Nathaniel Hawthorne
[Writer, b. 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, d. 1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire.]
[I wish] there was something in the intellectual world analogous to the Daguerreotype... in the visible—something which should print off our deepest, subtlest, and delicatest thoughts and feelings, as minutely and accurately as the above-mentioned instrument paints the various aspects of Nature.
(1839)
While we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, [the daguerreotype] actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would even venture upon, even if he could detect it.
I was really a little startled at recognizing myself apart from myself.
(On seeing his first photographic portrait.)
Most of my [daguerreotype] likenesses do look unamiable; but the very sufficient reason, I fancy, is, because the originals are so. There is a wonderful insight in heaven's broad and simple sunshine. While we give it credit for only for depicting the merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even if he could detect it.
(1851)