American photographer Robert Shlaer is a
particular individual with a grand determination to walk and follow his own
intuition. For 20 years he has been investigating the western part of America,
following the tracks of previous explorers carrying his camera all the time. His
main intention was to recapture photographically the very same scenarios that
were once frozen in time by previous photographers several years before.
Shaler
had a particular aim to reinterpret specifically daguerreotypist artists that ventured
these areas in the very beginning of photography, for him the daguerreotype was
the form of commercialization of photography, the most appealing form of
photography but not the most reliable.
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| Robert Shlaer at Beaumont Newhall's home in Santa Fe, 1993 |
“My
first and greatest love remains the landscape,” he says, “so with a process as
given to failure as daguerreotype, it is comforting to know that the subject
will be there tomorrow for another try.” (Coumbia College, 2012.)
Shaler
was so deeply into this field that he took on a process of self-taught, where
he himself had built the equipment needed to handle the toxic chemicals and the
equipment for the development of the plates. The plates had been commissioned
to be customized made by a commercial manufacturer. He projected himself as the
only full time Daguerreotypist in the world, and sold many of his work to
galleries. His major project was that of recreating the lost work of
Daguerreotypist photographer Solomon Nunes Carvalho that at his time in 1853
was commissioned by the explorer John C. Fremont to photography his expedition
in finding a route for the transcontinental that was viable.
 |
| Wetterhorn Peak, Colo., from the Forks of the Cimarron River, July 1996. |
Coumbia College, 2012. Robert Shlaer ’63 Recreates History Through Daguerreotype. [online]
Available
at: < http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/fall12/alumni_profiles2>
[Accessed 25 December 2013].
[Accessed 25 December 2013].
