This public domain image of the famed Geronimo is a bit different from most you see, here he is an old man, looking worn rather than fierce. Twenty years earlier he was harassing both United States and Mexican armies with his little band of followers. Never considered a chief among his people, he was as ruthless as he was cunning, and a brilliant military strategist. It was only with the help of Apache trackers that the U.S. army was finally able to find and capture him.

This photo was taken at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo New York in 1901 by Charles Dudley Arnold. We profiled Arnold in a post last October from that same Exposition, Temple of Music.

With Christmas just three weeks away I thought we should have a picture evocative of that event. This is a typical mid-eastern couple posing with a donkey in a Joseph and Mary on their way to Bethlehem type of scene. The background has been entirely blacked out — I suspect the photographer intended (and maybe did in other prints) add a background suitable to the scene. In the U.S. photographers used something called ‘Bendann Backgrounds’ to add background scenes to studio images, I’m sure this photographer had something similar, either purchased or that he made himself. To print the background a mask was cut out of black paper in the shape of the subject — both parts of the paper were used in turn, the one shaped like the subject blocked that area while the background was printed, then the outline part was used to block the background while the subject was printed.

This public domain image was made by Tancrède R Dumas (1830-1905) of Beirut, Lebanon. We profiled Dumas on our post about the Snake Charmer. He seems to have opened his Beirut studio in 1866, so this image dates from between 1866 and about 1890. The scene is so generic there are no clues to the date directly from the subject, we have to rely on the known dates of operation for the photographer, and the knowledge that the photograph is an Albumen print.

Here is a dramatic image of an Eskimo man, his face framed by the fur of his parka. A studio portrait, the picture alone gives no clues to the date it was taken. This is the traditional style of winter clothing for Eskimos, used from prehistoric times to the present. There is no background, just a cloudy amorphous blotchiness, that has been used in photography from the 1860s to present.

As it happens, though, this image was published, and the copyright date of the publication was 1926, so it was probably taken that year or within a year or two previously. The image comes from the Cann Studio in Fairbanks, Alaska. That studio was open from the 1920s through at least 1939, and probably later. It was owned by Charles F Cann, a native of Estonia, born 15 May 1885, he died in Fairbanks 14 April 1970.

Oscar Wilde was a flamboyant Irish author and playwright, who was imprisoned in England for two years (May 1895 to May 1897) for “gross indecency” when his homosexual activity was publicized. This is one of several photographs of Oscar Wilde taken by the famous photographer Napoleon Sarony in 1882 when Wilde visited New York. Another image from the same session sparked a lawsuit the following year that rose all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and confirmed the right of photographers to copyright their images. A lithographer used the image of Wilde to make a lithograph, claiming that the picture of Wilde was not a creative work but due to a mere mechanical process. Sarony’s lawyers prevailed, and established a precedent still cited to this day when photographic copyright issues arise.

Sarony was the premiere celebrity photographer in New York in the 1870s and 1880s. Born in Canada about 1821, he was trained as a lithographer, but learned the daguerreotype process in the late 1850s. After his wife died in 1858 he took his children to Europe, and studied art. His brother was running a successful photography business in England, and Napoleon decided to go into that business as well. He returned to New York in 1865 and opened a photographic studio. Napoleon Sarony died November 9th 1896 in New York City.

This cute little fellow was photographed in San Antonio Texas in the mid-1890s, with his faithful dog at his side. Think he will grow up to be a cowboy? Regardless of his later profession, I’m sure he was thoroughly embarrassed by pictures of him in this frilly outfit. Maybe that is why nobody ever bothered to write a name on the back of this card-mounted photograph, so we have no clue as to who he was.

The photographer was Bruno Nauschuetz. Born in Germany about 1862 his parents brought him to the USA about 1867. He probably started his photography business in the late 1880s, as we find him located at 700 Austin Street in San Antonio in the 1891 city directory, and by 1892 he is at 221 Sharer where this photo was taken. He was still in business as a photographer in San Antonio at the time of the 1910 census, and died 19th May, 1914.