Frozen in time: What’s cool about vintage portrait photography
Old photos: part I
Ever seen a ghost? The next time you look at a 19th-century portrait photo, look real hard: You may feel closer to the vale than you ever thought you would. Maybe it’s the moody monochromatic tones, the frozen stares – seldom a smile in those days (at least, not for the camera) – the realization that the person looking back at you was captured in one fleeting instant and is now long dead and turned to dust. Maybe it’s the fact that 120-plus years ago, most people had harder day-to-day existences, with fewer conveniences, and generally didn’t live as long as we do now … something we too often take for granted.
(If this sounds a little macabre, I note that on the rare occasion when an original Daguerreotype image of Edgar Allan Poe is unearthed, it looks LITERALLY dug up, with the actual image deteriorating – as if poor Edgar literally lived with one foot in the grave; as if the lonely lover of dead Lenore and Annabel Lee and maybe Norma Jean suddenly gave up and decayed like a real-life Dorian Gray or a dejected Gomez Addams, who he actually resembled.)
Of course, this may not seem “cool” or aesthetically pleasing or even very nice to many people. And frankly, I’m not suggesting that there’s anything pleasant or romantic or uplifting about death and dead people – certainly not people who went before their time and most especially not dead children (who, in the 19th century, were sometimes posed and photographed posthumously as if still alive before being consigned to their graves) or soldiers sent to war for spurious reasons by self-serving old men, as has happened a time or two in history.
No: Notwithstanding the recent spate of young-love vampire films and the nice Goth kids at the local Hot Topic who dress completely in black, death is not the “cool” that the title of this post refers to.
What I mean is that there is something magical and – depending on the photographer’s level of talent – wonderfully artistic and revealing about old portrait photos. They are glimpses of people from an earlier time that we in the Internet Age can relate to more intimately than paintings, which are completely interpretive. After all, the lens lies less than the brush.
To see what I mean, check out some of the really good Web sites selling vintage photos, like J. Cosmas Vintage Photography (www.JCosmas.com), A Glimpse of Americana (www.AGlimpse.com), Jeffrey Kraus Antique Photographica (www.antiquephotographics.com), Remains to Be Seen (www.RemainsToBeSeen.com) and KaufmaNelson Vintage Photographs (www.KaufmaNelson.com). Professional photograph dealers routinely sift through thousands of unexceptional photos to offer what they consider to be the most humorous, moving, artistic or important images.
Or go to eBay and type “carte de visite” or “cabinet card” in the search box. (The carte de visite – French for “calling card” – was a common 19th-century business-card-size format consisting of a photo pasted on a cardboard photographer’s mount; cabinet card photos are larger, about 4.5 by 6 inches, and there are larger formats as well.) Compare the way the various images are set up, the way the subjects (including dogs!) are posed, the depth of the tones, the way props (guns, parasols, rowboats) are used. If you’re like me, the more you look at vintage photos, the more you eager are to find one that really resonates with you. And if you collect in a particular area, like baseball or bicycles or even DOGS – or if you’re interested in a specific country or state or town (photographers generally put their names and locations on their mounts) – add that to the subject box and see what comes up.
You may find a small, very affordable work of art by an obscure photographer that really speaks to you from over a century ago.
Now THAT’S history …
All images courtesy of J. Cosmas Vintage Photography, www.JCosmas.com
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