Lady with book. Buenos Aires. Circa 1854.

Vintage daguerreotype in the universal measure of a sixth of a plate -measures: 6.8 x 5.5 cm / 2.67  x 2.16 in- made around the 1850s and of an unidentified author. The work is inserted in a special storage case with the inside of the lid lined in embossed velvet with the figure in its center of a stylized bouquet of leaves and flowers. For its protection, the daguerreotype is encapsulated by an ornate, gilded flexible copper perimeter band, a gilt bronze mat or passepartout and, sealing the whole, a crystal.

Uncommon portrait of a young girl. In this case, the lady reaffirms her social and intellectual independence by posing with an open book in her hands, while she stares at the objective of the large wooden camera. She wears a banded hairstyle, a luxurious dark dress with wide sleeves; the blouse and the striking bow are white, while the gloves or mittens cling to the prevailing fashion. Like the Creole Mona Lisa, she outlines a slight and enigmatic smile that continues to question us more than a century and a half away.

Although we must point out that in its almost three decades of validity, the daguerreotype was at the service -in more than 90 percent- of social portraiture, the truth is that female portraits were significantly smaller than male ones. And when they faced the camera, they used to pose accompanying their husbands or as part of the family. Portraits of women alone were not common and these special female figures open a range of questions for us.

It was on August 19, 1839 when, in the solemn ambit of the Institut de France, the secretary Francois Arago finally revealed the secret that weighed on the "Daguerreotype", a brilliant invention of the French Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, and freed the world for free use. Photography was born.

182 years after that event, today we are witnessing a historical revaluation of those early works.