Untitled (Portrait of a Seated Girl Holding Flowers)

The daguerreotype was the first commercially viable photograph, becoming a sensation in Western Europe and the United States during the 1840s. For the first time, members of the middle class could afford lifelike portraits of themselves and of loved ones. But this new audience was sometimes uncomfortable with the unrealistic gray color of the photographic plate, prompting the addition of pigments that suggested natural flesh tones. Alexis Gouin, an early photographer who was trained as a painter, was renowned in Paris for his expertly hand-colored daguerreotypes. In 1855, an admirer praised Gouin's work in the photography journal La Lumière, proclaiming, "His bodies are alive, their flesh throbs before our eyes. Nature has been captured on the spot and translated into poetry through the talent of a painter."

2012 Flesh and Bone: Photography and the Body Portland Art Museum