DC 2026 Highlights:

• A festive opening reception for attendees 
• Talks by expert speakers presenting important discoveries and new research, showing seldom-seen images and offering new insights into photography’s beginnings
• A photo fair with veteran dealers and newcomers offering more daguerreotypes and 19th-century photographs than can be seen anywhere. Buy, sell, trade, or just look and learn – it’s an opportunity that only comes along once a year.
• A grand banquet with a live auction and silent auction featuring exceptional images
• Room-hopping to catch up with friends and see what’s on the market
• And behind-the-scenes viewings of photography collections at leading cultural institutions, led by their curators

Block out the time on your calendar…then register for the Symposium and make your room reservation for a stay at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill at a special rate (reserve by September 15 for the special rate as rooms are limited). 

Speakers

What the Magicians Revealed

By Wm. B. Becker

The discovery of two previously unknown photographs of important 19th century magicians—one by Mathew Brady and one by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri—began a research journey that sheds new light on the final days of both photographers.

Brady and Disderi were leaders in their profession, although on separate continents. Both started as daguerreotypists, each built a palatial studio, and both made their fortunes with the carte de visite craze.

But the similarities and confluences do not end there.

This talk features new discoveries about Brady’s last years in Washington, D.C. and includes a glimpse of what might just be the final (if unintentional) Mathew Brady self-portrait.

Wm. B. Becker began collecting daguerreotypes as a teenager in 1968. He’s published dozens of magazine and journal articles on the history of photography, presented talks to U.S. and international audiences, and co-authored two books connected with exhibitions of 19th-century photographs from his collection.

Bill is a founding member of The Daguerreian Society and the developer of the American Museum of Photography (photographymuseum.com) online. He’s also the author of Brady of Broadway, a play about Mathew Brady (staged by the National Portrait Gallery during a previous D.C. Symposium). Bill has curated or co-curated exhibitions from his collection at Henry Ford Museum, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Southeast Museum of Photography, MIT Museum, and at the home of Louis Daguerre in Bry-sur-Marne.

Following a decades-long TV News career honored by four Emmy® Awards, Bill volunteered for multiple nonprofit groups over the last 25 years, including service as National Trustee of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and as a board member of The Daguerreian Society.

Bill’s work has been supported by grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the U.S. Embassy in France. He is a Benefactor of the Detroit Institute of Arts and a Patron of the Toledo Museum of Art.

Bill remembers with gratitude his mentors and collaborators: Heinz K. Henisch, John B. Cameron, and François Brunet.

Looking Through the Glass: Examining the History of Glass and Its Relationship to Early Cased Photographs, With Examples From the SAAM Collections

By Emma Dacey

Glass has been included as part of daguerreotype packages since the earliest days, as photographers were keenly aware of the fragility of the daguerreotype surface, and glass was used to protect. Most people have only ever seen a daguerreotype from the other side of a piece of glass, yet we gloss over this; our eyes and

minds selectively focus on the appeal of the image. Glass is a key protective factor for cased images, yet has inherent propensity to deteriorate, causing risk to the plate and other components of the cased photograph.

Glass availability in 19th-century United States was varied, with imports from Europe, many different materials and methods used in manufacturing, and variability in quality. By highlighting key characteristics of 19th-century glass and providing an overview of how glass was marketed to and used by 19th-century photographic studios, this presentation illuminates an overlooked part of the daguerreotype package.

With images of examples from the SAAM collections and conservation study collections, the qualities of handmade glass and its intimate relationship with a daguerreotype package will be highlighted.

Emma Dacey is a conservator of photographs with an M.A. Cultural Materials Conservation (University of Melbourne), a post-grad diploma in Museum Studies from Massey University, New Zealand, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School, Sydney. Emma has worked in heritage collections in Australia and New Zealand and was the recipient of a George Alexander Foundation Fellowship in 2024. Since January 2025, Emma has been working at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as the Bank of America Conservation Fellow in Photography.

The Spirit of Invention: Patent Office and Patentees

By Christina Finlayson

An introduction to “The Spirit of Invention: Patent Office and Patentees” exhibition, which will be on view at the National Portrait Gallery during this year’s Daguerreian Society Symposium. This exhibit focuses on 19th-century American patent holders and architects of the U.S. Patent Office building. This building is now called the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture and houses the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museums. The show features cased objects, a miniature on ivory, and works on paper relating to the building and its original function as the U.S. Patent Office. The presentation will also touch on the stabilization of a daguerreotype for the exhibition.

Christina Finlayson (she/her) has been the photographs conservator at the Smithsonian Institution—National Portrait Gallery since 2012. She has held internships and fellowships at the MFA-Boston, FAMSF-Legion of Honor, and the Smithsonian Asian Art Museum.

On Top of the World: Making the First Known Daguerreotype Views From Atop the Dome of the U.S. Capitol Building

By Francesco Fragomeni

The U.S. Capitol Building is one of the most photographed locations in the United States. Notable early examples include works by John Plumbe Jr., John Wood, Mathew Brady, and Alexander Gardner. The earliest known views made from atop the building’s dome include stereoviews by J. F. Jarvis and Underwood & Underwood. On July 27, 2025, 180 years after the earliest of those examples and on one of the hottest and most humid days of the year, Francesco Fragomeni, accompanied by a joint team from the Library of Congress and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, made the long climb through the Rotunda and into the dome’s steel structure, emerging through a small steel door to make the first known daguerreotype views of the District of Columbia from atop the Capitol dome. Francesco will share photographs and video footage of the ascent to the top of the structure and the making of his daguerreotypes. He will also discuss the technical challenges posed by the extreme heat and humidity and, in addition to presenting the final dome views, will examine visible effects on the finished plates and a particularly intriguing failed plate to illustrate just how sensitive this extraordinary but fragile photographic process can be to adverse environmental conditions and their effects on the operator.

Francesco Fragomeni is an artist and independent scholar, specializing in 19th-century photographic processes, material culture, and experimental archaeology for functional photographic artifacts in museum collections. In 2024, he performed a live recreation of Hippolyte Bayard’s Le Noye (Drowned Man) at the Getty Museum for the exhibition Hippolyte Bayard: A Persistent Pioneer. In 2025, in collaboration with the Library of Congress and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, he made the first known daguerreotype views from the roof of the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building—the topic of his Symposium presentation. His ongoing work includes an optical survey of the Robert Cornelius lenses in the collection of the Library of Congress; a survey of the Morse Daguerreotype Camera in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH); and a creative exploration of the working methods behind John William Draper’s earliest American daguerreotype photomicrographs, also with Smithsonian NMAH. Fragomeni’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the Architect of the Capitol, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and the Getty Museum.

Boston Literati Go to Freshwater: Cameron’s Legacy in the Athens of America

By Anne Havinga

Some of the earliest Cameron photographs to cross the Atlantic reached the United States through Boston’s literary circles. In 1868, she photographed the Cambridge poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at her Freshwater studio, followed by his publisher, James T. Fields, when he visited the following year. These portraits, along with others she sent, circulated among their friends and peers, introducing her work to Boston’s cultural elite. The city’s intellectual community, drawn to Cameron’s soft-focus aesthetic and spiritually charged portraits, found in them alignment with its embrace of artistic experimentation and moral earnestness. Sustained by transatlantic friendships and personal networks, Cameron’s photographs continued to shape Boston’s artistic imagination throughout the late nineteenth century.

Anne Havinga recently concluded her tenure as the Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Chair of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she served for 36 years. Her areas of focus span early photography, Pictorialism, European modernism, postwar abstraction, fashion, Japanese, contemporary, and the photobook.

Anne led Photography at the Museum for over 25 years, strengthening its collection with landmark acquisitions, including the Howard Greenberg Collection and the archive of Kawada Kikuji’s seminal photobook Chizu/The Map. She also organized numerous exhibitions, among them an expanded version of Julia Margaret Cameron: Victorian Photographer (1998).

Her publications include essays in Reframing Photography: Multiple Histories (2024); In the Wake 3-11: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3-11 (2015); F. Holland Day (2000); Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography (2002); and Inspiring Reform: Boston's Arts and Crafts Movement (1997). 

Sublime Obsessions: Highlights of the Kelbaugh Collection in the National Gallery of Art

By Ross J. Kelbaugh 

Over the past three years, the National Gallery of Art acquired over 400+ images through purchase with the support of the Ford Foundation and my donations to be part of the NGA’s Ross J. Kelbaugh Collection. Most of the daguerreotypes and other photographs in the NGA exhibit “Remember Me: Picturing African Americans in Early Photography” during the Daguerreian Symposium are drawn from my collection there. I will give an overview of the Kelbaugh Collection and discuss a couple of my images in the NGA exhibit in greater depth.

Ross J. Kelbaugh began collecting images of Civil War soldiers while in the sixth grade at the beginning of the Civil War Centennial. In 1971, he purchased his first daguerreotype and recognized the opportunity to build a master collection. He focused on the history of photography in Maryland, African American images, occupational images along with historic and important aesthetic examples. Ross was a dealer at the first D.C. Photo Show in 1978 and became a charter member of the Daguerreian Society in 1988. He has guest curated several photography exhibits, including “The Daguerreotype in Maryland” as part of the 2012 Daguerreian Symposium. Since 2023, the National Gallery of Art has acquired over 400 images from his collection through purchases and as gifts. Selections from his African American collection are in the NGA exhibit “Remember Me: Picturing African Americans in Early Photography.” Members can view his program “Black Lives in Focus: Selections for the Ross J. Kelbaugh of African American History” on the Society’s website. His National Parks exhibit program “African American Faces of the Civil War” is on YouTube. Ross has also been an on-air appraiser for thirteen seasons of Maryland Public Television’s “Chesapeake Collectibles,” which can also be viewed online. Books featuring his photography collections are available on Amazon. His latest book Sublime Obsession: A Collector’s Journey from Davy Crockett to the National Gallery of Art will be published in the fall.

The Serpent King Portrait by James Goins, Protégé of J.P. Ball in Cincinnati

By Theresa Leininger-Miller

This two-part paper examines a startling portrait and its maker, the African American James M. Goins (ca. 1847–1921). The image features a male snake charmer in Goins’ studio, hands grasping multiple writhing timber rattlesnakes, racers, and boa constrictors, as others coil around his neck, slithering over shoulders. Leander Millward (ca. 1848–1894), aka the Serpent King, toured with Robinson Circus for decades.

I situate the extremely rare cabinet card (ca. 1888) in terms of the circus and sideshow worlds, female snake charmers, Black circus workers, Millward’s mistaken identity as a “colored man,” his tragic demise, local history, and Goins’ career. A peripatetic entrepreneur, Goins had multiple studios in Chicago, St. Paul, Denver, and Cincinnati, where he promoted his “celebrity” series.

Cabinet cards and a tintype from private collections contextualize the photograph, in addition to many visual culture items (120+ images), such as color lithographs, historical newspapers, census records, and more.

Theresa Leininger-Miller (Ph.D., Yale) is Professor of Art History, University of Cincinnati. Selected publications include her co-edited anthology, Illustrated Sheet Music in the U.S., 1830–1930 (2025), her book, New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922–1934 (2001); chapters in Reading Southern Art, The Routledge Companion to African American History, Women Artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Out of Context, and The Modern Woman Revisited; essays Panorama and Source; and catalogue essays in John Wilson: Witnessing Humanity (The Met, 2025), Imprinted: Illustrating Race (Norman Rockwell Museum, 2022), Harlem Renaissance, and Picture Cincinnati in Song. She has deeply researched African American artists in her hometown of Cincinnati, giving many talks on J.P. Ball and publishing an essay on a previously unknown painting by Robert Duncanson, who worked as Ball’s retoucher and panorama painter.

Leininger-Miller has curated three exhibitions of 19th-century photographs and nine of illustrated sheet music. Her current show, at UC, is Dare to Stare: 19th-Century Circus and Sideshow Portraits. Awards include those from NEH; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Kress Foundation; Henry R. Luce Foundation; Smithsonian Institution; Auburn University; and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

The 19th-Century Roots of Instagram: The Amateur Photographic Exchange Club (1861–1863)

By Adrienne Lundgren

Exchanging photographs with strangers to build social networks of like-minded individuals is nothing new. From its invention in 1839, photography was devised as a means of conveying and sharing information. Photographers formed small, informal groups from the start, but it was not until the Amateur Photographic Exchange Club (1861–1863) that a formalized social network based on photography emerged in the United States. From the initial request to connect to the sharing of selfies, the Amateur Photographic Exchange Club’s defined structure showed a striking similarity to how we currently engage with platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Its members’ humorous exchanges, preserved in published literature, offer a grounding point for understanding how sharing images and ideas connected people and facilitated the formation of lasting friendships despite geographical distance, economic disparity, or political differences. This talk draws on archival documents, a review of contemporary literature, and an examination of exchanged images to explore these early photographic networks and their enduring relevance.

Adrienne Lundgren is a Senior Photograph Conservator at the Library of Congress, where she has worked for the past 24 years. Her research has focused on the technical aspects of photographic image production, particularly 19th and early 20th century processes. She has published extensively on topics such as coatings applied to daguerreotypes, the use of glycerine in platinum printing, and the materials and techniques of Pictorialist photographers Clarence H. White and F. Holland Day. She is currently working on a history of the dry collodion process. Lundgren is also the author of Magnificent Intentions: John Wood, First Federal Photographer (1856–1863), which was released in 2024. Her most recent book about Diane Arbus: Social Security is being published by Aperture with a release date of Spring 2027.

The Clairvoyant Camera: Spirit Photographs from the Lilly Library Collection

By Scott McMahon

This presentation will focus on a richly layered conjuring of ethereal guests from a selection of spirit photographs at Indiana University’s Lilly Library. The collection of 325 photographs was recently acquired from the archive of the sleight-of-hand artist, magician and author Ricky Jay. Comprised of albumen prints, cartes de visite, cabinet cards, and postcards, this collection highlights many of the earliest known spirit photographers of America, England, France, and Russia, such as William H. Mumler, Eusapia Palladino, Édouard Buguet, Richard Boursnell, Frederick Hudson, John Beattie, and Charles Lacey. The popularity of the spiritualist movement and the urge to capture the likenesses of invited and perhaps uninvited guests during the 19th-century will be evidenced in the photographs and content in this presentation. The lure of photography’s magic still occupies the imagination as we question the conjuring of gossamer guests and mischief that took place in parlors and in darkened rooms.

Scott McMahon is Curator of Photography at the Lilly Library. His primary areas of research involve historic/antiquarian processes and the production of his own photographic works using wet plate collodion, gum bichromate, anthotype, cyanotype, as well as camera obscuras and homemade pinhole cameras.

Scott’s images have been published in The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes by Christopher James, Pinhole Photography, Rediscovering a Historic Technique by Eric Renner, Anthotype by Malin Fabbri, Poetics of Light – Contemporary Pinhole Photography by Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer, Gum Printing – A Step-by-Step Manual by Christina Z. Anderson, among others.

Selected exhibitions include Poetics of Light, Palace of the Governors New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, NM & National Media Museum, Bradford, UK; Amerykańskie Metafory, Galeria Pusta, Katowice, Poland & Old Gallery ZPAF, Warsaw, Poland; Forgotten Attributes, Three Columns Gallery, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Cellulose Documents: Forget Me Not (in collaboration with Katina Bitsicas), New Orleans Film Festival, New Orleans, LA; Second Nature, The Halide Project, Philadelphia, PA; and Response Time (in collaboration with Ahmed Salvador), Sol Mednick Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. He was a resident artist at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine; iPark Artists’ Enclave in East Haddam, CT; Border Art Residency in La Union, New Mexico; and Main Street Arts in Clifton Springs, NY.

Daguerreian Storycraft: Practice of two contemporary Daguerreotypists
By Anton Orlov and Dr. Simone Wicca

This lecture proposes a reflection on contemporary production of daguerreotypes through practical experiences and technical investigations. Drawing from recent experiments developed by the artists within a collaborative creative game, this presentation explores how contemporary artists are presently expanding the historical, material, and imaginative boundaries of this revered medium. Daguerreotype is focused upon not merely as a historical technique, but as a living field of aesthetic, poetic, alchemical, and philosophical experimentation. Laboratory processes, questions related to the materiality of the photographic object, and the relationships between light, mirror, presence, disappearance, and poetics that permeate contemporary daguerreian practice will be presented. Through the collaborative project developed by these two artists and researchers, the talk also examines how the daguerreotype is being revisited today in practices that combine expanded photographic vernacular, technical investigation, and poetic imagination.

Anton Orlov (1977) was born in Moscow, Russia, and began learning the arts of the photographic darkroom at the age of 12, using his grandfather’s 1950s enlarger. At 16, he moved to the USA, where he continued studying his passion. In 2006, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Photography from San Jose State University, and he currently resides in Southern California. Since an early age, he has been constantly exploring creative imagemaking across various analog platforms. After 25 years of exploring the range of alternative processes, Anton began working with daguerreotype in 2015, which, along with wet collodion, has become his main preferred method of expression. Anton Orlov’s work has been exhibited in the USA as well as internationally, and earned the Irving Pobboravsky Prize at IO-2 Tokyo exhibit. Over the past three decades, Anton’s imagery has been published in numerous publications, including Photographer’s Forum and View Camera Magazine, and his images are part of numerous private collections around the world. https://thephotopalace.blogspot.com/

Dr. Simone Wicca (1979) was born in Brazil and has researched and taught photography and historical photographic processes since 2002. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Photography from Centro Universitário Senac, as well as a Master’s degree and PhD in Visual Poetics from the Institute of Arts at UNICAMP. Over the years, she has been interested in the material characteristics of alternative and historical photographic processes, exploring a wide range of techniques with particular emphasis on ambrotypes, tintypes, anthotypes, and daguerreotypes. She has taught workshops and courses at institutions including Escola Rever, Casa Ranzini/Imagineiro, FotoAtiva (Pará), and the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo. Her work has been published in national and international journals, including The Hand Magazine. She has also participated in national and international exhibitions, including the photography biennial Image as Object: Alternatives 2023, organized by Ohio University. In recent years, her research and artistic practice have focused on contemporary daguerreotypy (Becquerel and mercury). She lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. https://simonewicca.wordpress.com

A Spotlight Breaks the Dark: Made by Light, Threatened by Time and Humans

By Ariadna Romer

With the approach of the bicentennial of the public announcement of the daguerreotype—the first commercially viable form of photography, introduced to the world in 1839—it is an appropriate moment for a critical examination of the current culture surrounding the care, use, and stewardship of this legacy.

Over the coming years, the anniversary will place daguerreotypes under increased public and institutional attention. These objects will be collected, bought, studied, exhibited, handled, reproduced and inevitably may be both appropriately utilized and, at times, mishandled or misused. This key moment therefore calls for a careful evaluation of issues related to daguerreotype preservation, as well as a broader inquiry into the actions necessary to ensure the long-term survival of the Daguerreian legacy.

This lecture will highlight issues that must be addressed to strengthen the protection, appreciation, and recognition of daguerreotypes, an essential part of the world’s cultural heritage.

Ariadna Romer graduated from National School for Conservation, Restoration and Museography. M.S.S. in Spatial Development and Planning, Certificated in Geospatial Analysis and Appraiser by the Appraiser Association of America. PostDoc at the European Center of Archaeometry (Centre Européen d’Archéométrie, University de Liège, Belgium).

Worked for several institutions, including the Mexican National Library (MX); Institute Hercule Florance (BR); Instituto Moreira Salles (BR); Centro de Fotografia Montevideo (UR); Cantabria University (SP); and in private projects in Latin America, Europe and USA.

Currently she is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Conservator of Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Faculty Member in the Educational Program for the Conservation of Photographic Heritage, in Mexico and Uruguay; and part of the Academy of Archaic Imaging.

A Closer Look at Plate Stock: Steps to Solidify a Timeline of Early American Daguerreotypy Through Examination of the Earliest Practitioner’s Working Methods, Materiality Choices, and the Availability of Proper Daguerreotype Plates

By Rachel Wetzel

A collaborative research endeavor between two government institutions, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, utilized technical art history to gain a greater understanding of how daguerreotypes were made in America between 1839 and 1843, in the absence of French plate stock. Approximately fifty daguerreotypes from both institutions’ collections were scientifically analyzed to determine the composition of the plate stock, thickness of each layer, presence of metal inclusions, and Daguerreian hallmarks—all of which help to determine specific characteristics and working methods of a variety of early practitioners, including Robert Cornelius, John William Draper, Henry Fitz, Jr., Samuel Morse, Walter Rogers Johnson, and more. This study has provided a greater understanding of how the earliest American plate manufacturers were trying to compete with government-regulated French plated metals and how the existing daguerreotype plates of the period have helped to shape the history of photography as we currently understand it.

Rachel Wetzel is a Senior Photograph Conservator at the Library of Congress who specializes in early American photography. For the past decade, she has served as the lead investigator of several group collaborative projects studying the works of Robert Cornelius, Henry Fitz, Jr., and other early Daguerreians. Her work encompasses technical art history, conservation, preservation, connoisseurship projects, and digital humanities endeavors. She holds an M.A. in Art Conservation from SUNY Buffalo State College (2005) and a certificate from the Andrew W. Mellon Advanced Residency Program (2007). She was a recipient of a NEH Research and Development grant in 2017.

Reflections: The Making of Modern Daguerreotypes in China

By Jingxian Wu

Established in Nanjing in 2020, HLiiC is dedicated to the research and practice of nineteenth-century handmade photography. Over the past five years, it has grown from tentative first experiments into an active image laboratory and gallery, rebuilding the craft of the daguerreotype on solid silver plates in a country where the process had left no living tradition. Today the lab makes daguerreotypes for artists, collectors, museums and private clients, and its exhibitions, seminars and courses are introducing the process to a public encountering it for the first time—work carried out in continuous exchange with practitioners and institutions abroad. This presentation traces that journey: how a daguerreian practice takes root without a tradition behind it, what Chinese clients and audiences ask of the plate, and what the daguerreotype is becoming in China.

Jingxian Wu is the academic director of HLiiC (Hengli Image Centre) in Nanjing, China. Her research concerns the history of early nineteenth-century imaging technologies and the ways historical photographic processes find expression in contemporary art and visual culture. Through curating, seminars and writing, she works to bring early photography into contemporary Chinese discourse, and collaborates continuously with artists and scholars abroad.

Behind-the-Scenes Institution Visits

We are working on plans for private tours of 19th-century photography collections at museums and institutions.

Here are two public exhibitions that are scheduled:

• The National Gallery of Art will be staging a photography exhibition in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding. The exhibition, which is scheduled to open October 3, will feature some of the 248 early photographs of African American life that the museum acquired in 2023 from longtime Society member Ross J. Kelbaugh. Kelbaugh's collection includes 11 photographs by celebrated early photographers James Presley Ball, Glen Alvin Goodridge, and Augustus Washington. More information here. 

• The Smithsonian American Art Museum will be organizing an exhibition in August featuring items from the collection of Larry J. West, another longtime Society member. In 2021, the museum acquired 286 objects from West's collection, dating from the 1840s to the mid-1920s. They include works by African American daguerreotypists James P. Ball, Glen Alvin Goodridge, and Augustus Washington. In 2023, the museum enhanced its holdings further by purchasing the Dr. Robert L. Drapkin Collection, a wide-ranging collection of photographs representing African Americans from roughly the 1840s to the 1970s. More information here.

Antique Photo Fair

The Daguerreian Society Photo Fair will be held on Saturday, October 17, 2026 in the Congressional A Ballroom (lobby level) of the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capital Hill, 400 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001. It is open to Symposium attendees as well as the public.

Symposium attendees and members: 9 am early admission. Entry cost ($10) included with conference registration.

General admission: 10 am–4 pm, $10. More information here. 

Registration

To register for the conference, click this link, which also appears under "Upcoming Events" on the homepage. By registering, you will receive all the program highlights mentioned above. Further details will follow in emails and Daguerreian Society Quarterly issues.

A summary of the registration options is as follows. Early registration typically ends a month before the event. 

Member	Non-member	Dealer Tables
$350 early	$400 any time	$200 center table
$375 late		$250 wall table