My Daguerreotype Boyfriend

The Bowdoin College Tug of War Team, 1891. From top left,  John Horne, James Merriman, George Mahoney, Jonathan Cilley.

Note the sweet one-armed leather gear. All the better for tugging?

Submitted by Molly S. 

laphamsquarterly:

Hm. I have new concerns about my Daguerreotype boyfriends.

thisistheverge:

Is this shopped? Truth, lies, and art before and after Photoshop

Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, reminds us that yes, we have seen quite a few ‘shops in our time. Tracing the practice through the centuries, the unprecedented collection shows that not only has manipulation been around since the beginning of the recorded image, but many of its methods and motives have remained more or less the same.

Daniel Tohill, age 27, 1908. Mugshot via the New Zealand Police Museum. Tohill was acquitted of stealing a bicycle but found guilty and sentenced to four months hard labor in prison for stealing a fur necklet.

This married father of three had two previous convictions, which included stealing from a railway shed and nabbing two ferrets. 

Henry O. Nightingale, c. 1864, age 20.

Born in England, Nightingale emigrated to America when he was five and joined the Union Army in 1861 at the age of seventeen. He was promoted to corporal after the Battle of Gettysburg. This picture was taken before he was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864 and his left arm was partially amputated. 

He was also present at Ford’s Theatre when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. 

Submitted by giovedisera

Harrison Mahone of Lunenburg County, c. 1920.

Abraham Lincoln, c. 1860. Thought to be the last beardless portrait of the soon-to-be president, this ambrotype was made for the portrait painter John Brown, who wrote: 

There are so many hard lines in his face that it becomes a mask to the inner man. His true character only shines out when in an animated conversation, or when telling an amusing tale…He is said to be a homely man; I do not think so.

Submitted by Lindsey

Alexander Blok, age 23, 1903. Russian Symbolist poet married the daughter of Dimitri Mendeleev (creator of the periodic table), joined the Revolution, and later became disillusioned by it.

Night, street and streetlight, drugstore,
The purposeless, half-dim, drab light.
For all the use live on a quarter century—
Nothing will change. There’s no way out.

You’ll die—and start all over, live twice,
Everything repeats itself, just as it was:
Night, the canal’s rippled icy surface,
The drugstore, the street, and streetlight.

Submitted by polinapol

We’re going to take a brief pause from daguerreotype boyfriends to consider a classic portrait of a daguerreotype girlfriend.

What do you think about this newly-discovered portrait of a supposed Emily Dickinson? Does the likeness hold?

laphamsquarterly:

Teenage Emily Dickinson, meet adult Emily Dickinson….maybe.

A new photograph has surfaced in Amherst that reportedly shows Emily Dickinson in her mid-twenties. Her dress is apparently out of fashion for the time,1859, but that’s in keeping with her personality: “I’m so old fashioned, Darling, that all your friends would stare.”

“Emily Dickinson gets a new look in recovered photograph” [The Guardian]

Albert Ball, decorated British flying ace during World War I. Died at the age of 20 while pursuing the brother of the infamous (and also dashing) Red Baron through a cloudbank.

Submitted by agreeablecar