Local Art Alert: Early Photography at The Met

Summary

All Of It: Local Art Alert – Early Photography at The Met

Episode Release Date: July 3, 2025
Host: Alison Stewart
Guest: Jeff Rosenheim, Curator of "New American Photography 1839-1910" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Introduction and Series Overview

In this episode of All Of It, hosted by Alison Stewart, the focus shifts to the rich history of early American photography showcased at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Celebrating the culmination of their 100 Pieces of Art series, WNYC brings together insights from experts on must-see artworks across New York City. Alison invites listeners to explore the full list of 100 art pieces and engage with the community through their Art100 website and Instagram page.

The Metropolitan Museum Exhibit: "New American Photography 1839-1910"

Alison Stewart introduces the centerpiece of the episode: the "New American Photography 1839-1910" exhibit at The Met. This exhibition features over 250 photographs, many of which have never been publicly displayed before. The show opened in April and will run until July 20th.

Jeff Rosenheim, the curator, shares his approach to selecting photographs for the exhibit:

“I think I just followed my eye and my heart. These are pictures that left the studios from the beginning of photography and went into the hands of the sitters, and they've been moving through space ever since then.”
(02:16)

Rosenheim highlights the serendipitous acquisition of these photographs by a Connecticut collector over the past five decades, emphasizing the timing of the exhibit's launch just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Historical Photography Formats: Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, and Tintypes

The conversation delves into the technical aspects of early photography. Alison asks Rosenheim to explain the differences between daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes.

Rosenheim provides a comprehensive overview:

“Louis Daguerre invented photography in France in the early 1830s... a daguerreotype is simply a picture made using Daguerre's process. It's a sheet of copper with a silver surface on it... Oliver Wendell Holmes called it a mirror with a memory.”
(03:16)

He continues to describe ambrotypes and tintypes, clarifying:

“Tintypes were invented in the U.S. and are actually silver images on iron sheets, also called ferrotypes. There's no enlarging, similar to Polaroids.”
(03:37)

Notable Photographs in the Exhibit

Man with Chicken

Alison brings up a unique photograph titled "Guy with Chicken". Rosenheim explains:

“It's an occupational portrait of a young man with freckles... he chose to photograph himself with his favorite rooster. It showcases the bond between man and his barnyard animal.”
(08:35)

This daguerreotype, made around 1855, captures the gentleman's relationship with his pet chicken, highlighting personal and cultural connections of the era.

African American Woman with a Beautiful Hat

Another striking image features an African American woman adorned with a tignon (a headscarf):

“Free women of color in Louisiana had to wrap their hair to distinguish themselves from enslaved women. They transformed this punitive measure into a beautiful fashion statement.”
(09:53)

This hand-colored daguerreotype not only serves as a portrait but also as a commentary on societal norms and resilience.

Alice Austin: A Pioneering Female Photographer

The exhibit honors Alice Austin, a Staten Island native who documented her community and personal life extensively. Rosenheim praises her work:

“Alice Austin took thousands of pictures of her friends, family, and landscapes. Her photograph of Lake Mahopac captures a serene summer day, reflecting her deep connection to her surroundings.”
(11:54)

Despite her prolific contributions, Austin remains underrecognized, with her work recently being collected by the Staten Island Historical Society and featured in an upcoming publication.

Squirrel Photographs

Alison and Rosenheim discuss photographs featuring squirrels, revealing the quirky aspects of early photography:

“People kept pet squirrels in the 19th century. The photograph of the man with the squirrel on his shoulder showcases this unusual pet choice.”
(14:37)

Rosenheim remarks on the challenges and charm of photographing such subjects:

“Photographing wild animals like squirrels was no easy task, especially with the long exposure times required.”
(14:45)

The Role of Photography in Society

Photography and Abolitionism

The exhibit includes powerful images documenting the horrors of slavery, serving as potent abolitionist propaganda. A notable photograph shows an escaped enslaved man with a scarred back:

“This individual wanted to fight for freedom and ended up having his back scarred, symbolizing the brutality of slavery. His photograph was widely circulated to garner support for the Union cause.”
(07:16)

Accessibility through Tintypes

Rosenheim emphasizes the democratizing nature of tintypes:

“Tintypes were inexpensive and accessible, allowing more individuals to have their likeness captured. Unlike other formats, tintypes didn’t require negatives, making them more equitable.”
(16:02)

This accessibility meant that a broader cross-section of society could participate in and benefit from the burgeoning medium of photography.

Continued Love for Pet Photography

The enduring trend of photographing pets is also discussed:

“People have always loved their animals, and photography has been a means to capture these beloved companions. In the exhibit, there are numerous pet portraits, particularly of dogs.”
(14:07)

Rosenheim notes the absence of cats in the exhibit, humorously attributing it to their elusive nature during long exposure times.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the conversation wraps up, Rosenheim invites visitors to spend additional time appreciating the tintypes and early photographic techniques showcased in the exhibit:

“Tintypes offer a unique poetic and visual language that’s often overlooked in fine art museums. They provide insights into everyday lives that other formats don’t capture.”
(16:06)

Alison encourages listeners to visit the exhibit before its closing on July 20th and to explore the full 100 Pieces of Art series for a deeper appreciation of New York City's cultural landscape.

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Production Credits: Andrea Duncan Mao, Kate Hines, Jordan Loff, Simon Close, El Malik Anderson, and Luke Green.
Additional Acknowledgments: Bonnie Yochelson, Staten Island Historical Society, and the upcoming publication on Alice Austin.

Stay Connected: For more details on the 100 art pieces and to access supplementary materials, visit wnyc.org/art100 and follow WNYC on Instagram at @WNYC.

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This summary is intended for those who have not listened to the episode, providing a comprehensive overview of the discussions and insights shared between Alison Stewart and Jeff Rosenheim.

Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wtf. Welcome to wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Today we're talking about art to celebrate the culmination of our 100 pieces of art series. 10 experts on art came on our show to share their top 10 don't miss works of art around the city. You can listen to all of those conversations and see the full list of 100 suggestions and see the full list of 100 suggestions and where to see [e-mail] art100 and you can go to our Instagram of NYC to see our cheat sheet as well. And when you do, you'll see that many of the pieces on the list can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is also where you'll find the subject of our next conversation about the exhibit Called the New American Photography 1839-1910, it includes more than 250 photographs from the earliest days of the medium. Many of these photos had never been seen by the public before. The show opened in April. It will be open until July 20th. And when Jeff Rosenheim joined me on the show to talk about it, I started by asking the curator how he decided which photographs to include in the exhibit.

[Jeff Rosenheim]

I think I just followed my eye and my heart. These are pictures that left the studios from the beginning of photography and went into the hands of the sitters, and they've been moving through space ever since then. And they were gathered over the last 50 years by a collector in Connecticut. I knew some of them, but I had this great opportunity right before COVID began to bring this collection to the museum, and we've been waiting for the right time to put them on the wall.

[Alison Stewart]

When you don't know who took the photograph or what steps are taken to determine the photographer, does it matter?

[Jeff Rosenheim]

It does matter, but this is a show that tempers what we know and what we don't know in equal way. And what I like is that when we don't know the maker, we try to figure out something about why the picture was made. What choices did the sitter have if it's a portrait in how to present themselves? Do they look at the camera? Do they look away? How do they dress? Do they bring something from their work? Do they bring their children? Do they bring their pet? How do you represent yourself psychologically? It's very, very interesting. And then how do we respond to it? That was the challenge.

[Alison Stewart]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

Horrible picture.

[Alison Stewart]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

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]

Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

Do you know who that is?

[Jeff Rosenheim]

Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

All right, tell us about the guy with chicken.

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

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]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

Tell us about the history of it.

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

True, of course.

[Alison Stewart]

Lots of pictures of pets in the show.

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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

[Alison Stewart]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

Glad you answered that.

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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

[Alison Stewart]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

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

[Jeff Rosenheim]

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]

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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