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Previous | Next Albert Sands Southworth and
Josiah Johnson Hawes |
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Southworth and Hawes were among the most important American portrait photographers of the nineteenth century. The two men worked together in Boston using the daguerreotype process, a popular way of making portraits in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s. They aimed to capture the "life, the feeling, the mind, the soul" of their subjects. Although the two contemplative women here were carefully posed, The Letter is more natural in feeling than most daguerreotypes of the period, which usually show people in frozen postures and with stern facial expressions because of lengthy exposure times. The informal composition of The Letter also departs from most American daguerreotype portraits, which featured frontal, bust-length, single figures set against a blank or painted backdrop. Southworth and Hawes' innovations enabled them to create an expressive record of human sentiment and friendship. | |