Subject: RE: wanted,banjoman photo c1800s Era.
From:
JohnInKansas
Date: 21 Nov 07 - 05:58 AM
There are a very few crude "photos" dating to ~1836, but the art didn't take off until around 1840. Some photos of "landscape scenes" from 1840 - 1844 show incredible detail, but were mostly "proof of concept" kinds of things.
The earliest intentional photo of a living person that I've found reference to was close to 1840. A few of the earlier landscape pictures showed some artifacts of human/animal presence where parts of a person were accidentally stationary long enough to register in the photo, or where large animals (horses) were far enough away that minor motions didn't remove them from the exposure.
Photography was fairly widely used from around 1850 or so, still with fairly long exposure times. Subjects were generally chosen for novelty and inertness, so banjo players might have been included from the mid-1800s (1850 and on ;>). The problem is finding a photo of a wanted subject - without knowing if one actually exists.
It would be expected that there might have been a player in the enormous number of US Civil War photos that have survived; but I haven't found one - or seen one that was memorable.
By the time exposure times were reduced to a few seconds (1870s?), more compatible with living subjects, the principal "new use" seems to have been "educational photos for artists" (especially around Paris). If a naked lady would fit into the plan, some very old ones are fairly easy to find; but of course they don't usually show much of the costumes/dress of the period.
A more modern photo of someone who affects period dress probably would be easier to find than an authentic old photo.
John
|
sj
