In "The Wizard of Oz", Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz is symbolized by a shift from black and white to Technicolor. This camera was one of several used to film the Oz scenes.
Invented in 1932, the Technicolor camera recorded on three separate negatives--red, blue and green--which were then combined to develop a full-color positive print. The box encasing the camera, a "blimp," muffled the machine's sound during filming.
The Early Color Cinema Equipment Collection [COLL.PHOTOS.000039] includes equipment, media and ephemera related to color motion pictures from the birth of the cinema to the mid twentieth century. This collection is comprised of 5 motion picture cameras, 3 movie projectors, more than 34 pieces of editing and other apparatus, more than 60 pieces of early color film and two notebooks illustrating the Technicolor process.
Reproducing natural color on film had been an industry goal since the earliest days of motion picture production, but it took several decades to perfect a technology for making movies in color. Motion picture directors often toned or hand-tinted monochromatic film in the industry’s early days to add life and emotion to their productions. Though movie producers continued to use toning and tinting, these costly and inefficient processes could never produce the full range of color that movie cameras failed to record. Therefore, innovators increasingly focused on the use of color filters during capture and projection to reproduce color detail.
Danish-American inventor August Plahn built and patented a camera and projector that split motion picture images through three color lenses using 70mm film. When the film, with three images printed across its width, was projected through the same colored filters, movies’ natural color was restored. The collection includes forty five short lengths of processed film and documents related to Plahn’s work as well as one camera, three projector heads and over seventy-five pieces of apparatus used by the engineer.
While Plahn had little success marketing his inventions, the Boston-based Technicolor Corporation effectively marketed their similar technology to become the industry standard. The color cinema collection includes four Technicolor cameras as well as over twenty-five pieces of equipment related to the Technicolor process and a book of photographs illustrating Technicolor film processing in a train car.
The Society of Motion Picture Engineers, the industry’s leading trade group, donated examples of a number of other early color film technologies, including Prizma, Kelley-line screen, Krayn Screen, Naturalcolor, Multicolor and Morgana color processes.
This finding aid is one in a series documenting the PHC’s Early Cinema Collection [COLL.PHOTOS.000018]. The cinema-related objects cover the range of technological innovation and popular appeal that defined the motion picture industry during a period in which it became the premier form of mass communication in American life, roughly 1885-1930. See also finding aids for Early Sound Cinema [COLL.PHOTOS.000040], Early Cinema Equipment [COLL.PHOTOS.000037], Early Cinema Film and Ephemera [COLL.PHOTOS.000038] and the Gatewood Dunston Collection [COLL.PHOTOS.000021].
Paper-mounted tintype studio portrait of four two pairs of men in boxing stance and another man, in a suit, standind between them; on verso, in pencil, "M Stimson / 1894."
Description
The NMAH Photo History Collection (PHC) has over 3000 tintype photographs dating from the beginnings of the process in 1856 to the present. ‘Tintype’ was coined and became the favored name.
Tintypes in the PHC are found in albums, the Kaynor Union Case collection and as individual photographs. The original tintype process patent was assigned to William and Peter Neff in 1856. William Neff died a short time later, but his son Peter, who named the process Melainotype, continued on with his work. The earliest tintypes in the PHC are a group of more than thirty Peter Neff Melainotypes, some of which date back to 1856 and contain notes written by Peter Neff. Shortly after the Melainotype, Victor Griswold introduced a very similar process on thinner, lighter iron plates and called them Ferrotypes. The PHC has tintypes ranging from rare large images between 5”x7” and 10”x12”down to small images cut to 6mm diameter to fit jewelry. The Melainotypes are between 1/6 plate and 4”x5” in size and many have indistinct images. There are also unexposed Melainotype plates including a pack of 1/6 plates and large whole-plates with four decorated oval borders that were designed to be cut into smaller quarter plates after exposure.
The great majority of tintype photographs are studio portraits, including the very popular ‘Gem’ size (about ¾” x 1”). Almost every gem tintype in the PHC is an individual head and shoulders portraits, the only exceptions seen being a full length portrait and a head and shoulders portrait of a couple. Most of these gem portraits are in small gem albums designed to hold two to six gems per page. However, several gems are mounted on cartes-de-visite (CDV) size cards and set in specifically designed album pages. Some of these CDV mounted gems are in elaborate miniature frames attached to the card. The tintypes larger than gem size show a greater variety of subject matter, but still with a main focus on individual portraits, this is especially true of the smaller 1/16 and 1/9 plate images. Outdoor tintypes are rare. Of the few in the PHC, the most common outdoor subjects noted are people standing in front of their homes and photographs of people proudly standing with, or sitting on, their horse or horses and buggy. One of the largest tintypes is a 9”x 7” outdoor view of a row of townhouses with a couple standing on one of the balconies. There is also an outdoor tintype of men fishing along with another of their days catch.
One common subject in tintype photography, as noted in text books, is the civil war soldier. The durability of the tintype meant that photographs taken in the field could be sent home. However, this category of tintype is not well represented in the PHC, with less than thirty noted due to the fact that the majority of the Smithsonian’s Civil War tintypes are located mainly in the Military History Collection. Most of the PHC examples of Civil War tintypes are in the Kaynor collection of cased images.
A few of the tintypes in the PHC are hand colored. This coloring varies from light tinting of faces and hands to heavy overpainting that obscures the underlying tintype image. A number of the tintypes (about 30) depict people with the apparatus of their occupations. Some are posed studio shots and others appear to be photographs of people at their place of work. Among the occupational views are images of a doctor, grocery deliveryman, weavers, fireman, ice delivery man, craftsman, cobbler, shoe shiners, mail carrier, surveyor, pipe liners and other tintypes of people wearing work clothes and posing with tools. These include a unique full-length gem tintype of a man in work apron with a saw.
Tintype full-length studio portrait of a woman dressed as a nun holding a crucifix and leaning on a piece of furniture.
Description
The NMAH Photo History Collection (PHC) has over 3000 tintype photographs dating from the beginnings of the process in 1856 to the present. ‘Tintype’ was coined and became the favored name.
Tintypes in the PHC are found in albums, the Kaynor Union Case collection and as individual photographs. The original tintype process patent was assigned to William and Peter Neff in 1856. William Neff died a short time later, but his son Peter, who named the process Melainotype, continued on with his work. The earliest tintypes in the PHC are a group of more than thirty Peter Neff Melainotypes, some of which date back to 1856 and contain notes written by Peter Neff. Shortly after the Melainotype, Victor Griswold introduced a very similar process on thinner, lighter iron plates and called them Ferrotypes. The PHC has tintypes ranging from rare large images between 5”x7” and 10”x12”down to small images cut to 6mm diameter to fit jewelry. The Melainotypes are between 1/6 plate and 4”x5” in size and many have indistinct images. There are also unexposed Melainotype plates including a pack of 1/6 plates and large whole-plates with four decorated oval borders that were designed to be cut into smaller quarter plates after exposure.
The great majority of tintype photographs are studio portraits, including the very popular ‘Gem’ size (about ¾” x 1”). Almost every gem tintype in the PHC is an individual head and shoulders portraits, the only exceptions seen being a full length portrait and a head and shoulders portrait of a couple. Most of these gem portraits are in small gem albums designed to hold two to six gems per page. However, several gems are mounted on cartes-de-visite (CDV) size cards and set in specifically designed album pages. Some of these CDV mounted gems are in elaborate miniature frames attached to the card. The tintypes larger than gem size show a greater variety of subject matter, but still with a main focus on individual portraits, this is especially true of the smaller 1/16 and 1/9 plate images. Outdoor tintypes are rare. Of the few in the PHC, the most common outdoor subjects noted are people standing in front of their homes and photographs of people proudly standing with, or sitting on, their horse or horses and buggy. One of the largest tintypes is a 9”x 7” outdoor view of a row of townhouses with a couple standing on one of the balconies. There is also an outdoor tintype of men fishing along with another of their days catch.
One common subject in tintype photography, as noted in text books, is the civil war soldier. The durability of the tintype meant that photographs taken in the field could be sent home. However, this category of tintype is not well represented in the PHC, with less than thirty noted due to the fact that the majority of the Smithsonian’s Civil War tintypes are located mainly in the Military History Collection. Most of the PHC examples of Civil War tintypes are in the Kaynor collection of cased images.
A few of the tintypes in the PHC are hand colored. This coloring varies from light tinting of faces and hands to heavy overpainting that obscures the underlying tintype image. A number of the tintypes (about 30) depict people with the apparatus of their occupations. Some are posed studio shots and others appear to be photographs of people at their place of work. Among the occupational views are images of a doctor, grocery deliveryman, weavers, fireman, ice delivery man, craftsman, cobbler, shoe shiners, mail carrier, surveyor, pipe liners and other tintypes of people wearing work clothes and posing with tools. These include a unique full-length gem tintype of a man in work apron with a saw.
Silver print of an untitled Ray K. Metzker photograph with abstract composition.
Description
In the collection of the National Museum of American History there are twelve photographic works by the American photographer Ray K. Metzker (1931). These pieces by Metzker were acquired by the Smithsonian in 1970 after they were on display in the “Persistence of Vision” exhibition at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Metzker’s photographs range from depictions of urban street scenes to abstraction, and vary in size from 8x10 inch prints to 30x32 inch assembled pieces of over one hundred individual photographs.
After working as an assistant for various portrait and commercial photography studios, Metzker enrolled as a student at the Illinois Institute of Design in 1956. Founded by former Bauhaus instructor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in 1937, the Illinois Institute of Design’s faculty included influential photographers such as Harry Callahan (see catalog numbers PG69.40.01-10), Aaron Siskind (see catalog numbers PG69.114.01-10), and Frederick Sommer. Metzker has often cited these instructors as having a great impact on his artistic outlook and passion for photography. In a 1983 conversation with curator Anne Tucker, Metzker said, “their experience and dedication is something you had to respect, and they communicated to me how really beautiful and of what great meaning a photograph or photography could be. They made photography a noble endeavor.” While at the Illinois Institute of Design, Metzker became fascinated with the urban environment of Chicago, which became the subject matter for most of his early photographs. After graduation, Metzker’s experimental methods were noticed by curators and included in exhibitions such as the “Persistence of Vision,” where he was included with fellow graduates such as photographer John Wood.
Metzker’s work utilizes the technical components of the medium of photography to create new and unique imagery. Instead of using the camera to create a traditional single frame photograph, Metzker has been known to use an entire roll of film to create one composite image. This is seen in his photograph Untitled Composite Print (Signs, Trucks, etc.), PG69.205.1. In this example, Metzker photographs a series of actions instead of a singular event. Metzker offers the viewer information about a specific location over a span of time while simultaneously abstracting the image by overlapping the individual film frames. Another demonstration of this time-based aspect of Metzker’s work is Untitled (Four Frames and a Film Strip) PG69.205.4, where various pedestrians are seen passing through the same environment throughout the day. Created in 1964, this photograph breaks the traditional rectangular format entirely with multiple frames printed on top of each other and the orientation of the print skewed to create a diagonal composition.
Metzker constantly tries to invent new ways to investigate the formal aspects of photography. This has led him to experiment with multiple camera formats and a variety of different printing methods. He has been known to spend extensive time in the darkroom, experimenting with processes that may never lead to a complete finished project. Even when Metzker depicts more conventional subject matter, such as a figure or cityscape, he eliminates information in the photograph to focus on light and shadow, line and form. An example of this is his 1963 photograph Untitled (Stripe on Pavement) PG69.205.2. Metzker photographs a segment of a city crosswalk, but through perspective and composition, creates an image that more closely resembles an abstract gestural mark than a typical city scene.
Metzker is an important figure to study in regards to evaluating the influence that Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Illinois Institute of Design had on the genre of American street photography in the 1960s. The Bauhaus tradition of experimentation can be seen throughout much of Metzker’s work. For Metzker, photography is a process that involves multiple steps before the final image is created.
Gelatin silver print, panorama. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Group of thirty people, all ages and sexes, standing on a suburban street corner. One story, tract homes in background with stone yards. Two cars on the street in the back, right edge of photograph. A dog facing away from the camera in the front, right hand corner.
Description
The Anne Noggle collection in the Photographic History Collection consists of four panoramic photographs signed and dated between 1969 and 1972. The subjects are: a neighborhood group, an elderly woman in a kitchen, a row of thirty-three mailboxes and two waitresses behind a lunch counter. The negatives were made using a Panon 35mm camera.
Anne Noggle was born in 1922 in Evanston, IL and spent her formative years living there with her mother and sister—two women who would become important characters in Noggle’s photography.
Prior to her photography career, Noggle led a markedly different life. In 1940, with her student pilot license in hand, she became a pilot and eventually a flight instructor as a Women’s Air Force Service Pilot (WASP) in World War II. At the conclusion of the war, Noggle taught flying, joined an aerial circus and worked as a crop duster. Art garnered Noggle’s attention while she was on active duty in the U.S. Air Force in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Stationed in Paris, she spent much of her free time at the Louvre. Forced into early retirement due to emphysema caused by crop dusting, Noggle registered for college as an art history major at the University of New Mexico in 1959, at the age of thirty-eight.
Anne Noggle’s early photographs utilize the 35mm Panon camera. Most of these 140° photographs are of an aging woman and her surroundings. In Janice Zita Grover’s introduction to Silver Lining: Photographs by Anne Noggle, she writes that the panoramic format is characteristic “to distort space in such a way that subjects distant from the lens appear flattened against deep space; between this effect and the necessity for reading the image side to side, the format gets as close as the still camera can to the implied narrative unfolding of a panoramic opening shot in a film.”
By the early 1970s, however, Noggle moved on to wide-angle portraits featuring herself, her mother, sister and her mother’s friends. It is for these photographs that Noggle is most known. Her interest in women and the aging process is exemplified by self-portraits of Noggle’s own face-lifts and images of her aging body.
Noggle has been awarded two NEA grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Unmounted silver print by Berenice Abbott, "James Joyce." Portrait of James Joyce, well-known twentieth century Irish novelist. Photograph depicts male figure seated in armchair, one hand resting on his lap while the arm in the lower right of the photograph is leaning on the arm of the chair. Man is wearing a jacket and tie, with two rings on the hand in the bottom right and a cane in the bottom left of the photograph. Portrait is ¾ view, with subject looking to the right and slightly up; head in top center of photograph. Verso: Stamp, "Photograph, Berenice Abbott, Maine 04406;" "26" in bottom left.
Description
During the 1920s, Berenice Abbott was one of the premier portrait photographers of Paris, her only competitor was the equally well-known Dada Surrealist Man Ray who had served as her mentor and employer before she launched her own career. An American expatriate, Abbott enjoyed the company of some of the great twentieth century writers and artists, photographing individuals such as Jean Cocteau, Peggy Guggenheim and James Joyce. One of the critical elements of Abbott’s portraiture was a desire to neither enhance nor interfere with the sitter. She instead wished to allow the personality of her subject to dictate the form of the photograph, and would often sit with her clients for several hours before she even began to photograph them. This straight-forward approach to photography characterized Abbott’s work for the duration of her career.
Thematically and technically, Abbott’s work can be most closely linked to documentary photographer Eugène Atget (COLL.PHOTOS.000016), who photographed Paris during the early 1900s. Abbott bought a number of his prints the first time she saw them, and even asked him to set some aside that she planned to purchase when she had enough money. After his death in 1927, Abbott took it upon herself to publicize Atget’s work to garner the recognition it deserved. It was partly for this reason she returned to the United States in 1928, hoping to find an American publisher to produce an English-language survey of Atget’s work. Amazed upon her arrival to see the changes New York had undergone during her stay in Paris, and eager to photograph the emerging new metropolis, Abbott decided to pack up her lucrative Parisian portrait business and move back to New York.
The status and prestige she enjoyed in Paris, however, did not carry over to New York. Abbott did not fit in easily with her contemporaries. She was both a woman in a male-dominated field and a documentary photographer in the midst of an American photographic world firmly rooted in Pictorialism. Abbott recalls disliking the work of both photographer Alfred Stieglitz and his then protégé Paul Strand when she first visited their exhibitions in New York. Stieglitz, along with contemporaries such as Ansel Adams and Edward Steichen, tended to romanticize the American landscape and effectively dismissed Abbott’s straight photography as she saw it. Not only was Atget’s work rejected by the Pictorialists, but a series of critical comments she made towards Stieglitz and Pictorialism cost Abbott her professional career as a photographer. Afterwards, she was unable to secure space at galleries, have her work shown at museums or continue the working relationships she had forged with a number of magazine publications.
In 1935, the Federal Art Project outfitted Abbott with equipment and a staff to complete her project to photograph New York City. The benefit of a personal staff and the freedom to determine her own subject matter was unique among federally funded artists working at that time. The resulting series of photographs, which she titled Changing New York, represent some of Abbott’s best-known work. Her photographs of New York remain one of the most important twentieth century pictorial records of New York City. Abbott went on to produce a series of photographs for varied topics, including scientific textbooks and American suburbs. When the equipment was insufficient to meet her photographic needs, as in the case of her series of science photographs, she invented the tools she needed to achieve the desired effect. In the course of doing so, Abbott patented a number of useful photographic aids throughout her career including an 8x10 patent camera (patent #2869556) and a photographer’s jacket. Abbott also spent twenty years teaching photography classes at the New School for Social Research alongside such greats as composer Aaron Copland and writer W.E.B. DuBois.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Abbott’s career was the printing of Eugène Atget’s photographs, one of the few instances in which one well-known photographer printed a large number of negatives made by another well-known photographer. The struggle to get Atget’s photographs the recognition they deserved was similar to Abbott’s efforts to chart her own path by bringing documentary photography to the fore in a Pictorialist dominated America. Though she experienced varying levels of rejection and trials in both efforts, her perseverance placed her in the position she now holds as one of the great photographers of the twentieth century.
The Bernice Abbott collection consists of sixteen silver prints. The photographs represent a range of work Abbott produced during her lifetime, including her early portraiture work in Paris, her Changing New York series, Physics and Route 1, U.S.A. series.
Silver gelatin, mounted. View of sun-lit, snow capped mountains with smaller shadowy mountains in front. Small hills and grass cover ground with two horses in foreground. Signed, ink (recto: bottom right). Verso: Adams stamp, title handwritten, ink. "RSN 82532R32" handwritten, pencil.
Description
The "natural chiaroscuro" of this scene in the Sierra Nevadas, foothills shaded in clouds and background mountains brightly lit, had Adams lingering outdoors in zero-degree weather waiting for the perfect composition to reveal itself. According to his book "Examples," Adams had the history and ecology of this region in mind when he took "Winter Sunrise." The endangered Mono Lake, which appears in the foreground, had once nurtured a lush and thriving valley, but by 1944, "practically all the water of the area flows to the homes and swimming pools of the City of Angels, and an American tragedy is here for all who care to see," according to Adams ("Examples," p.163). The photographer was equally upset by the letters "LP" which local Lone Pine High School students had painted on the left hill. Adams meticulously spotted out the graffiti in the darkroom before making his first prints, but the letters are still just visible in this print of the negative.
Ansel Adams (1902-1984) is one of the most well-known twentieth century photographers. His contributions to the field of photography include his innovation and teaching of the Zone System. The quality of his photographs set the standard by which many straight photographs are judged.
The collection in the Photographic History Collection consists of twenty-five photographs, all printed in or about 1968. All are gelatin silver, mounted, labeled and signed in ink by the photographer. The photographs include some of his most well-known images, but also portraits and objects. The selection of images was made in collaboration between the collecting curator and Adams.
Silver gelatin, mounted. Vertical view of boards with chipped white wash on them. Looks similar to a woven rug of light and dark fabrics. Substantial white wash missing in middle section. Signed, ink (recto: bottom right). Verso: Adams stamp, handwritten title.
Description
Ansel Adams (1902-1984) is one of the most well-known twentieth century photographers. His contributions to the field of photography include his innovation and teaching of the Zone System. The quality of his photographs set the standard by which many straight photographs are judged.
The collection in the Photographic History Collection consists of twenty-five photographs, all printed in or about 1968. All are gelatin silver, mounted, labeled and signed in ink by the photographer. The photographs include some of his most well-known images, but also portraits and objects. The selection of images was made in collaboration between the collecting curator and Adams.
Museum-matted and glass-covered vignetted tintype showing two women holding weaving implements in front of a painted backdrop portraying a river valley with a factory and a church on a hill.
Description
The NMAH Photo History Collection (PHC) has over 3000 tintype photographs dating from the beginnings of the process in 1856 to the present. ‘Tintype’ was coined and became the favored name.
Tintypes in the PHC are found in albums, the Kaynor Union Case collection and as individual photographs. The original tintype process patent was assigned to William and Peter Neff in 1856. William Neff died a short time later, but his son Peter, who named the process Melainotype, continued on with his work. The earliest tintypes in the PHC are a group of more than thirty Peter Neff Melainotypes, some of which date back to 1856 and contain notes written by Peter Neff. Shortly after the Melainotype, Victor Griswold introduced a very similar process on thinner, lighter iron plates and called them Ferrotypes. The PHC has tintypes ranging from rare large images between 5”x7” and 10”x12”down to small images cut to 6mm diameter to fit jewelry. The Melainotypes are between 1/6 plate and 4”x5” in size and many have indistinct images. There are also unexposed Melainotype plates including a pack of 1/6 plates and large whole-plates with four decorated oval borders that were designed to be cut into smaller quarter plates after exposure.
The great majority of tintype photographs are studio portraits, including the very popular ‘Gem’ size (about ¾” x 1”). Almost every gem tintype in the PHC is an individual head and shoulders portraits, the only exceptions seen being a full length portrait and a head and shoulders portrait of a couple. Most of these gem portraits are in small gem albums designed to hold two to six gems per page. However, several gems are mounted on cartes-de-visite (CDV) size cards and set in specifically designed album pages. Some of these CDV mounted gems are in elaborate miniature frames attached to the card. The tintypes larger than gem size show a greater variety of subject matter, but still with a main focus on individual portraits, this is especially true of the smaller 1/16 and 1/9 plate images. Outdoor tintypes are rare. Of the few in the PHC, the most common outdoor subjects noted are people standing in front of their homes and photographs of people proudly standing with, or sitting on, their horse or horses and buggy. One of the largest tintypes is a 9”x 7” outdoor view of a row of townhouses with a couple standing on one of the balconies. There is also an outdoor tintype of men fishing along with another of their days catch.
One common subject in tintype photography, as noted in text books, is the civil war soldier. The durability of the tintype meant that photographs taken in the field could be sent home. However, this category of tintype is not well represented in the PHC, with less than thirty noted due to the fact that the majority of the Smithsonian’s Civil War tintypes are located mainly in the Military History Collection. Most of the PHC examples of Civil War tintypes are in the Kaynor collection of cased images.
A few of the tintypes in the PHC are hand colored. This coloring varies from light tinting of faces and hands to heavy overpainting that obscures the underlying tintype image. A number of the tintypes (about 30) depict people with the apparatus of their occupations. Some are posed studio shots and others appear to be photographs of people at their place of work. Among the occupational views are images of a doctor, grocery deliveryman, weavers, fireman, ice delivery man, craftsman, cobbler, shoe shiners, mail carrier, surveyor, pipe liners and other tintypes of people wearing work clothes and posing with tools. These include a unique full-length gem tintype of a man in work apron with a saw.
Tintype portrait of a woman, Hellen Otis Dellenbaugh, holding a puppy.
Description
The NMAH Photo History Collection (PHC) has over 3000 tintype photographs dating from the beginnings of the process in 1856 to the present. ‘Tintype’ was coined and became the favored name.
Tintypes in the PHC are found in albums, the Kaynor Union Case collection and as individual photographs. The original tintype process patent was assigned to William and Peter Neff in 1856. William Neff died a short time later, but his son Peter, who named the process Melainotype, continued on with his work. The earliest tintypes in the PHC are a group of more than thirty Peter Neff Melainotypes, some of which date back to 1856 and contain notes written by Peter Neff. Shortly after the Melainotype, Victor Griswold introduced a very similar process on thinner, lighter iron plates and called them Ferrotypes. The PHC has tintypes ranging from rare large images between 5”x7” and 10”x12”down to small images cut to 6mm diameter to fit jewelry. The Melainotypes are between 1/6 plate and 4”x5” in size and many have indistinct images. There are also unexposed Melainotype plates including a pack of 1/6 plates and large whole-plates with four decorated oval borders that were designed to be cut into smaller quarter plates after exposure.
The great majority of tintype photographs are studio portraits, including the very popular ‘Gem’ size (about ¾” x 1”). Almost every gem tintype in the PHC is an individual head and shoulders portraits, the only exceptions seen being a full length portrait and a head and shoulders portrait of a couple. Most of these gem portraits are in small gem albums designed to hold two to six gems per page. However, several gems are mounted on cartes-de-visite (CDV) size cards and set in specifically designed album pages. Some of these CDV mounted gems are in elaborate miniature frames attached to the card. The tintypes larger than gem size show a greater variety of subject matter, but still with a main focus on individual portraits, this is especially true of the smaller 1/16 and 1/9 plate images. Outdoor tintypes are rare. Of the few in the PHC, the most common outdoor subjects noted are people standing in front of their homes and photographs of people proudly standing with, or sitting on, their horse or horses and buggy. One of the largest tintypes is a 9”x 7” outdoor view of a row of townhouses with a couple standing on one of the balconies. There is also an outdoor tintype of men fishing along with another of their days catch.
One common subject in tintype photography, as noted in text books, is the civil war soldier. The durability of the tintype meant that photographs taken in the field could be sent home. However, this category of tintype is not well represented in the PHC, with less than thirty noted due to the fact that the majority of the Smithsonian’s Civil War tintypes are located mainly in the Military History Collection. Most of the PHC examples of Civil War tintypes are in the Kaynor collection of cased images.
A few of the tintypes in the PHC are hand colored. This coloring varies from light tinting of faces and hands to heavy overpainting that obscures the underlying tintype image. A number of the tintypes (about 30) depict people with the apparatus of their occupations. Some are posed studio shots and others appear to be photographs of people at their place of work. Among the occupational views are images of a doctor, grocery deliveryman, weavers, fireman, ice delivery man, craftsman, cobbler, shoe shiners, mail carrier, surveyor, pipe liners and other tintypes of people wearing work clothes and posing with tools. These include a unique full-length gem tintype of a man in work apron with a saw.
Unmounted silver print by Berenice Abbott, "Princesse Eugènie Murat." Portrait of Princesse Eugènie Murat, granddaughter of Napoleon III. Woman is shown reclining in chair, facing front, holding a cigarette in the hand on the right of the photograph. Clothing is loosely draped, dark and jewelry includes a pearl necklace and two rings on the fourth finger of the hand holding the cigarette. The arm on the right side of the photograph is propping the woman up, while the other is casually draped over the other arm of the chair. Plain gray background. Verso: Stamp, "Photograph, Berenice Abbott, Maine 04406;" "30" in bottom left. Handwritten by Abbott: "Princess Eugène Murat."
Description
During the 1920s, Berenice Abbott was one of the premier portrait photographers of Paris, her only competitor was the equally well-known Dada Surrealist Man Ray who had served as her mentor and employer before she launched her own career. An American expatriate, Abbott enjoyed the company of some of the great twentieth century writers and artists, photographing individuals such as Jean Cocteau, Peggy Guggenheim and James Joyce. One of the critical elements of Abbott’s portraiture was a desire to neither enhance nor interfere with the sitter. She instead wished to allow the personality of her subject to dictate the form of the photograph, and would often sit with her clients for several hours before she even began to photograph them. This straight-forward approach to photography characterized Abbott’s work for the duration of her career.
Thematically and technically, Abbott’s work can be most closely linked to documentary photographer Eugène Atget (COLL.PHOTOS.000016), who photographed Paris during the early 1900s. Abbott bought a number of his prints the first time she saw them, and even asked him to set some aside that she planned to purchase when she had enough money. After his death in 1927, Abbott took it upon herself to publicize Atget’s work to garner the recognition it deserved. It was partly for this reason she returned to the United States in 1928, hoping to find an American publisher to produce an English-language survey of Atget’s work. Amazed upon her arrival to see the changes New York had undergone during her stay in Paris, and eager to photograph the emerging new metropolis, Abbott decided to pack up her lucrative Parisian portrait business and move back to New York.
The status and prestige she enjoyed in Paris, however, did not carry over to New York. Abbott did not fit in easily with her contemporaries. She was both a woman in a male-dominated field and a documentary photographer in the midst of an American photographic world firmly rooted in Pictorialism. Abbott recalls disliking the work of both photographer Alfred Stieglitz and his then protégé Paul Strand when she first visited their exhibitions in New York. Stieglitz, along with contemporaries such as Ansel Adams and Edward Steichen, tended to romanticize the American landscape and effectively dismissed Abbott’s straight photography as she saw it. Not only was Atget’s work rejected by the Pictorialists, but a series of critical comments she made towards Stieglitz and Pictorialism cost Abbott her professional career as a photographer. Afterwards, she was unable to secure space at galleries, have her work shown at museums or continue the working relationships she had forged with a number of magazine publications.
In 1935, the Federal Art Project outfitted Abbott with equipment and a staff to complete her project to photograph New York City. The benefit of a personal staff and the freedom to determine her own subject matter was unique among federally funded artists working at that time. The resulting series of photographs, which she titled Changing New York, represent some of Abbott’s best-known work. Her photographs of New York remain one of the most important twentieth century pictorial records of New York City. Abbott went on to produce a series of photographs for varied topics, including scientific textbooks and American suburbs. When the equipment was insufficient to meet her photographic needs, as in the case of her series of science photographs, she invented the tools she needed to achieve the desired effect. In the course of doing so, Abbott patented a number of useful photographic aids throughout her career including an 8x10 patent camera (patent #2869556) and a photographer’s jacket. Abbott also spent twenty years teaching photography classes at the New School for Social Research alongside such greats as composer Aaron Copland and writer W.E.B. DuBois.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Abbott’s career was the printing of Eugène Atget’s photographs, one of the few instances in which one well-known photographer printed a large number of negatives made by another well-known photographer. The struggle to get Atget’s photographs the recognition they deserved was similar to Abbott’s efforts to chart her own path by bringing documentary photography to the fore in a Pictorialist dominated America. Though she experienced varying levels of rejection and trials in both efforts, her perseverance placed her in the position she now holds as one of the great photographers of the twentieth century.
The Bernice Abbott collection consists of sixteen silver prints. The photographs represent a range of work Abbott produced during her lifetime, including her early portraiture work in Paris, her Changing New York series, Physics and Route 1, U.S.A. series.
Silver gelatin, mounted. View of tall rocks in water with water crashing in foamy wall on left side. Signed, ink (recto: bottom right). Verso: Adams stamp, title handwritten, ink, top center.
Description
Ansel Adams (1902-1984) is one of the most well-known twentieth century photographers. His contributions to the field of photography include his innovation and teaching of the Zone System. The quality of his photographs set the standard by which many straight photographs are judged.
The collection in the Photographic History Collection consists of twenty-five photographs, all printed in or about 1968. All are gelatin silver, mounted, labeled and signed in ink by the photographer. The photographs include some of his most well-known images, but also portraits and objects. The selection of images was made in collaboration between the collecting curator and Adams.
Gelatin silver print, black and white, mounted. Close up of flower pistol with wide open petals. Signed and dated, pencil (recto: lower right). Verso: Imogen Cunningham label adhered, top center.
Description
The Imogen Cunningham collection consists of thirty gelatin silver photographs, mounted, with label, signed and dated by the photographer, and three platinum prints, mounted and labeled. The subjects in the thirty gelatin silver photographs range from plants to portraiture between 1925 and 1968. The three platinum prints were made in 1912 and are representative of Cunningham’s pictorialist style. They were acquired from the photographer in 1968.
The photographs were used in a Smithsonian exhibition titled, “Women, Cameras, and Images I,” November 30, 1968-May 30, 1969, in the Hall of Photography, Museum of History and Technology. The exhibition also included thirty additional photographs lent by Imogen Cunningham, and five lent from the Library of Congress. The “Women, Cameras, and Images” exhibition was a series of five exhibitions featuring the work of female photographers: Cunningham, Betty Hahn, Gayle Smalley, Barbara Morgan, and Janine Niepce.
Silver gelatin, mounted. Close-up, focus on light colored branch lying on rocks. Background hazy, unfocused view of lake. Signed, ink (recto: bottom right). Verso: Adams stamp, handwritten title, top center. "RSN 82532R29" handwritten, pencil, bottom right center.
Description
Ansel Adams (1902-1984) is one of the most well-known twentieth century photographers. His contributions to the field of photography include his innovation and teaching of the Zone System. The quality of his photographs set the standard by which many straight photographs are judged.
The collection in the Photographic History Collection consists of twenty-five photographs, all printed in or about 1968. All are gelatin silver, mounted, labeled and signed in ink by the photographer. The photographs include some of his most well-known images, but also portraits and objects. The selection of images was made in collaboration between the collecting curator and Adams.
Gelatin silver print, panorama. Signed, dated, titled on verso. Old woman standing in kitchen behind a small table. In background are an oven, a gas furnace, a wash sink. In foreground, on right side of photograph is a kitchen sink with plates in strainer, glasses on an shelf above and utensils hanging below the shelf. A box of Tide is on the shelf above the sink. In the left, front corner is a desk, covered with papers and a "Maryland Club Coffee" canister.
Description
The Anne Noggle collection in the Photographic History Collection consists of four panoramic photographs signed and dated between 1969 and 1972. The subjects are: a neighborhood group, an elderly woman in a kitchen, a row of thirty-three mailboxes and two waitresses behind a lunch counter. The negatives were made using a Panon 35mm camera.
Anne Noggle was born in 1922 in Evanston, IL and spent her formative years living there with her mother and sister—two women who would become important characters in Noggle’s photography.
Prior to her photography career, Noggle led a markedly different life. In 1940, with her student pilot license in hand, she became a pilot and eventually a flight instructor as a Women’s Air Force Service Pilot (WASP) in World War II. At the conclusion of the war, Noggle taught flying, joined an aerial circus and worked as a crop duster. Art garnered Noggle’s attention while she was on active duty in the U.S. Air Force in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Stationed in Paris, she spent much of her free time at the Louvre. Forced into early retirement due to emphysema caused by crop dusting, Noggle registered for college as an art history major at the University of New Mexico in 1959, at the age of thirty-eight.
Anne Noggle’s early photographs utilize the 35mm Panon camera. Most of these 140° photographs are of an aging woman and her surroundings. In Janice Zita Grover’s introduction to Silver Lining: Photographs by Anne Noggle, she writes that the panoramic format is characteristic “to distort space in such a way that subjects distant from the lens appear flattened against deep space; between this effect and the necessity for reading the image side to side, the format gets as close as the still camera can to the implied narrative unfolding of a panoramic opening shot in a film.”
By the early 1970s, however, Noggle moved on to wide-angle portraits featuring herself, her mother, sister and her mother’s friends. It is for these photographs that Noggle is most known. Her interest in women and the aging process is exemplified by self-portraits of Noggle’s own face-lifts and images of her aging body.
Noggle has been awarded two NEA grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Silver print of an untitled Ray K. Metzker photograph with three frames of people walking along boardwalk.
Description
In the collection of the National Museum of American History there are twelve photographic works by the American photographer Ray K. Metzker (1931). These pieces by Metzker were acquired by the Smithsonian in 1970 after they were on display in the “Persistence of Vision” exhibition at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Metzker’s photographs range from depictions of urban street scenes to abstraction, and vary in size from 8x10 inch prints to 30x32 inch assembled pieces of over one hundred individual photographs.
After working as an assistant for various portrait and commercial photography studios, Metzker enrolled as a student at the Illinois Institute of Design in 1956. Founded by former Bauhaus instructor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in 1937, the Illinois Institute of Design’s faculty included influential photographers such as Harry Callahan (see catalog numbers PG69.40.01-10), Aaron Siskind (see catalog numbers PG69.114.01-10), and Frederick Sommer. Metzker has often cited these instructors as having a great impact on his artistic outlook and passion for photography. In a 1983 conversation with curator Anne Tucker, Metzker said, “their experience and dedication is something you had to respect, and they communicated to me how really beautiful and of what great meaning a photograph or photography could be. They made photography a noble endeavor.” While at the Illinois Institute of Design, Metzker became fascinated with the urban environment of Chicago, which became the subject matter for most of his early photographs. After graduation, Metzker’s experimental methods were noticed by curators and included in exhibitions such as the “Persistence of Vision,” where he was included with fellow graduates such as photographer John Wood.
Metzker’s work utilizes the technical components of the medium of photography to create new and unique imagery. Instead of using the camera to create a traditional single frame photograph, Metzker has been known to use an entire roll of film to create one composite image. This is seen in his photograph Untitled Composite Print (Signs, Trucks, etc.), PG69.205.1. In this example, Metzker photographs a series of actions instead of a singular event. Metzker offers the viewer information about a specific location over a span of time while simultaneously abstracting the image by overlapping the individual film frames. Another demonstration of this time-based aspect of Metzker’s work is Untitled (Four Frames and a Film Strip) PG69.205.4, where various pedestrians are seen passing through the same environment throughout the day. Created in 1964, this photograph breaks the traditional rectangular format entirely with multiple frames printed on top of each other and the orientation of the print skewed to create a diagonal composition.
Metzker constantly tries to invent new ways to investigate the formal aspects of photography. This has led him to experiment with multiple camera formats and a variety of different printing methods. He has been known to spend extensive time in the darkroom, experimenting with processes that may never lead to a complete finished project. Even when Metzker depicts more conventional subject matter, such as a figure or cityscape, he eliminates information in the photograph to focus on light and shadow, line and form. An example of this is his 1963 photograph Untitled (Stripe on Pavement) PG69.205.2. Metzker photographs a segment of a city crosswalk, but through perspective and composition, creates an image that more closely resembles an abstract gestural mark than a typical city scene.
Metzker is an important figure to study in regards to evaluating the influence that Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Illinois Institute of Design had on the genre of American street photography in the 1960s. The Bauhaus tradition of experimentation can be seen throughout much of Metzker’s work. For Metzker, photography is a process that involves multiple steps before the final image is created.
Paper-mounted tintype portrait of two women behind a board with assorted items mounted on it; the women are sticking out their tongues and looking through doughnuts, which they are holding to their faces like glasses.
Description
The NMAH Photo History Collection (PHC) has over 3000 tintype photographs dating from the beginnings of the process in 1856 to the present. ‘Tintype’ was coined and became the favored name.
Tintypes in the PHC are found in albums, the Kaynor Union Case collection and as individual photographs. The original tintype process patent was assigned to William and Peter Neff in 1856. William Neff died a short time later, but his son Peter, who named the process Melainotype, continued on with his work. The earliest tintypes in the PHC are a group of more than thirty Peter Neff Melainotypes, some of which date back to 1856 and contain notes written by Peter Neff. Shortly after the Melainotype, Victor Griswold introduced a very similar process on thinner, lighter iron plates and called them Ferrotypes. The PHC has tintypes ranging from rare large images between 5”x7” and 10”x12”down to small images cut to 6mm diameter to fit jewelry. The Melainotypes are between 1/6 plate and 4”x5” in size and many have indistinct images. There are also unexposed Melainotype plates including a pack of 1/6 plates and large whole-plates with four decorated oval borders that were designed to be cut into smaller quarter plates after exposure.
The great majority of tintype photographs are studio portraits, including the very popular ‘Gem’ size (about ¾” x 1”). Almost every gem tintype in the PHC is an individual head and shoulders portraits, the only exceptions seen being a full length portrait and a head and shoulders portrait of a couple. Most of these gem portraits are in small gem albums designed to hold two to six gems per page. However, several gems are mounted on cartes-de-visite (CDV) size cards and set in specifically designed album pages. Some of these CDV mounted gems are in elaborate miniature frames attached to the card. The tintypes larger than gem size show a greater variety of subject matter, but still with a main focus on individual portraits, this is especially true of the smaller 1/16 and 1/9 plate images. Outdoor tintypes are rare. Of the few in the PHC, the most common outdoor subjects noted are people standing in front of their homes and photographs of people proudly standing with, or sitting on, their horse or horses and buggy. One of the largest tintypes is a 9”x 7” outdoor view of a row of townhouses with a couple standing on one of the balconies. There is also an outdoor tintype of men fishing along with another of their days catch.
One common subject in tintype photography, as noted in text books, is the civil war soldier. The durability of the tintype meant that photographs taken in the field could be sent home. However, this category of tintype is not well represented in the PHC, with less than thirty noted due to the fact that the majority of the Smithsonian’s Civil War tintypes are located mainly in the Military History Collection. Most of the PHC examples of Civil War tintypes are in the Kaynor collection of cased images.
A few of the tintypes in the PHC are hand colored. This coloring varies from light tinting of faces and hands to heavy overpainting that obscures the underlying tintype image. A number of the tintypes (about 30) depict people with the apparatus of their occupations. Some are posed studio shots and others appear to be photographs of people at their place of work. Among the occupational views are images of a doctor, grocery deliveryman, weavers, fireman, ice delivery man, craftsman, cobbler, shoe shiners, mail carrier, surveyor, pipe liners and other tintypes of people wearing work clothes and posing with tools. These include a unique full-length gem tintype of a man in work apron with a saw.
Gelatin Silver Print by Charles Rushton of Mark Nohl, 1992.
Black and white portrait of a man sitting on a rockface with one leg stretched out and the other bent under his body. He is wearing jeans, boots and a button-up shirt with the sleeves slightly rolled. He has a pen in one breast pocket, is wearing his sunglasses on a cord around his neck and is holding a camera in his hands. Recto: signed, titled and dated by artist.
Description
Charles Rushton is an American photographer that made portraits of New Mexico photographers between the years of 1980 and 1994. This particular collection consists of 38 prints: twenty-nine- 8"x10" gelatin silver prints and nine- 8½"x11" inkjet prints acquired from the photographer. The collection includes photographers Tom Barrows, Van Deren Coke, Betty Hahn, David Michael Kennedy, Patrick Nagatani, Beaumont Newhall and Joel-Peter Witkin. The earliest print in this collection is of Manuel Carrillo in 1982, and the last piece added to the collection is of Holly Roberts in 1994.
Rushton chose this particular project after attending a Zone VI workshop offered by Fred Picker in Vermont in 1980. While at the workshop Rushton was given specific advice to pick a topic and stick to it instead of switching random topics every day. This was when Rushton had the idea to photograph artists and photographers upon returning home to New Mexico. With the help of photographer friend, Bob Hooten, Rushton was able to obtain the names of photographers that suited the parameters of his project. After a few years, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History purchased several of Rushton's prints for their collection of portraits of New Mexico Artists and expressed interest in seeing his future work. With the permission of the museum, Rushton used the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History name to help him gain influence and access to more famous photographers such as Beaumont Newhall.
Rushton studied photography under Fred Picker, Oliver Gagliani (depicted in the collection) and Arnold Newman (depicted in the collection). Rushton holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lawrence University, a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from St. Thomas University, a Master of Arts in Library Science degree from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography degree from the University of Oklahoma. Rushton is currently a professor of digital photography at Oklahoma City Community College and Moore-Norman Technology Center.
Silver print of a Ray K. Metzker photograph showing children walking beside a building.
Description
In the collection of the National Museum of American History there are twelve photographic works by the American photographer Ray K. Metzker (1931). These pieces by Metzker were acquired by the Smithsonian in 1970 after they were on display in the “Persistence of Vision” exhibition at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Metzker’s photographs range from depictions of urban street scenes to abstraction, and vary in size from 8x10 inch prints to 30x32 inch assembled pieces of over one hundred individual photographs.
After working as an assistant for various portrait and commercial photography studios, Metzker enrolled as a student at the Illinois Institute of Design in 1956. Founded by former Bauhaus instructor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in 1937, the Illinois Institute of Design’s faculty included influential photographers such as Harry Callahan (see catalog numbers PG69.40.01-10), Aaron Siskind (see catalog numbers PG69.114.01-10), and Frederick Sommer. Metzker has often cited these instructors as having a great impact on his artistic outlook and passion for photography. In a 1983 conversation with curator Anne Tucker, Metzker said, “their experience and dedication is something you had to respect, and they communicated to me how really beautiful and of what great meaning a photograph or photography could be. They made photography a noble endeavor.” While at the Illinois Institute of Design, Metzker became fascinated with the urban environment of Chicago, which became the subject matter for most of his early photographs. After graduation, Metzker’s experimental methods were noticed by curators and included in exhibitions such as the “Persistence of Vision,” where he was included with fellow graduates such as photographer John Wood.
Metzker’s work utilizes the technical components of the medium of photography to create new and unique imagery. Instead of using the camera to create a traditional single frame photograph, Metzker has been known to use an entire roll of film to create one composite image. This is seen in his photograph Untitled Composite Print (Signs, Trucks, etc.), PG69.205.1. In this example, Metzker photographs a series of actions instead of a singular event. Metzker offers the viewer information about a specific location over a span of time while simultaneously abstracting the image by overlapping the individual film frames. Another demonstration of this time-based aspect of Metzker’s work is Untitled (Four Frames and a Film Strip) PG69.205.4, where various pedestrians are seen passing through the same environment throughout the day. Created in 1964, this photograph breaks the traditional rectangular format entirely with multiple frames printed on top of each other and the orientation of the print skewed to create a diagonal composition.
Metzker constantly tries to invent new ways to investigate the formal aspects of photography. This has led him to experiment with multiple camera formats and a variety of different printing methods. He has been known to spend extensive time in the darkroom, experimenting with processes that may never lead to a complete finished project. Even when Metzker depicts more conventional subject matter, such as a figure or cityscape, he eliminates information in the photograph to focus on light and shadow, line and form. An example of this is his 1963 photograph Untitled (Stripe on Pavement) PG69.205.2. Metzker photographs a segment of a city crosswalk, but through perspective and composition, creates an image that more closely resembles an abstract gestural mark than a typical city scene.
Metzker is an important figure to study in regards to evaluating the influence that Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Illinois Institute of Design had on the genre of American street photography in the 1960s. The Bauhaus tradition of experimentation can be seen throughout much of Metzker’s work. For Metzker, photography is a process that involves multiple steps before the final image is created.
The NMAH Photo History Collection (PHC) has over 3000 tintype photographs dating from the beginnings of the process in 1856 to the present. ‘Tintype’ was coined and became the favored name.
Tintypes in the PHC are found in albums, the Kaynor Union Case collection and as individual photographs. The original tintype process patent was assigned to William and Peter Neff in 1856. William Neff died a short time later, but his son Peter, who named the process Melainotype, continued on with his work. The earliest tintypes in the PHC are a group of more than thirty Peter Neff Melainotypes, some of which date back to 1856 and contain notes written by Peter Neff. Shortly after the Melainotype, Victor Griswold introduced a very similar process on thinner, lighter iron plates and called them Ferrotypes. The PHC has tintypes ranging from rare large images between 5”x7” and 10”x12”down to small images cut to 6mm diameter to fit jewelry. The Melainotypes are between 1/6 plate and 4”x5” in size and many have indistinct images. There are also unexposed Melainotype plates including a pack of 1/6 plates and large whole-plates with four decorated oval borders that were designed to be cut into smaller quarter plates after exposure.
The great majority of tintype photographs are studio portraits, including the very popular ‘Gem’ size (about ¾” x 1”). Almost every gem tintype in the PHC is an individual head and shoulders portraits, the only exceptions seen being a full length portrait and a head and shoulders portrait of a couple. Most of these gem portraits are in small gem albums designed to hold two to six gems per page. However, several gems are mounted on cartes-de-visite (CDV) size cards and set in specifically designed album pages. Some of these CDV mounted gems are in elaborate miniature frames attached to the card. The tintypes larger than gem size show a greater variety of subject matter, but still with a main focus on individual portraits, this is especially true of the smaller 1/16 and 1/9 plate images. Outdoor tintypes are rare. Of the few in the PHC, the most common outdoor subjects noted are people standing in front of their homes and photographs of people proudly standing with, or sitting on, their horse or horses and buggy. One of the largest tintypes is a 9”x 7” outdoor view of a row of townhouses with a couple standing on one of the balconies. There is also an outdoor tintype of men fishing along with another of their days catch.
One common subject in tintype photography, as noted in text books, is the civil war soldier. The durability of the tintype meant that photographs taken in the field could be sent home. However, this category of tintype is not well represented in the PHC, with less than thirty noted due to the fact that the majority of the Smithsonian’s Civil War tintypes are located mainly in the Military History Collection. Most of the PHC examples of Civil War tintypes are in the Kaynor collection of cased images.
A few of the tintypes in the PHC are hand colored. This coloring varies from light tinting of faces and hands to heavy overpainting that obscures the underlying tintype image. A number of the tintypes (about 30) depict people with the apparatus of their occupations. Some are posed studio shots and others appear to be photographs of people at their place of work. Among the occupational views are images of a doctor, grocery deliveryman, weavers, fireman, ice delivery man, craftsman, cobbler, shoe shiners, mail carrier, surveyor, pipe liners and other tintypes of people wearing work clothes and posing with tools. These include a unique full-length gem tintype of a man in work apron with a saw.