Historical Indulgences

ca. 1850’s, [daguerreotype portrait of two instrument repairmen and a child]

via Cowan’s Auctions

ca. 1855, [ambrotype portrait of a young man playing his guitar]

via Charles Schwartz Photography

ca. 1860-80, [carte de visite portrait of two blind musicians with their instruments], G. & J. Hall

via Stereographica, Antique Photographica

ca. 1850, [daguerreotype portrait of a daguerreotypist with his camera]

via the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Photography Collection

ca. 1858, [daguerreotype portrait of a surveyor with equipment]

via the Daguerreian Society, William J. Schultz Collection

ca. 1840-60, [daguerreotype portrait of a watchmaker with his tools]

via the Library of Congress, Daguerreotype Collection

ca. 1860-80’s, [occupational tintype portrait of a silversmith with his tools, showing off a few spoons]

via Crow Creek Unique, Etsy

ca. 1851, [daguerreotype stereograph of a scientist in his laboratory], John Benjamin Dancer

via the Victoria & Albert Museum, Prints Drawing and Paintings Collection

ca. 1875, [albumen portrait of Mohan Lal with His Camera]

The subject here is likely the painter-photographer Mohan Lal, posing with his camera and holding the lens cover in his hand. A number of Mohan Lal’s pictures are documented in the Udaipur City Palace photographic archives. Most courts either maintained a photographer in the same manner that court painters were employed in the household, or else, they increasingly turned to the services of commercial photographic studios, which arose rapidly in India.

via the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photographs Collection

ca. 1850-60’s, [ambrotype portrait of a long-fingered daguerreotypist with a Lewis-type camera]

via Be-Hold Fine Photographs

ca. 1843, [Self-portrait of Robert Cornelius with laboratory instruments], Robert Cornelius

via the George Eastman House Collection, Still Image Archive

ca. 1865, [tintype portrait of a photographer with his camera]

via the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

ca.1865, [tintype portrait of two fiddlers]

via the Online Archives of California, UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, Zelda Mackay Pictorial Collection

ca. 1860, [daguerreotype portrait of Captain John Bolles]

“Captain John Bolles of Montville, Connecticut, made seven whaling voyages between 1845 and 1869. After his first voyage he married Nancy Chapman, then sailed off for a two year voyage to the Pacific. When he returned in 1850, it was becoming common for wives to accompany their whaling-captain husbands. Nancy accompanied John on the whaleship ALERT, and was later left in Hawaii as John was very busy with work. By the time they all returned home from the Pacific, she and John had doubled the size of their family.”

via the Mystic Seaport Museum, Photographs Collection