Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented the daguerreotype process in 1839. European and American photographers greeted the process with enthusiasm. Celebrities and political figures were invited to photographers' studios in the hopes of obtaining a likeness for display in their windows and reception areas. The Photographic studio became a museum. By 1850, there were over 70 daguerreotype studios in New York City alone. Popularity of the daguerreotype declined in the late 1850s when a faster and less expensive photographic process, became available. A few contemporary photographers have revived the process.
A negative was not used in the daguerreotype process. The image was captured on a mirror like plate of copper, which had been coated with silver. After exposure to light, the plate was developed over hot mercury until an image appeared.
The clarity of the images was stunning. The final product was the plate itself. They were called "mirrors of truth". In 1839 the journal the Knickerbocker stated: "Their exquisite beauty almost transcends the bounds of sober believe." The popularity of the process was fleeting. As there were no negatives, it was extremely difficult to make a duplicative print. Just as their namesake, a conventional "mirror", the final product was heavy. Also, the process of rendering the image on the plate was extremely toxic. By 1860 alternative methodologies of image making were in vogue.
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Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics in single issues during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form. Watchmen originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring superhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics. As Moore's proposed story would have left many of the characters unusable for future stories, managing editor Dick Giordano convinced the writer to create original characters instead.
Moore used the story as a means to reflect contemporary anxieties and to deconstruct the superhero concept. Watchmen takes place in an alternate history United States where the country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most costumed super-heroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the personal development and struggles of the protagonists as an investigation into the murder of a government sponsored super-hero pulls them out of retirement and eventually leads them to confront a plot by one of their own to stave off nuclear war by killing millions of innocent people.
Creatively, the focus of Watchmen is on its structure. Gibbons used a nine-panel grid layout throughout the series and added recurring symbols such as a blood-stained smiley face. All but the last issue feature supplemental fictional documents that add to the series' backstory, and the narrative is intertwined with that of another story, a fictional pirate comic titled Tales of the Black Freighter, which one of the characters is reading.
Watchmen has received critical acclaim both in the comics and mainstream press, and is regarded as a seminal text of the comic book medium. After a number of attempts to adapt the series into a feature film, director Zack Snyder's Watchmen is scheduled for release in March 2009.
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