This distinguished looking gentleman appears to be holding a baton or thin handle in one hand. Blue tint has been applied to his shirt. The image was a daguerreotype, the earliest photographic process. No negative was used, the image was produced directly on the silver-plated sheet of metal that we see pictured here, then covered with a sheet of clear glass and gold-colored brass mat. The flowery edge is formed by another piece of thin brass that folds around the edges of the daguerreotype, mat and glass cover, helping to hold them all together while producing this decorative frame. That is called a ‘preserver’ and is one clue as to the age of the image, though not entirely reliable since it was a simple enough matter to move a preserver from one daguerreotype, and put it on another.

This public domain image was taken by the well-known African-American daguerreotypist, Augustus Washington, probably between 1854 and 1858. Augustus has a studio in Hartford Connecticut from 1847 to 1848, and then again in 1850 to 1854. He sold the gallery in 1854 to G. W. Davis, and left for Liberia with The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, an organization formed in 1817 to resettle Afro-Americans in Liberia. Washington continued taking photographs in Liberia, including most of the heads of state for that young nation. The image above is one such image, though whether the subject is African or an African-American immigrant, we don’t know. By about 1858 the declining popularity of the daguerreotype, and difficulty obtaining photographic materials, led Washington to abandon photography to spend more time on his other endeavors, such as running the sugar cane plantation he purchased there.

Here we have taken two photographs and combined them into one, because - well, they belong together. These are pictures of a Jewish bride and groom from Turkestan, taken in 1871 and published in 1872. They are both very young looking, and neither seems very happy, whether about the wedding or about having their pictures taken we can only guess. The parents likely arranged the wedding, so it may be a bit of both. The bride’s name was Khanna, and the groom Mulla Borukh.

The photographer was N. V. Bogaevskii, a Russian officer with the Office for Land Surveys. He was part of a group of men selected by Adjutant-General K.P. von Kaufman, who was Governor-General of Turkestan at that time, to document the history and customs of the region. The results of their effort were published in a photo-album book, which brought awareness of this remote region to the outside world for the first time.

This public domain image almost looks like a medieval village scene, until one looks closely and sees the people dressed in the 19th century clothing. The spire in the background looks like it could belong to fairy-castle, though more likely it is a minaret from a mosque. The buildings are a combination of stone and wood, and look like they grew there.

This is another photograph by Guillaume Berggren whom we profiled in an earlier post titled Antiques Anyone? It was probably taken in the 1880s.

This is a carte-de-visite image of Sarah (or Sally) Anderson Fremont. Her husband, Rear Admiral John C Fremont Jr., was the son of the famous ‘Pathfinder’ John C Fremont and his wife Jessie Benton. John Junior was born about 1851 and joined the U.S. Navy as a midshipman in June 1868 at the age of 17. He married Sally in 1877, and they had at least two daughters, and a son, the John C Fremont (III) born about 1880 who was listed as a cadet in the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland in 1900. John C Fremont Junior died in 1911. In 1930 Sarah was still alive, residing in the Pemberton New Jersey home of her brother John Anderson.

The photographer for this public-domain image is ‘Otto’ of Paris. He was known for his photographs of celebrities and show-people, from the 1880s to the 1910s. This image is supposed to be about 1910, which is late for a CDV format image, but they did continue to publish them that late in France, especially for noted figures. Sally would have been about 50 in 1910, and was living in Boston at the time of the 1910 census, so perhaps this was taken a few years earlier on a trip to France.

This unforgettable public domain image of the ‘White House’ Anasazi ruins in Canyon de Chelle is well-known and often reproduced. It is emblematic of cliff-dwellings of the American Southwest. One hardly notices the pueblos at the foot of the cliff — those in the rock-shelter or cave are the center of focus. Then the cliff face continues above, streaked with different colored rock layers in one direction, and stains of a thousand years of rain in the other.

The ruins on the ledge of rock are castellated, like medieval European forts. The one on the left appears to be several stories high, and buttressed for strength. Impregnable, with the high-ground advantage, certainly defenders could withstand anything but a prolonged siege, when water would be their weak point.

But they were found unoccupied; nature had already ousted the defenders — most likely by withholding water. The best laid plans are never a match for relentless time.

This is another Timothy H O’Sullivan image, like our earlier post on Canyon de Chelle, and is dated from the same time period, about 1873.