America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1862

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Go directly to the collection, America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1862, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection.

America's First Look into the Camera offers portraits of authors, politicians, tradesmen, and other people in the nineteenth-century United States. These images can be used to spark biographical and critical assessments of an author's work. Other portraits can be used in creative writing projects and can prompt the analysis of the evolution of media outlets from their origins in the 1830s.

Walt Whitman and the Picture Gallery

In a July 2, 1846, edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, editor Walt Whitman described daguerreotype portraits as a spectacle:

In whatever direction you turn your peering gaze, you see naught but human faces! There they stretch, from floor to ceiling--hundreds of them. Ah! what tales might those pictures tell if their mute lips had the power of speech! How romance then, would be infinitely outdone by fact.

Mathew Brady's Dagguerreian Gallery.

Whitman celebrated the connection that a viewer has with the subject of a portrait and noted, "An electric chain seems to vibrate . . . between our brain and him or her preserved there so well by the limner's cunning. Time, space, both are annihilated, and we identify the semblance with the reality." Whitman made reference, again, to this spectacle in his poem, "My Picture Gallery."

In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix'd house,
It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other;
Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories!
Here the tableaus of life, and here the goupings of death;
Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself,
With finger rais'd he points to the prodigal pictures.

• In "My Picture Gallery," what does the metaphor of the "little house" represent?
• What does the metaphor of the pictures represent? Why are they described as "prodigal"?

Whitman's biographer, David S. Reynolds, observed in Walt Whitman's America, that "photography was an essential metaphor behind [Whitman's] democratic aesthetic." This collection provides the opportunity to examine Whitman's work with an understanding of the impact of early photography in mind.

Creative Writing

Unidentified Man.

This collection can be used for creative writing projects based on an imagined visit to a daguerreian gallery. In 1840, the first commercial portrait gallery, New York's Wolcott and Johnson, used large mirrors mounted outside the studio to project as much sunlight onto the customer as possible, in a sitting that could last for as long as eight minutes. As daguerreotype technologies improved, sitting times decreased and attention to artistry increased. Photographer, Mathew Brady, achieved fame for his skill in posing his subjects, eliciting from them the desired expression, and then telling the camera operator when to take the picture. Portraitist Napoleon Sarony was known for dramatic poses made possible by an innovative posing machine with separate controls for the sitter's back, arms, head, etc. Like Brady, Sarony employed a camera operator while he elicited a pose and expression from his subject, in one case sparring with a boxer to evoke the image of a prizefighter.

Browse the collection's photographs and imagine either what it would have been like to see such images in a daguerreotype gallery or to sit for a portrait. Describe this experience as if writing about it in a letter to a friend.

• Was this the first time that you were in a daguerreian gallery? What is it like to see all of these portraits hanging on the walls?
• Which people do you recognize? Why?
• How did you pose for your portrait? What objects did you include in the picture? What clothes did you wear? Why?
• What was the photographer and the studio like?

Literary Biography

This collection contains portraits of literary figures from the nineteenth century including poet, William Cullen Bryant, authors, Samuel Goodrich, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Washington Irving, and publisher, James Brown of Little, Brown & Company. The lives of these people can be researched and serve as the basis for a biographical sketch that includes a discussion of the subject's major contribution to nineteenth-century American literature. What is the social and educational background of the writer? Do you think that the writer's personal life is reflected in his or her work? If so, to what extent does it influence the story or poem? Does it play out in a semi-autobiographical fashion or is it merely reflected in the work's themes?

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Ichabod Crane

Ichabod Crane.

Authors often choose names for their characters that reinforce certain qualities about them. When Washington Irving wrote his classic tale, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," he named the protagonist, terrorized by the Headless Horseman, Ichabod Crane. This collection, however, contains a portrait of the real Ichabod Crane, a U.S. Army colonel who Irving met when the soldier was stationed in Sackett's Harbor, New York during the War of 1812.

Washington Irving.

• How does the portrait of the real Ichabod Crane compare to the author's description of his protagonist?
• When you hear the name, "Ichabod Crane," what types of qualities do you imagine this person possessing? Why?
• Do you think that these qualities can be attributed to the person in the portrait, to Irving's character, or to Walt Disney's portrayal of the protagonist?
• Do you think that the character would be different if his name was "John Smith" or "Thomas Wintergreen"?
• How does the effect of a name compare to the influence of a person's appearance?
• What is the difference between the ways that characters are developed in fiction and in dramatic arts such as theater or film?
• What types of techniques are used to introduce a character?
• When is it necessary to introduce the name of a character to further the plot?
• When is it necessary to introduce the name of a character to develop the character?
• Why do you think that Irving used the name of a real person?
• What qualities do you think of in regard to your own name? Why?

Penny Papers

The New York Herald and other "penny papers" often competed with papers of integrity such as Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Greeley founded the Tribune in 1841 and provided space for intellectual discussions of politics, social reform, and news. Searches on editor and journalist provide portraits of newspapermen such as Horace Greeley, James Gordon Bennett, and members of the New York Tribune editorial staff. A search on news also results in an 1853 image of a man stranded on a log in Niagara Falls that provides an early example of a news photograph.

James Gordon Bennett.

Horace Greeley.

What sort of information does this news photograph of Niagara Falls convey to the viewer? Why do you think that Greeley posed with a copy of a newspaper on his lap? Why do you think that Bennett did not appear holding a paper? Do you think that these portraits are more similar to the collection's occupational portraits or its presidential portraits? Do you find sensational newspapers today similar to the "penny papers" of the nineteenth century? Do you think that certain media outlets attempt to establish an audience through sensational stories? Which forms of reporting (radio, print, television) are more sensational than others? What do you think are the potential benefits and potential dangers of sensational reporting?