"As Frederick Douglass saw it, Morse and Daguerre were two facets of the same democratizing revolution, a revolution that was fast uniting the world in communication (Morse) and in image (Daguerre)."

True Pictures
Gregory Fried

Part I | II | III | IV | V
Early Photographic Techniques

Early Photographic Techniques

The daguerreotype received its name in honor of its French inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851). Daguerre announced his discovery to the world in 1839, and in doing so he accomplished what many had sought to do for decades: to fix an image produced directly by light and a lens. The process, including some of the improvements made by later practitioners, was the following: take a copper plate coated with silver; buff the silver surface to a very high polish; make the plate light sensitive by exposing it in sealed boxes to the vapors of iodine and bromine crystals; expose the sensitized plate in the camera; develop the image by holding it over the vapors produced by heated mercury; fix the image by giving it a bath in hyposulphite solution; finish and preserve the image with a bath in gold chloride. The process produced a single, unique image that could only be reproduced by photographing it in turn; there is no negative to print from. For an example of a well-executed daguerreotype, see fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Photographer unknown: subject unknown, sixth plate daguerreotype, c. 1847-50. Collection of Gregory Fried.

The process was both dangerous and difficult. Prices for a portrait in the early 1840s ran to $8 or higher, which would have been a full week’s wages for a working man. But American refinements and improvements quickly lowered the price. By 1850, a portrait could be had for as little as 25¢, putting it within the budget of even the most modest wage earners. It is estimated that by 1860, tens of millions of daguerreotypes had been taken in the United States.

An ambrotype is a weak negative image on glass rendered positive by the addition of a dark background. Frederick Scott Archer, an English sculptor, discovered that light-sensitive silver salts could be mixed with collodion, a sticky liquid that rapidly hardens and which had seen use as a field bandage for the British military. This mixture could then be applied to a glass plate and exposed in a camera while still wet; hence the term "wet plate process." In 1854, James Cutting of Boston took out a patent on this process, and Marcus Root coined the name "ambrotype" for it, from the Greek ambrotos (immortal). The process was cheaper and easier than the daguerreotype and contributed to the demise of that earlier process. Like the daguerreotype, an ambrotype was also produced as a unique object, although in principle, a print could be made from the negative on the glass. For an illustration of how a dark background makes the negative ambrotype plate look positive, see fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Photographer unknown: subject unknown, ninth plate ambrotype, c. 1861-65. Collection of Gregory Fried.

The tintype is actually an image produced on a very thin piece of iron, not tin (fig. 3). The process is quite similar to the ambrotype: the light-sensitive collodion mixture is applied to the iron plate and exposed in the camera while still wet. Because the plate has previously been given a black finish, the negative produced by the camera actually results in a positive image. Hamilton Smith, a chemistry professor at Kenyon College in Ohio, discovered this process in 1854. His student Peter Neff financed the development of the process and patented it in 1856. Tintypes were even cheaper than ambrotypes. They were also durable and could be sent through the mail. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers during the Civil War had tintypes made by studio or itinerant photographers to leave as mementos with loved ones and friends or to send home by mail from the front. Tintypes rapidly supplanted both daguerreotypes and ambrotypes because they were cheaper, easier to produce, and readily transportable. Other names for the tintype include "melainotype" and "ferrotype." Tintypes are also unique items like the daguerreotype, although some studios employed multiple lens cameras to produce multiple images from a single portrait sitting.

Fig. 3. Photographer unknown: subjects unknown, tintype, c. 1880. Collection of Greg French.

The carte de visite (or CDV) is a print made from a glass plate negative onto albumen paper which is then mounted on thin card (fig. 4). The French name derives from the common use of these photographs as visiting cards. André-Adolphe-Eugène Diséri popularized this format in Europe in 1854, and it spread to the United States by 1858. Cartes de visite were cheap, portable, and mailable. Because they could be printed from a negative, cartes de visite could be mass produced, unlike most earlier photographic processes. In combination with the tintype, the carte de visite lead to the extinction of both the daguerreotype and the ambrotype by the end of the Civil War.

Fig. 4. Photographer unknown: subjects unknown ("Tonquaways of Texas"), carte de visite, c. 1865-70. Collection of Greg French.

The cabinet card uses the same method as the carte de visite but in a larger format, for display in a "cabinet" (fig. 5). Cabinet cards became popular after around 1863 and remained in use until after the turn of the century.

Fig. 5. J. D. Westervelt: Captain John Walker, cabinet card, c. 1870. Collection of Greg French.

A stereograph (or stereoview) is composed of two images taken simultaneously from slightly different perspectives (fig. 6). When mounted together side by side and looked at through a specially designed viewer (a "stereoscope"), the two images merge to form a single three-dimensional image. Stereographs were produced using all the early photographic techniques, but the most popular form was the mass-produced albumen print version, mounted on rigid card, which came into wide circulation around 1860 in the United States.

Fig. 6. Photographer unknown: The Octoroon (from a sculpture by John Bell), albumen print, stereograph, c. 1859-65. Collection of Gregory Fried.

Presentation: Studio photographers produced most of the earliest images using standard-sized plates for daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. Studio technicians would present the customer with a photograph mounted beneath glass and a brass mat in a leatherette or thermoplastic case. Many studios employed colorists to tint the images. Cartes de visite and cabinet cards were simply mounted on thin card and often placed in specially designed portrait albums. Production of cased images had largely ceased by 1865. For an illustration of an ambrotype disassembled from its case, brass mat, brass frame, and dark backing plate, see fig. 7.

Fig. 7. Photographer unknown: subject unknown, ninth plate ambrotype, diassembled, c. 1861-65. Collection of Gregory Fried.

Plate sizes for early cased images:

Full plate: 6-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches 165 x 216 mm

Half plate: 4-1/2 x 5-1/2 inches 114 x 140 mm

1/4 plate: 3-1/8 x 4-1/8 inches 83 x 108 mm

1/6 plate: 2-5/8 x 3-1/4 inches 70 x 83 mm

1/9 plate: 2 x 2-1/2 inches 51 x 64 mm

1/16 plate: 1-3/8 x 1-5/8 inches 35 x 41 mm