Old Photographs
07.07.06By Lorraine Newberry
It’s fun to browse through a stack of antique photos, seeing all those solemn faces gazing out at you, wondering where life took those people who sat down one day to be photographed, so long ago.
Some collect antique and vintage photographs for historical value, focusing on a specific time period like the Great Depression or the Civil War. Many collect antique photos for the clothes in the images – the antebellum Scarlett O’Hara dresses, the late 19th century gowns with huge bustles and the short, fringed flapper dresses of the 1920s. Others collect photos of their own ancestors, straining to see the resemblance between the long gone family members in the photos and the six-year-old eating Cheerios at the breakfast table.
The age of modern photography began in the mid 1800s with the daguerrotype, developed by Louis Daguerre in 1839. People flocked to studios to have their images recorded on copper plates. Although the daguerrotype produced a good quality image, it was costly and easily damaged. The daguerrotype was followed in the 1850s by the ambrotype, which used a glass plate painted black on the back to create an image. The ambrotype was cheaper than the daguerrotype, making it more accessible to a wider segment of the population. Card photographs soon followed, where the image was mounted on a card, much like a postcard. These were commonly traded with family and friends. A thin plate of iron was used to create a tintype, or ferrotype. This type of photo was inexpensive and easy to create, and while it lacked some of the detail of the other types of images, the tintype’s low cost made it popular from the 1850s through the late 1800s.
Old paper photos can be found at antique shops and malls, antique auctions and online and usually go for a few dollars per photo. Daguerrotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes can be more difficult to find with prices anywhere from $10 to over $100.
