(2014 to ongoing)
Binh Danh’s series of daguerreotypes captures the soul of San Francisco—its sweeping vistas, civic landmarks, and everyday streets—rendered with the luminous, mirror-like detail that only this 19th-century process can achieve. This body of work is many things at once: a love letter to a city that has shaped him; a reverent nod to early photographic pioneers like Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge, who documented San Francisco’s rise as a metropolis; and a quietly urgent act of preservation, freezing a moment in the city’s evolving story—one marked by rapid economic growth, deepening inequality, and the displacement of communities.
For Danh, these images are both personal and political. They bring together his photographic practice and lived experience as he retraces the paths of his youth, bearing witness to a place in flux. In a city where change is constant, these daguerreotypes are still points of reflection—mirrors of memory and time.
The series’s title comes from William Vaughn Moody’s 1901 poem The Daguerreotype, which evokes the fragility and permanence of what is captured in silver and light.
Daguerreotype plate sizes are “full,” “8 x 10,” and “8 x 15” inches.
