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America’s First Masters of Photography: Southworth & Hawes

America’s First Masters of Photography: Southworth & Hawes

 

 

Stereoscopic Portrait with Columns

Quarter-plate daguerreotype (3.25 x 4.25 inches), after 1850

FromThe David Feigenbaum Collection of Southworth & Hawes. Illustrated in The Daguerreian Annual 1998 (The Daguerreian Society: 1999) page 191. Private Collection.

 

“In the nice production of light and shade which is the perfection of modelling, the Daguerreotype will be found to surpass the Artist’s best efforts, being capable of representing independently, action, expression, and character to a great extent; and in some instances approaches very nearly, if it does not equal these higher branches [painting and sculpture], thus developing beauty in grace of motion and in repose, which is the first object and the supreme law of all Art.”

–Albert S. Southworth, “Suggestions to Ladies Who Sit for Daguerreotypes,” Lady’s Almanac, 1855

 

 

THE STEREOSCOPE.

By this simple apparatus, two shadows become, to appearance, so real and so beautiful as to startle with surprise and charm the beholder beyond all previous conception…

Messrs. Southworth & Hawes were so fortunate as to arrive in their experiments to a result which … enabled them to produce the first perfect Stereoscopic pictures ever made.

–From a promotional article by Albert S. Southworth in The Massachusetts Register: A State Record, for the Year 1853, p.327. Courtesy: GaryW. Ewer

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