Between 1846 and 1848, Charles Guillain, assisted by Vernet, the helmsman of the frigate “Le Ducouëdic,” took a series of daguerreotypes while on an expedition along the coast of east Africa. The daguerreotypes are portraits of African and Arabic people of all ages and gender. They were taken during a remarkable period of intense experiment in the development of photography that started on January 1839 when the physicist François Arago, during a session of the Académie des Sciences de Paris, presented a new process developed by the French inventor Jacques Daguerre. The daguerreotypes were to modify people’s perception of the world and its representations, both in artistic and scientific fields.

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