The National Portrait Gallery has acquired the oldest photo of a First Lady, an 1846 daguerreotype of Dolly Madison. This is a very cool picture, as it captures some of her personality - people chose very formal poses back then. No smiling. Except for a hint of a smile from Dolly.
2 comments:
"That's a MAN, baby!"
I still use 100+ year old cameras,you know with the hood and giant 5"x 7" or 8"x10" film plates. And those old daguerreotype plates were even slower. Not film but painted emulsion directly on a tin plate. The reason nobody smiled was because of the slow emulsions used. Holding a smile for seconds without moving is hard. And if even a slight movement happened it would blur. Look at civil war photos. Most people knew to stay still but animals and kids, just like today, couldn't. And that picture of Dolly was 20 years before the war. Look how far photography has come in the last 20. And yet, digital cameras still don't have the fidelity or can be enlarged as well as a photo taken with a 100 year old camera with new 8"x10" film with modern ISO emulsion.
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