Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Today, Brad and I looked at some of the oldest images in the archives--a box of cased images. The examples we looked at included daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. Brad explained how to distinguish between the three types, and showed me how to safely take apart cased images by using a suction cup to gently lift the image from its case rather than attempting to pry it or shake it out of the case, both of which can damage the case. Lifting the image from the case sometimes reveals information about the subject of the photograph or the photographer beneath, so we went through all the images and checked for this kind of information beneath.

The cased images are really fascinating. I especially liked the daguerreotypes--I think they're a little eerie. At certain angles their subjects become almost invisible in the mirrored surface of the photograph, and instead you see your own face reflected back at you.

Lifting out the images is fun, since you never know what you'll find underneath. One of the cased images we examined had portraits of Madison Evans and his wife, and the inscription beneath one of the photographs was a little mysterious--inside three hearts, someone had written the following information: "E&H Jan & Feb 1880," "Ring performance by L July 29, 1880," and "Lost 1880 June 9th." We're not sure what any of that means, but hopefully I'll uncover something when I start researching Evans.

We scanned some of the cased images, but I forgot to email them to myself, so I'll post about the cased images in more detail later when I can include the scans.

For some of the images, we only know the names of the subjects, so sometime within the next few weeks, Brad will have me work on researching those subjects to see if I can uncover any more information about the people pictured.

We also looked through a photo album of Charles Cushman's early work and Cushman's camera. In this post, you can see a photograph of Cushman's camera and a photograph of a page from his album. Only a few of his early black and white photographs are currently available on the Cushman website.

We also looked at some Indiana University photo albums from 1881 and 1885, one of which contained small, "carte de visite" photographs while the other included larger "cabinet cards." Brad showed me how to safely remove photographs from these types of albums, since these types of photographs often have information about the photographer on their backs.