Abraham Lincoln by Nicholas Shepherd, a daguerreotype from 1846

 

A daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln in 1846, attributed to Nicholas Shepherd

The same as above, edited for clarity (Shepherd, 1846)

    This is the earliest-known photo of Abraham Lincoln (Shepherd, 1846), taken when he was 37 years old and working as a lawyer in Springfield and a congressman of Illinois (Ostendorf, p. 4). If you were to ask Walter Benjamin in the 1930s what he thought about such a portrait, he might tell you that the formal pose, tense expression, and literal depiction of the figure lacks aura (Benjamin, p. 515-517). And he might be right, but I am of the belief that a photograph doesn’t have to have aura or even significant intention to be able to connect with it, and that the inherent ability of the photographic process to capture a moment of the past - whether 100s of years or mere minutes ago - can be just as valuable to the human experience as an artistic statement.

    Learning about the early inventions in photography between France and England in the 1840s, and the sometimes polarizing natures of the precision and depth of daguerreotypes, versus the softer and more artistic qualities of the salted paper print, I have to admit I'm drawn just as much to this posed photo of Honest Abe as I am to any of the artistically revered prints mentioned in our lesson so far. Not because of the composition, styling, or even the emotional response it may or may not invoke - but because of the inherent nature of the daguerreotype process, the photograph it produces, and the experience it allows the viewer, which shifts with both the angle of the light and the collection of scratches over time.

    When looking at (even just a photograph of) this daguerreotype of Lincoln, you can see how crisp every detail of his hair, jacket, hands, and lines in his face is. You can imagine that while holding this daguerreotype shortly after it was produced, if illuminated correctly, it would feel like looking at a man through a portal in real time. His eyes alone have a three dimensional quality about them that really makes you feel like the gaze is reciprocal - even across over 150 years. Although his facial expression is meant to be fairly neutral, the precision of this method captures and conveys the anxiety he holds in his brow. He was looking straight into the camera lens when the photo was taken, so if you were to hold this daguerreotype in your hands as you're meant to view it, the feeling of Lincoln looking at you would remain constant no matter how you tilted it in the light - reminiscent of a silent plea from a friend across a crowded room. It has the ability to make someone that lived and died so long before me that he often feels more like an abstract concept than a real person, feel tangible and human.

    The other facet of this daguerreotype that I’m drawn to is the way it has aged and changed since it was produced. While the softer and more expressionistic paper prints fade, wrinkle, scratch, rip, burn, and blow away, daguerreotypes have the ability to scratch and age and express the passing of time while maintaining the sense of realism in the image behind it. Almost as though the man in the window is still sitting there just as he was in 1846, and only the glass between you grows hazier over time, requiring perhaps a more precise angle of light to clearly see through so that you can meet his gaze again.

    So while there are certainly lots of other photographs from the late 1800s, and especially paper prints, that might elicit a more emotional response or tell a greater story, I believe that these types of realistic, spatial, and permanent daguerreotype portraits from that time are just as valuable to our experience by being able to connect us to people from our past, not necessarily from the narrative expressed, but by the elimination of the space and time that would have otherwise stifled a connection between two people. This photo doesn't illicit feelings of joy, sadness, or rage, but of familiarity and oneness with our predecessors. There is a sense of sharing of space with the images in these daguerreotypes that facilitate a closeness to the images depicted that other processes of the time can't replicate, and that's why photographs like these are still so important.

Works Cited:

Benjamin, Walter. “Little History of Photography.” Essay. In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings 2, edited by Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, 2: 507–27. 2. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. https://monoskop.org/images/0/0e/Benjamin_Walter_1931_1999_Little_History_of_Photography.pdf.

Ostendorf, Lloyd, and Charles Hamilton. Lincoln's Photographs: A Complete Album. Dayton, OH: Rockywood Press, 1998.

Shepherd, Nicholas H. [Abraham Lincoln, Congressman-Elect from Illinois. Three-Quarter Length Portrait, Seated, Facing Front]. 1846. Photograph. Library of Congress. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2004664400/.