42. Fifteen daguerreotypes. Mads Alstrup. 1840-60

The French inventor Louis Daguerre published the first viable method for producing 'photogenic pictures' in 1839. Already in that same year, people in Denmark were reading about the invention in Ursin's Magazine for Artists and Craftsmen, which brought articles with Daguerre's own recipe for and description of the process. A considerable drawback to the method was that one could not make any copies. The invention was therefore only short-lived in the history of photography.

Mads Alstrup was the first Danish portrait photographer with his own studio. He was a qualified goldsmith and had a business in Randers. In the summer of 1842 he moved to Copenhagen and set up a studio behind the Hercules Pavilion in Rosenborg Garden. Here he started daguerreotyping. Later he travelled round the country and in the other Nordic countries to take portraits.