Stereo Daguerreotypes

As you might know, sterograph cards were a hugely popular thing in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. These cards use two photographs taken from slightly different angles to produce a single image with a 3-d appearance, when viewed through a viewer (or by someone who is good at Magic Eye). However, the concept of stereo photographs was around from the very beginning. Daguerreotypes are quite interesting to view in stereo-- they are a) very very detailed, so the 3-D effect is especially profound, and b) essentially on mirrors, so extra work is needed to get a proper view. Some places, such as the studio of Southworth and Hawes, created whole installations where daguerreotypes could be viewed in stereo. In the mid 1850s J. F. Mascher invented a special type of daguerreotype case that could be folded out into a viewer (though, speaking from experience, it still takes a bit of fiddling to get the right angle of light). These days, the 3-D stereo effect is also often hard to get due to deterioration; one side may be more tarnish or dirty than the other, ruining the effect. Still though, they look neat!

(By the way, one of the most common uses of the stereo daguerreotype was for pornography. Unfortunately I've yet to find a public collection with any of these online... but thought you'd like to know!)

Library of Congress

Portrait of an unidentified woman. Source

Harvard University, Houghton Library

Tinted portrait of an unidentified man. Source

Library of Congress

Bust of William Robert Grant. Source

Daguerreotype Babies

From the first generation of babies to be captured by photograph!

 Average exposure time for a portraits in a well-lit studio during the Daguerrian era (1839-1860) was about 2-5 seconds, during which the sitter couldn't move or the picture would blur. Not bad for an adult sitter, but pretty well impossible for the little ones, let alone getting a pose, gaze, and preventing crying at parental separation. So just about every photograph from the time (well, most of the 19th century!) has a baby on a mother's lap. Sometimes she's a part of the picture and sometimes she's cropped out, or obscured, or even disguised as furniture!

George Eastman House

By Southworth and Hawes, Boston, ca. 1850. Source

Library of Congress

ca. 1855. Source

George Eastman House

By Southworth and Hawes, Boston, ca. 1850. Source

Daguerreotype Views

Though daguerreotypes were hugely popular for portraits that was hardly the limit of the medium. Photographic outdoors certainly brought challenges--things moved in long exposures, a lot of equipment had to be carried around, and not all colour wavelengths translated onto the plate equally--but, then as now, people wanted pictures of things. Today a selection of daguerreotypes focused not on people, but on places.

You can see many more (which I can't share here) in the online galleries of the Daguerrian Society.

Library of Congress

Niagara Falls, [1853-60], created by the studio of Matthew Brady. (Note: daguerreotypes, being direct positives, reverse the scene left to right, like a mirror). Source

Library of Congress

The Entrance to Independence Square, Philadelphia [1840-1856].  Source

Library of Congress

Portsmouth Square, San Francisco [before 1851]. Source

Daguerreotype Children II

All right, well, that "I'm back" was rather preliminary. :) I'll work on getting back on track, but meanwhile let's just assume this blog will a bit sporradic for a while. 

Today, another set of children of the 1850s! How incredible is it that we can look into the faces of children from the 1850s?  

Many of these are the work of the incomparable daguerreotype team Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes.

George Eastman House

An unidentified child by Southworth and Hawes, c. 1850. Source

Library of Congress

A child holding a black rag doll, c. 1852. Source

George Eastman House

An unidentified girl by Southworth and Hawes, c. 1850. Source

Daguerreotype Dogs

As long as people have been able to photograph, they have wanted to photograph their pets! 

Note: These aren't all daguerreotypes-- actually very few of them are-- but I needed a snappy title, and 'daguerreotype' evokes the kind of 19th century photos these are. :)

Portrait of a dog, c. 1860 (ambrotype). Source

Portrait of a dog, 1846 (daguerreotype). Source

Man with a dog, 1900. Source

Dog on a chair, 1865. Source

Two portraits of a boy and dog, c. 1860 (ambrotype). Source

Black man with white child and dog, c. 1890. Source

A boy and his dog, c. 1850. Source

Man holding dog, c. 1867 (tintype). Source

Man with his dogs, c. 1860. Source

Woman with a dog, c. 1875. Source

A novelty studio photo, c. 1885. Source

Dog on a love seat, c. 1855 (daguerreotype). Source

"Candid" Daugerreotypes

Though the exposure time for a studio photograph decreased dramatically over the decades of the mid-19th century, the process still required at least a few seconds-- and though that may not seem like long,   consider that a 'slow' portrait shutter speed today is 1/25 of a second! Added to the bulk and hassle of the equipment needed, and the days of snapshots seem far off in indeed in 1850. However, photographers soon tried to do more than the usual 'look into the camera' portrait. 

Of course I've no idea what the photographers of these images were intending-- but I like to think of them as attempts to give the effect of a subject who is not posing, perhaps even unaware of the photographer... a candid photograph. 

Note: "daguerreotype", in some of these posts, is used as an umbrella term; some of these are ambrotypes and tintypes as well, as indicated. 

All photos c. 1850-1860, and from the collections of the George Eastman House. 

Ambrotype, c. 1865. Source

Ambrotype, c1860. Source

Ambrotype, c. 1860. Source

People have always sat weirdly in chairs. This one's actually a daguerreotype, c. 1850. Source

Tintype, c. 1860.  Source

Daguerreotype Children

The next in the series of daguerreotype people; the first is here. As before, I find it so truly remarkable that we can look at these people from so long ago, and feel that they are in fact people, like anyone we would know today. Today's post concentrates on portraits of children-- children who are every bit as sweet and adorable and wonderful in the 1850s as in any other time before or since! 

From the collections of the George Eastman House, a museum dedicated to the history of photography. These photos all come in elabourate frames; I have cropped them out to focus on the faces themselves, but the links show the portraits in their original, very beautiful settings. 

Sarah Emile Mason. Daguerreotype, 1856.  Source

Unknown boy. Ambrotype, c. 1970.  Source

Little girl. Daguerreotype, c. 1860. Source

Two girls-- poor things, they don't look very happy to be there, do they? Ambrotype, c. 1860.  Source

Marion Augusta Hawes (daughter of Hawes, of Southwood and Hawes). Daguerreotype, c. 1850. Source

Mother and baby... heart-melting! Daguerreotype, c. 1850.  Source

Daguerreotype People

Going even farther back now, to the 1850s in fact, and the dawn of portrait photography. The 1850s seem so very long ago, don't they. On paper it seems like these people are so distant, and yet when you look into their faces... they aren't. The George Eastman House, a museum of photography, has a remarkable collection of daguerreotypes [the first type of photographic process, where metal plates are specially coated so they will react to the light from the lens]-- this shall rather be an ongoing series! 160 years ago, or so, and we can look at these people and get a sense of who they were. Incredible, isn't it?

Young woman with book. Daguerreotype, 1855. Source.

Unidentified young man. Daguerreotype, c. 1855. Source.

Portrait of man yawning-- or probably posing yawning, that is. Ambrotype, 1854.  Source.

Portrait of girl in scarf. Collodion positive on paper, c. 1855.  Source.

Portrait of man wearing weird hat. [Even the George Eastman House itself describes it as an unusual hat!] Dauguerreotype, c. 1855. Source.

Adorable little girl named Alice Mary Hawes. Source.