Alison Stewart (3:06)

You learn a lot in this exhibit. You learn phrases and terms. Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes. Tintypes were invented in the U.S. i learned. Would you explain the difference between those three?

Jeff Rosenheim (3:16)

Sure. So the first language that we have to learn about photography is this strange word daguerreotype. So Louis Daguerre invented photography in France in the early 1830s, and that process came to the US in September of 1839. And the daguerreotype is simply a picture made using Daguerre's process. It's a sheet of copper with a silver surface on it, and it's made light sensitive. And when you left the studio, you left with the copper plate with your image on it. Oliver Wendell Holmes called a mirror with a memory because when you hold it in the wrong way, you see yourself not the subject. An ambrotype is just the next development of format. In the silver image is on a sheet of glass. And a tintype, which is a misnomer, is a silver image on a sheet of iron, also called a ferrotype, but we call them, for whatever reason, tintypes. And there's no tin in it at all, but there's no enlarging. And the object that was in the camera is in the hands of the person who had it made. Or if you were to acquire it, you acquired it. But there's no negative. It's like a Polaroid more than anything else.

Alison Stewart (4:37)

It's interesting because some of the photos in the exhibit are really tiny, some are much larger. What determined the scale of the photograph?

Jeff Rosenheim (4:45)

Sure, at the beginning it was just a technically hard thing to make a picture any size. And it was much easier to start small because the amount of light that to be put through the lens and onto the plate, at the beginning, it was tens of minutes long. And for a portrait, that's a hard. How many of us can sit still and not blink for tens of minutes? But eventually by around 1860, it was down to a second or a fraction of a second, and the size did matter. It was harder to make larger size pictures. So at the beginning, things were not much larger than a sheet of paper at their largest and often down to something half the size size of most people's mobile phones. We are trained today to look at pictures on our phones and they're small and we love them because we can hold them in our hands. Part of the problem with looking at the history of photography is that generally in museums, we can't hold them in our hands. But just like our phones, if we put a phone on the wall and kept someone two feet away, you wouldn't enjoy it so much. You want to hold it in your hands. So this was a handheld medium until after. Until about the Civil War time. So the 1860s, who were photographers when it first started? Right. I know. You asked me, how do I know who made them and how? We know. So often the photographer left their mark on the velvet pad, in a cased photograph, or in a paper print photograph on the back of the card or even on the bottom edge of the card mount would be their name. They would brand their. Their materials because they wanted business. This was a profession. It was a psychologically interesting profession because as the country was maturing and people started moving to the states, one of the new occupations was photographer. And so they wanted it to be known. Unfortunately, a lot of that has been lost. And so I would say the vast majority of the pictures, even the best ones, we don't know who made them. We may one day be able to find out. Someone might have a picture with a similar subject, and we know the name of the studio, but we have to be content, at least for now, in that unknowingness, and we have to accept it. And that's interesting.

Alison Stewart (7:08)

The photos document the horror of slavery. There's a very famous photo of an enslaved man with a very scarred back.

Jeff Rosenheim (7:14)

Horrible picture.

Alison Stewart (7:16)

How can we tell? These photos were meant to promote abolitionism.

Jeff Rosenheim (7:20)

Right. So the circulation of pictures during the war and in the immediate years thereafter, the abolitionists who were fighting to create a groundswell of support for the war effort and to create. To make change. So those pictures were published in our show in Harper's in 1863. They circulated as wood cuts and as physical silver print objects. The one that you mentioned is one of the hardest pictures to look at. That individual had escaped bondage in Mississippi and made his way into a Union encampment in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And when he wanted to join the Union effort, he wanted to be a soldier, to fight for his brothers and sisters, to fight for freedom, to end slavery. He had a physical and he removed his shirt, thus showing his back. And it was made in the Union encampment and it was sent all across the country. That is powerful advocacy for change.

Alison Stewart (8:28)

I'm going to get you to comment on a couple of the pictures I have here. My producer says Guy with chicken?

Jeff Rosenheim (8:33)

Yeah.

Alison Stewart (8:34)

Do you know who that is?

Jeff Rosenheim (8:35)

Yeah.

Alison Stewart (8:35)

All right, tell us about the guy with chicken.

Jeff Rosenheim (8:37)

So it's an occupational portrait of a young man with freckles. It's a daguerreotype. It's about the size, Maybe it's about 3 inches tall. It has unbelievable resolution. And this individual decided to pose, perhaps for his very first likeness, first work of art in the photographic realm. And he chose to photograph himself to be seen with clearly his favorite rooster. And any of us who have actually tried to hold a chicken, it's very hard unless that chicken has grown up with you. And I have a feeling that the chicken is so calm and is standing there and he really knows how to hold it. It's a fascinating portrait, and I don't know anything about it. I don't know when it was made. I don't know where it was made. I know it was made around 1855, but it's this. It's the residue of a relationship between a man and a common barnyard animal. But they clearly are friends. That comes through in the picture.

Alison Stewart (9:46)

There's also this picture of African American woman wearing sort of a beautiful hat. Yes, there's a lot to this picture.

Jeff Rosenheim (9:53)

Yes.

Alison Stewart (9:53)

Tell us about the history of it.

Jeff Rosenheim (9:55)

Yes. So this is a picture about the same size, a little over 3 inches. It's also a daguerreotype. And a black woman is posing for her own likeness wearing a tignon, which is the name French kind of word to describe a headscarf. And it's been beautifully hand colored. Just like the rooster is hand colored, the tinon has this beautiful brown green color. She is looking directly at the camera. In Louisiana, in the Spanish colonial period and the French colonial period, free women of color had to wrap their hair to distinguish them from enslaved women. And this was to punish them in a certain sense. And yet these women turned what was a bitter reality and law into this beautiful piece of fashion. And she owns it. And it's just an extraordinary object. We don't know that was made in Louisiana, but it seems likely. And I think it's one of the stunning pictures in this collection, and it's a masterpiece.

Alison Stewart (11:09)

You mentioned adding color. When did color come into it?

Jeff Rosenheim (11:12)

So we didn't have color photography until the first decade of the 20th century, so soon after photography's birth. By the mid 18, let's say about 1845, sitters asked to have a little bit of rouge added to their cheeks and a little bit of coloring on their couture. And so photography is added by hand onto the surface of the picture. And that's true all the way through from 1839 or early 1840s all the way through the end of the century. We didn't have color until the autochrome process, which is the first decade of the 20th century.

Alison Stewart (11:48)

One female photographer is featured in the exhibit, Alice Austin, who's right, from Staten Island. What was special about her work?

Jeff Rosenheim (11:54)

So Alice Austin grew up in Staten island and she documented her lives. She took her camera everywhere. She made thousands of pictures in Staten island of her community, of her friends and family, of her lovers, and she also worked in upstate New York. And this is a picture made on Lake Mahopac in Putnam county, so just about 60 miles north of the city. What I love it is the relaxing scene of figures on a summer day. It's a landscape with the water in the background. And what we know about Alice Austin is. Well, not enough people know about Alice Austin and her achievement, but it's been collected by the Staten Island Historical Society. And there's going to be a new book out by my first boss in New York City. I'm going to throw it to her. Bonnie Yochelson, who I work with at the museum in the city of New York, is about to publish a book in June and you should have her on your show like that.

Alison Stewart (12:59)

He booked us a segment. Gotta love it. Were female photographers frequent?

Jeff Rosenheim (13:05)

Yeah. So as we've mentioned, most of the pictures are by unknown makers. So maybe we have many, many more. There are about three or four known women artists in this exhibition, but every studio was often operated by men and women. And the women generally used initials to describe their names for reasons that authors, women authors in the 19th century generally, or even earlier, had to hide their identity to be published. In photography, it was slightly different, but women were very much colorists and co owners of studios. And there was a good number of women makers as the century progressed. And as a professor, I know that the majority of the students studying photography, at least in the US are women. It is an empowering field of practice.

Alison Stewart (14:07)

Jeff, I want to get your opinion about this. Some things never change. People will take pictures of their pets.

Jeff Rosenheim (14:14)

True, of course.

Alison Stewart (14:15)

Lots of pictures of pets in the show.

Jeff Rosenheim (14:17)

Many, many, many. One, because people love their animals and two, because at least for dogs, no cats in the show, I'm sorry to say, but dogs slept a lot. And for photography, where we have a long exposure time, it's a perfect subject.

Alison Stewart (14:39)

Well, one of our producers, Jordan, was obsessed with the squirrel.

Jeff Rosenheim (14:42)

The man with squirrel. Oh my gosh I forgot the squirrel.

Alison Stewart (14:45)

Could you please explain the man with the squirrel? It's been.

Jeff Rosenheim (14:47)

I cannot explain the man with the squirrel. All I can tell you is that there are two squirrels in the show. Two different photographs made in different processes of squirrels. It turns out that I had to research this, that people kept pet squirrels. And especially in the 19th century, evidently they're loving the one of the man with the squirrel on his shoulder. It's a little tiny string like you would wrap newspapers in. And there it is. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I couldn't wait to put it on the wall. Thank you for bringing it up. I will say this. The other picture of the squirrel is. The squirrel is sitting on a studio table eating some acorns. Now, that was not an easy picture to be made. Not that any picture is easy to be made except for today, where it's made whether we want it to want it to be made or not. But it was very interesting to try to photograph, you know, wild animals. Squirrels are essentially a wild animal, although people kept them as pets.

Alison Stewart (15:53)

Glad you answered that.

Jeff Rosenheim (15:55)

Sorry, I couldn't tell why. The why is the great thing.

Alison Stewart (15:58)

You gave us a good reason. People kept pep squirrels. Kept pet squirrels.

Jeff Rosenheim (16:01)

Yeah.

Alison Stewart (16:02)

Is there one part of the exhibit you'd like people to spend an extra few minutes?

Jeff Rosenheim (16:06)

Well, so you mentioned tint types. We didn't invent photography here. The Americans didn't invent photography in the 19th century. It was invented in England and France, but we took it on as our own. And when the tintype is invented, it's a peculiarly wonderful medium. It's inexpensive, its language, it has its own poetics. And tintypes are generally not respected in the field of photography. Paper print photography and daguerreotypes and a little bit of ambrotypes. Tintypes were basically something that you did not see in a fine art museum. I love these pictures. That's where the squirrels are. And there are also many, many individuals who had otherwise not been able to afford their own likenesses. It's a very equitable. The tintype is a very equitable medium. So basically we see things that do not appear in any of the other formats. And so I kind of very, very taken by that. But I love the earliest photographs and I love the beautiful stereographs and. And the paper prints.

Alison Stewart (17:20)

That was my conversation with Jeff Rosenheim, curator of the exhibit the new American Photography, 1839-1910. You can catch it until July 20th. And that is all of it for today. All of it is produced by Andrea Duncan Mao, Kate Hines, Jordan loff, Simon Close, El Malik Anderson and Luke Green. The all of It 100 Pieces of Art series featured in today's show was produced by Luke and myself. Head to wnyc.com for the full series and the list of all 100 works of art around the city. And head to our Instagram Olivet WNYC for a little cheat sheet you can take with you. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Our engineer is Juliana Fonda. Luscious Jackson does our music. If you missed any segments this week, catch up by listening to our podcast, available on your podcast platform of choice. If you like what you hear, please leave us a great rating. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

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