Daguerreotype portrait of a seated man with pocket watches – Vintage Wall Art
(Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
Few images capture their era like this historic photograph of Daguerreotype portrait of a seated man with pocket watches. It is part of the Snapshots of the Past archive, gathered over 25 years of research.
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Daguerreotype portrait of a seated man with pocket watches
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The record gives us a seated man, and the detail that sets this plate apart is the pocket watches he has with him, which were prized possessions in 1840 and a deliberate choice for a sitter to be shown with. Daguerreotypes of this period were made on silvered copper plates, each one a unique image with a mirror-like surface that shows the viewer's own reflection when tilted, and exposures could run from several seconds to a minute or more. Because sitters had to hold still for so long, portraits from the early 1840s often look stern, and the careful arrangement of objects at the sitter's side was a way to suggest status, trade or character. The pictures of the era are among the earliest photographic portraits people sat for, so this plate offers a direct glimpse of how a working man presented himself at the very start of photography.
| Created / published | 1840 |
|---|---|
| Original scan | 3,277 × 4,096 px · prints to 11 × 14 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | 103_Occupational_portrait_o_1840 |
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Snapshots of the Past helps heritage brands, museums, historians and storytellers tell stories with history: historic prints, image licensing and historical storytelling drawn from more than 25 years of research and curation.
