Early Photography in the United States

When photography first appeared in 1839 with the introduction of the daguerreotype, it was celebrated for revealing the truth of nature without the distortions of human intervention. Very soon after its introduction, photography led to a virtual industry of new patents and technologies. Some of these innovations were designed to improve the quality of the image, while others focused instead on photography's commercial applications. In the countryside, traveling artists converted from painting portraits to making photographs and were joined by other craftspeople, such as blacksmiths and shoemakers, who wished to take advantage of the new technology. These rural image-makers tended to work individually, moving from door to door and town to town to create and sell daguerreotypes of varying quality. In the cities, to the contrary, daguerreotypists sought to appeal to a more cultured clientele. They advertised themselves as professionals, touted the aesthetic quality of their work, and set up shops that employed assistants. Daguerreotypes became so popular that by the early 1850s there were "daguerreotype factories" across the urban centers of the United States. Each offered low prices, standardized packages (poses, mats, and cases), familiar props, and speedy delivery.

Unlike daguerreotypes, which produced a single, nonreproducible image on a plate coated with reflective silver (there was no negative), the wet-plate photograph allowed unlimited paper prints to be made from a single exposure. By allowing for multiple prints, it helped answer the almost insatiable demand among all classes for photographs of family and friends.

If photography satisfied the need of the Victorian family for images of itself, it also answered a larger social anxiety . Photography provided a society undergoing rapid urbanization with a way to affirm the importance of character. Photographers advertised their ability to bring out the truth of their models: a person's captured essence in a single image, revealing not just an enduring likeness but a true expression of the sitter's personality .

As cultural historians Alan Trachtenberg and Karen Halttunen have pointed out, urban America before 1860 suffered from a "crisis of social confidence." As cities swelled in size, people feared their inability to "read" the true motives and designs of the strangers they encountered. Photographers seized on this anxiety by creating a visual product that allowed the viewer to "discern inner character from outer appearance." Photographers created a standardized set of poses and expressions designed to reveal the "inner character" of their models. This process helped reassure a middle class concerned about modernization that they were still able to discern truth from falsity, good from bad. In this regard, photography performed a cultural role similar to that of genre painting (paintings of scenes from everyday life, of ordinary people at work or recreation). Both media provided people with a vocabulary of familiar characters and types that allowed them to navigate their daily lives with confidence.

Nowhere was the appeal of the truth-telling characteristics of the daguerreotype more evident than in the emergence of photographic galleries devoted to images of public figures. Mathew Brady (1823-1896), known today primarily for his daguerreotypes of the American Civil War (1860-1865), was famous among his contemporaries for an exhibition space in New York filled with photographic portraits of celebrated citizens and civic leaders. Begun originally as a portrait studio in 1844, the gallery moved many times as it grew more popular, relocating always to a more fashionable address. Brady saw himself as a chronicler of public history.

Brady invited the notable figures of his day to pose for him. Their photographic portraits were then displayed in the gallery as both a public service and a keen method of self- promotion. Brady referred to his collection as his Gallery of Famous Americans. He published engravings of his daguerreotypes in book form and in popular magazines of the day, and drew a steady flow of visitors to his gallery by highlighting its civic appeal. Visitors were urged to study the likenesses of public figures to discover their inner character, the sources of their greatness. Such discoveries were thought to lead not only to appreciation but to inspiration, prompting citizens to model themselves after the great leaders of the time.