-stained fingers—

there in the corner, two figures are safe,

the preserved perpetual husk of what is gone.

The old man stoops, the boy

polishes his shoes, quick hand thickened

by distance, arm raised as if

staving off a blow.