This daguerreotype, produced in Girona in the 1840s–1850s, marks the photographic technique’s arrival in the city, shortly after the 1839 demonstration in Barcelona, testament to the new medium’s rapid adoption in Catalonia.

The daguerreotype was made on a silver-coated copper plate, exposed to iodine vapours and developed with mercury, a unique method requiring exposures of up to 30 minutes, involving considerable technical complexity for the time.

As a unique piece of great economic value, this daguerreotype from Girona probably portrayed a member of the local bourgeoisie, symbolizing social status at a time when photography was still unaffordable for the vast majority of the population.

This daguerreotype was made with a wooden box camera and achromatic lenses, designed according to the Daguerre method, similar to the camera preserved at the Academy of Sciences and Arts on La Rambla in Barcelona, used for the first Catalan daguerreotype in 1839.

This daguerreotype offers a window onto mid-19th-century Girona society, making it possible to analyse how photography documented local identity before this pioneering technique was displaced by the wet collodion process.