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54. Draper, "Process," 222-23; see also Draper, "First Portrait," 5.
55. Draper, "Process," 222-23.
56. "Dr. Draper Dead," World.
57. Draper, "Process,"223.
58. Ibid.
59. Draper to Committee, 3 May 1858. This is an important detail appearing in the rough draft of
Draper's letter that he crossed out and did not include in the final letter.
60. Contrast the assertion in William F. Stapp, Robert Cornelius: Portraits from the
Dawn of Photography (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983), 30, that:
making portraits indoors, which--without a camera designed specifically for the purpose (like
Wolcott's) was virtually impossible with singly iodized plates. . . . By the Winter of 1839,
therefore, the challenge lay, not in making a likeness, but in making it indoors, in a studio situation,
where light levels were significantly reduced.
Draper's very first portraits were indoors. When he explained that indoor use of his four-inch lens
was unsatisfactory because it had to be used in a piazza to have light enough, Draper revealed that
he was thinking with an October 1839, pre-portrait gallery perspective. To his way of thinking at
the time, portraiture limited to indoor operation was flawed. Later, in December, using his
third in a sequence of portrait lenses, Draper acheived the first portraits that he
considered sucessful and practical and they were taken outdoors. He had solved the
scientific difficulties involved. At the time he had no interest or intention of creating an indoor
gallery product produced for profit.
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