AustLit

Dedication: For Mikaila and Gemma

Author's note: Although this is a work of fiction and the characters are inventions, I have borrowed details from the biographies of Charles Baudelaire, the poet, and Louis Daguerre, an early inventor of photography. Wherever possible (and expedient to the story) I have tried to capture the flavour of the real Daguerre's life and the historical context in which he achieved his fame. There are several books the were invaluable for aiding this process : L.J.M. Daguerre : The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype (1968) by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim; An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Various Processes of the Daguerreotype and the Diorama (1839), by Lois-Jacques-Mande Daguerre; Dickens's Dictionary of Paris (1890), by Charles Dickens; The Poem of Hashish (1895), by Charles Baudelaire; and The Hashish Club (1971), by Theophile Gautier. I also found many of the articles and resources on the Daguerreian Society's website (www.deguerre.org) to be useful.

Mercury vapors were used extensively by Louis Daguerre during his photographic career. His basic process was to expose a sensitized plate inside camera obscura, take the plate into a darkened room, then pass it back and forth above a heated mercury bath. Millions of tiny mercury drops settled over the image, fixing it permanently. The presence of mercury gives metal-plate daguerreotypes their luster and minute level of detail, but it can also lend them a ghostly. holographic appearance. The image can appear to change based on the eye-level and perspective of the viewer. in later years, as Daguerre tried to minimise exposure times in an attempt to capture faster paced movement (such as galloping horses and birds in flight) he experimented with increasingly deadly substances - cyanide of mercury, nitric acid, and gold chloride. Daguerre, who suffered from various physical complaints until he died of a heart attack in 1851, was probably unaware of how harmful such substances were.

The image on the original front jacket, known as The Vampire was taken by Chalres Negre circa 1853 using a paper negative process. The view is from the balustrade above the Grande Galerie of Notre Dame, looking north. The man in the photograph is Henri Le Secq, an artist friend of the photographer. Negre, like so many of his painter contemporaries, was inspired by Daguerre's process and began experimenting with various forms of photography, primarily as an aid to painting.