Abstract

Without the invisible, the meaningful visible is scarcely possible. This claim, central to this chapter, appears to be the case when examining the theoretical positions championed or implied by significant individuals within photography’s history. Elizabeth Eastlake, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Peter Henry Emerson, writing in the nineteenth century, as well as Frederick H. Evans, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Alfred Stieglitz, writing in the twentieth century, each celebrate in a unique way the partially invisible image. Furthermore, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s literary references to the daguerreotype in his novel The House of the Seven Gables are worthy of consideration and have been insufficiently celebrated in mainstream literature.