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Although often overlooked as valuable and informative primary source artifacts, visual testimony exists of slavery. The 1839 invention of the first photographs, allowed man to capture and encase any instant from the ceaseless flow of time. Daguerreotypes and subsequent processes, afforded an accurate visual record of the 1840-60 antebellum generation. In all world history, this generation was first to leave exact images to posterity. Virtually all surviving photographs depict white Americans, with a small scattering of free African Americans. Rare glimpses of Southern slaves exist.

Most images of slaves survive in the form of collodion glass negatives or albumen prints made from such negatives. Nearly all were taken by abolitionist or Union Army "sponsored" photographers. Technically, they depicted the emancipation process and narrowly missed the institution of slavery.


Albumen photograph (5 1/4 x 7 inches) attributed to Henry P. Moore. Taken in the spring of 1862 on James Hopkinson's plantation, Edisto Island, South Carolina.


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 Such images of newly freed slaves, posed at work or in front of cabins, teach much about the physical circumstance of their condition, yet something elusive is lost. Sifting such photographs for shards of information, the historian never actually views slavery.
African American "work and cabin" scenes ten and twenty years after the war, differ only minutely from Civil War period images. If physical conditions were so visibly similar twenty years after the Civil War, it seems futile to search emancipation scenes for illumination about slavery. War-date or post-war, such "work and cabin" views are primary sources sullied by certain characteristics of secondary sources.
Post-war (c.1870-80s) yellow mount stereograph, labeled "No. 885, Cabin Home, Petersburg, Va. Published by Kilburn Brothers, Littleton, New Hampshire."


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The deepest fault with these images lies in their posing. The sponsor, the photographer, the freedmen themselves, all had subtle messages to express. These messages cloud the pre-war purity of delicately suspended master/slave "solutions" within the institution.

For maximum information, the viewer must learn to look beyond detail, unveiling the "invisible hand" that arranged all such photographs. Abolitionist circulated images of newly freed slaves illustrate the importance of such technique:



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DAGUERREOTYPE

The first practical photographic process invented by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in 1839. A fine daguerreotype is an extremely beautiful, detailed image formed on the highly polished, silver coated surface of a copper metal plate. The silvered surface, sensitized in fumes of iodine, was placed in a camera for exposure. The plate was developed in mercury vapor.

No negative was involved, and the image produced on the plate appears as both negative and positive when turned in the light. The surface of a daguerreotype is extremely fragile, requiring protection behind mat and glass in folding, booklike cases of leather covered wood or plastic. To set off the daguerreotype, most cases also contain linings of dark velvet or silk. Daguerreotypes are one of a kind. Copies required additional exposures.

Aptly termed a "mirror with a memory" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, daguerreotypes were sometimes hand tinted with color to heighten realism. Gazing into the subtle realities of "presence" captured in a great daguerreotype can afford an unforgettable experience. No photographic reproduction equals actually viewing such an image.

Sizes of daguerreotypes were early standardized. A full or whole plate was the largest size ordinarily available. The full plate measured 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches, from which smaller sizes were derived. The half plate measured 4 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches. The quarter plate measured 3 1/4 by 4 1/4 inches. The sixth plate measured 2 3/4 by 3 1/4 inches. The ninth plate measured 2 by 2 1/2 inches.

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COLLODION GLASS NEGATIVE

Collodion was made from gun cotton (cotton soaked in nitric and sulfuric acid and dried) dissolved into a mixture of alcohol, ether, and potassium iodide. This syrupy mixture was poured onto clean glass plates. While still wet, the glass plate was sensitized in a solution of silver nitrate, and exposed in a camera. Fixed, washed, dried, and coated with protective varnish, the negative was then used to produce prints (salt or albumen) by contact printing in sunlight.

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ALBUMEN PRINT

Invented by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard of France in 1850, this process replaced salt prints for copying from photographic negatives. Thin paper soaked in a bath of egg whites and salt, offered a smoother surface than salted paper alone, and was capable of recording more accurate detail. A bath in silver nitrate solution sensitized the paper to light. Sunlight contact printed an image onto the albumen paper through a collodion glass negative.

Originally reddish brown in color, most albumen prints have faded over time to a yellowish brown tone. Image particles are suspended in the albumen layer on top of the paper instead of in the fibers of the paper itself. Until about 1890, albumen prints reigned as the prevalent process.

SILVER NITRATE

Silver dissolved in nitric acid forms silver nitrate. This chemical reacts with salts containing chlorine, bromine or iodine to form light-sensitive silver halides.

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STEREOGRAPH

Paired photographs of the same image which, when viewed through a stereoscope, appear as a single image in three dimension. There are stereo daguerreotypes and ambrotypes but most, called "card" stereographs were made of albumen prints set next to each other on a cardboard mount. A dual-lens camera made two exposures separated approximately as far apart as are human eyes.

In 1854, Frederick and William Langenheim issued the first American card series. Most stereographs date from the mid-1850s to about 1920. Viewing stereographs through the stereoscope was extremely popular parlor entertainment. No other form of photograph provides such a complete record of the world changing from agrarianism to a new industrial and urban way of life.

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