Two exhibits showing photographs using similar techniques 150 years apart, can be seen at the Columbus Museum. They are “Soldier Portraits, Contemporary Wet Plate Photographs” by photographer Ellen Susan and “Likenesses in the Latest Style, Historical Portrait Photography.”
Susan, who was in Columbus as an artist in resident last fall, spent the past four years taking photographs of soldiers. She used the wet plate collodion process to produce her photographs.
The technique uses glass or metal plates and silver nitrate and produces negative images, so any writing is seen in reverse (as illustrated in the images to the right). Susan said she wanted to show photographs of modern-day soldiers alongside historical images that used the same photography techniques. “These are stunningly beautiful, but it takes a lot of practice,” she said.
Susan took photographs of soldiers at Fort Benning and at Hunter Army Airfield at Fort Stewart.
For Susan’s portraits, the soldiers had to sit very still for 5 to 60 seconds for each exposure. Because of the long exposure time, the soldiers’ gazes are very intense. Some of the soldiers used a head rest to help them hold still. Some photographs show the head rest (see the photo at the top right of this page).
In contrast, in the historical portrait exhibit, none of the head rests are intentionally seen in the portraits, said George S. Whiteley IV, a collector of Civil War era images. Whiteley, Susan and David Wynn Vaughan took part in a panel discussion last week at the museum where they compared techniques used in the art featured in the two exhibits.
Historical images “Likenesses in the Latest Style” shows how portrait photography changed through the years. In just a couple of decades during the mid-nineteenth century, photographic technology grew so quickly that everyone could had access to photographs.
Currently, in the past decade cameras have become increasingly accessible.
Most people now have cell phone cameras or digital cameras, said Tom Butler, the director of the museum.
Whiteley said he was born with a disease called “collecto-mania,” which results in collecting various types of memorabilia. He became “enamored with daguerreotypes, which have an ethereal beauty.”
With the daguerreotype process, an image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silver plated copper plate. The historical images exhibit has many examples of this type of photography, along with “carte-de-visites” or calling cards which feature a person’s photograph on the card.
One of Whiteley’s most prized photographs was a daguerreotype of Louis Daguerre taking a photograph, he said. Daguerre was one of the creators of this technique. Whiteley sold this piece to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.
Vaughan has been collecting Civil War memorabilia for about 25 years. After seeing a photograph of a soldier, he realized that it was a kind of time capsule, he said.
“That (photography) was exactly what I wanted to focus on,” he said.
Vaughan’s big find was a file of albumen photographs (a photographic print on a paper base from a negative) in Washington, D.C. After making a call, he found out that each the photographs was worth at least $2,500. He bought the file for about $45 per print.
He’s not sure he’d be able to make such a discovery again.
Both collectors say the public is becoming knowledgeable thanks to popular television shows like “Antiques Roadshow” and “American Pickers.” And, of course, the Internet can help people find out how much their grandparents’ photograph collections are worth.
