Fireman

Photography and Media

1850/60

Photographer unknown
American, 19th century

Inexpensive and astonishingly sharp, daguerreotypes were the most popular portrait form of the 1840s and 1850s. One subset of American daguerreotypes, so-called occupationals, showed workers posing with tools of their trade. These images celebrated American craft and labor, their subjects personifying traits like innovation, industriousness, and courage. This daguerreotype reveals that its sitter understood, and accommodated, the daguerreotype process, which reverses the image. To have his unit number read (almost) correctly, the fireman obligingly posed with his belt upside-down, sacrificing the N to get the O and E in the right place. Even in photography’s infancy, people knew how to pose for the camera; from this moment on, self-presentation would be mediated through its lens.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Unknown artist
Title: Fireman
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1850–1860
Medium: Daguerreotype
Dimensions: Plate, sight: 8.8 × 6.7 cm (3 1/2 × 2 11/16 in.); Case: 12 × 9.4 × 1 cm (4 3/4 × 3 3/4 × 7/16 in.)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Eric Ceputis and David Williams in honor of Liz Siegel
Reference Number: 2017.155
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/238936/manifest.json

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.