The Daguerreotype

Hallucination, or reality?

Browsing in an old shop, Professor Harry Inman comes across the image of a famous hotel in Saratoga Springs, NY, taken on a fragile metal plate in 1847, an actual daguerreotype from the origins of early photography. The small, framed image becomes an unexpected window into the past, one that pulls him literally into another time and space.

It is a world that appears increasingly mesmerizing and seductive, the Saratoga Springs of grand hotels and Victorian glamour, of people strolling in summer along tree-lined boulevards that no longer exist. The music he hears enchants him. Each visit brings him welcome release from the stress and dullness of his ordinary life. Most startling, on one such visit Harry encounters the man who created the daguerreotype he owns--who acknowledges Harry as if he knows him. How?

He doesn't have time to ask. His visits are only brief ones, and the daguerreotype, already corrupted, is fading. He must make a decision, before the image disappears.