Snapshots of the Past

[Minister wearing spectacles] – Historic Photograph Print

[Minister wearing spectacles], [ca. 1850] — historic photograph
[Minister wearing spectacles], [ca. 1850]. Historic photograph from the Daguerreotypes & Early Photography collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

Step back in time with [Minister wearing spectacles], a historic photograph rich in period detail. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.

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[Minister wearing spectacles]

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A minister peers out from this sixth-plate daguerreotype, his gilt-rimmed spectacles catching the light on the silvered copper surface. Made around 1850, when the process was roughly a decade old and cased portraits were a common keepsake, the image is a small, mirror-bright object that must be tilted to reveal the sitter. The record places it in a case variant of Rinhart 114 and notes its citation in Jackie Napoleon Wilson's *Hidden Witness*, a study of African-American images from the earliest days of photography through the Civil War. That context makes the portrait a useful document of how early photography recorded Black lives.

Created / published[ca. 1850]
Medium1 photograph : sixth-plate daguerreotype.
GenreDaguerreotypes 1840-1860.Portrait photographs 1840-1850.
NotesCase: variant of Rinhart 114. Sitter's eyeglasses are gilt. No electronic surrogate available. Hidden witness : African-American images from the birth of photography to the Civil War / Jackie Napoleon Wilson. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999. Purchase; Christies, New York; 2001; (DLC/PP-2001:120). Forms part of: Daguerreotype collection (Library of Congress).
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan4,953 × 6,168 px · prints to 17 × 21 in at 300 dpi
Reference270_Minister_wearing_specta_1850

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