PLATE BOX IMAGE "A"

At the University of the City of New York, Samuel Morse and John Draper forged technology that helped create our modern world. They were certainly among the first to apply newly invented daguerreian procedure to capturing life portraits of the human face.

Draper contributed inspired technological skill and achieved a practical operating system. Morse brought artistic expertise from his rich heritage of portrait painting. Their collaboration created a product unexcelled in its era. From Morse and Draper flowed the genesis of portrait photography. They instructed many of the first generation of daguerreian operators.

During their lifetime, recognition and honor came to both men for their contribution to the history of portrait photography. As the years passed, most examples of their original works were lost to history. Exactly what they accomplished gradually receded beyond human sight and knowledge, and the primacy of their work came into dispute. New historical evidence and possible recovery of some images themselves may help to reaffirm their achievements.

The prevailing paradigm of the history of photography does not adequately explain the existence of the small plate box and dozen daguerreotypes. One possible solution for their existence emerges if the images are hypothetically accepted as lost work of Dr. Draper and Professor Morse at New York University. Examining the images from this perspective, and studying Draper's written articles in light of the images, eventually led the writer to an understanding of Draper's sequence of lenses in developing portraiture.

Draper's specific description of products from his second and fourth lens systems share an intriging correlation with visual details appearing in plates H, I, J, K, and L. Draper's third lens likely produced quarter-plate images, so the ninth-size plate box contained no such example.

Hypothesizing that a flawed plate from Draper's first lens system (convex lenses of five inches aperture and seven inches focal length) should logically be included in the plate box, each plate previously assumed to be blank was carefully scrutinized. One plate (later designated A) was in fact found to contain a shadowy human figure partially visible.



Plate "A"..
[Fig. 26 credits]
 Judged in light of all other circumstancial evidence, Plate A could conceivably be one of the experimental series of daguerreotypes Dr. Draper took on 22 or 23 September 1839 of his assistant William Henry Goode in the university chapel. Defects of exposure and time's abrasion obscure the shadow within this plate. Indistinct portions of a human figure only partially emerge, yet the surviving image closely mirrors Draper's description of his first experimental results. This image may be a partially successful exposure leading up to Draper's first successful "whole countenance."

Part of a hand is visible propping up the sitter's head. Dark clothes and hairline, white-spots of the forehead, cheeks, and chin of the sitter are also visible, exactly as Draper described. Facial features are shadowy and confused however, apparently owing to a movement blurred or double exposure of the face.[106*]

Detail of Plate "A" with labels next to areas difficult to see.
[Fig. 26a credits]



Detail of Plate "A".
[Fig. 26b credits]
 The lens system described by Draper would not have allowed anything "like a good picture" (in other words there would have been no depth of field, no clearness of focus). This appears to be the exact phenomena visible in plate-box image A.

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15. Conclusions


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13. Subsequent work of Draper and Morse..


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