About

My Daguerreotype Boyfriend is a single topic blog featuring late 1800s black-and-white and daguerreotype photographs of handsome men.

Origin

Daguerreotype^[1] is a photographic process introduced in 1839 in which an image is formed on a polished silver surface on top of a metal substrate like copper or brass.

On May 29th, 2011, editor Michelle Legro launched the Tumblr blog "My Daguerreotype Boyfriend",^[5] with the first post reblogging an early photograph of Russian physician and author Anton Chekhov (shown below).

Precursors

On October 21st, 2010, the Blogspot blog Bangable Dudes in History^[2] was created, featuring photographs and portraits of historical figures accompanied by pie graphs illustrating notable character traits and accomplishments (shown below).

On September 11th, 2010, the first episode in a "My Dead Historical Boyfriend" web series was uploaded to YouTube, in which a woman dates the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates (shown below).

Spread

On June 16th, 2011, several black-and-white photographs from the Tumblr blog were highlighted on BuzzFeed.^[3]
On July 21st, the Tumblr blog My Historical Portrait Boyfriend was launched, featuring notable paintings and portraits of attractive figures throughout history.

In November, 2012, the 2013 My Daguerreotype Boyfriend Calendar^[4] was released on the My Daguerreotype Boyfriend blog, featuring photographs of attractive Union and Confederate and soldiers from the American Civil War (shown below). On August 24th, 2013, the blog was featured on the Internet news site Boing Boing.^[6]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References