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The history of photography has remained enduringly entwined over its nearly two-century existence with technological breakthroughs and advancements. The evolving methods, equipment and materials, along with the public’s shifting appetite for varying aesthetics, themes, applications and expense, forged the medium’s prosperity over time. With the introduction of the French-born daguerreotype process to America in 1839, the nineteenth century was a period of fruitful experimentation marked by the introduction of a multitude of processes, each flourishing and reigning for a brief to extended period of time before being dethroned for the next surpassing development.

Daguerreotype 1839-late 1860s .

The American middle class’s ability to obtain inexpensive detailed images of themselves was ushered in with the arrival of the British Queen to New York City in November of 1839. Aboard the steamer was Francois Gouraud—the agent of the Frenchman Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, who was the inventor of the world’s first utilitarian, commercially-viable photographic process known as the daguerreotype. Just four months following the arrival of Daguerre’s agent, the first daguerreotype portrait studio in the world opened in New York City. New York cultivated the evolution of daguerreian industry throughout America due to the city’s prominent and influential standing within the nation, and by the mid-1840s, all principal cities in America were brimming with daguerreotype studios.

The daguerreotype’s period of greatest production in America was from 1850 to 1855 when approximately three million were produced annually, reaching its zenith in 1853 in correspondence with a large-scale display of daguerreotypes at the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition. Nevertheless, the popularity of the daguerreotype began to wane in 1853 with the introduction of the wet plate collodion negative process that allowed for image production on paper, glass, and iron for relatively less cost. By 1858, only a trickle of photographic studios continued to specialize in the process, and by the late 1860s the daguerreotype had become an outmoded and soon to be forgotten photographic technique.

The nature of the daguerreotype method created a one-of-a-kind image. To create a daguerreotype, a thin copper plate coated with silver and polished to a mirror-like reflectivity was sensitized with iodine and then placed in a camera where it was exposed to light. To develop the image, the plate was held over highly-toxic mercury vapor fumes until the image appeared and then fixed with salt (hyposulfite of soda).

Modern daguerreotypes are made in much the same way as they were in the 19th century. They are now considered an art form as each daguerreotype is unique and multiple copies are not able to be reproduced.

Ambrotype 1854-approximately 1865 .

The ambrotype process was patented in 1854 and enjoyed great popularity for a few short years, and again during the Civil War. It produced pictures on glass instead of metal plates. Like the earlier daguerreotype, each image is unique, made one-at-a-time in the camera. The glass is flowed with a sticky material known as iodized collodion. It is then sensitized by being dipped into a bath of silver nitrate, and exposed in the camera while still wet. A chemical developer is used to bring out the image. The glass plate is then backed with black material-paint, cloth or paper, and furnished in a case similar to those used for daguerreotypes. The ambrotype process was marketed as an improvement, because the finished image lacked the glittery, elusive reflective quality of daguerreotypes and was therefore easier to view. The detail and tonal range, however, tend to be less impressive than in the earlier process.

With its popularity peaking from 1855 to 1856, the ambrotype’s popularity began to decline in 1857 with the commanding acceptance of paper photography and the mounting favor of the ambrotype’s relatively cheaper and sturdier wet collodion photographic cousin, the tintype. Although ambrotypes continued to be produced until 1865, they become rare by 1861.

Tintype 1856-1920s .

The 1856 American invention of the “japanned” iron plate, a thin iron plate brushed with a boiled varnish of black lacquer composed modestly of asphaltum (tar), linseed oil and ample amounts of lampblack color and precedingly oven-dried to an exceptionally hard consistency, would lead to the cheapest and most favored photographic process of the nineteenth century within the nation: the ferrotype (the prefix “ferro” referencing to the iron support), more commonly known as the tintype despite the absence of tin.

Into the last decade of the nineteenth century, the tintype remained America's most popular photographic medium for personal portraits, due to the nominal expense of supplies and equipment along with the minimal training required by tintype “operators.” The tintype can be considered a distinctively American form of photography. The process’s peak years coincided with the American Civil War due to durability, allowing them to be easily mailed and carried in soldiers’ pockets on the battlefield. The tintype’s popularity also sprang from its instantaneous exposure and comparatively short processing time of only ten minutes, in comparison to the twenty to thirty minute wait for a finished daguerreotype.

Although the tintype endured as a novelty item into the 1920s, its popularity began to wane around 1890 with a series of technical and manufacturing innovations by the Eastman Kodak Company, including the introduction in 1889 of the first commercial transparent roll film and the advent of the easy-to-use snapshot camera.

Pannotype approximately 1853-1860s .

Photographic images can be made on any absorbent fabric that can be sensitized with light-sensitive emulsions, such as on silk, satin, leather, or linen. Fabric prints were popular primarily from the art form's invention in 1839 to the early 1860s. A pannotype is a direct-positive wet collodion , or collodion transfer , made by stripping the collodion emulsion from a glass plate and transferring the image to a silver sensitized piece of black waxed linen (oilcloth) or japanned /patent leather. A japanned piece of leather would reference the application of a boiled varnish of black lacquer composed of asphaltum (tar), linseed oil, and ample amounts of lampblack color and precedingly oven-dried to a hard consistency.

Pannotypes were unusual even during their time of production (approximately 1853-early 1860s), attractive primarily to wealthier clientele and desirable for their ability to suffer less from being bent and, thus, especially suitable for enclosure in letters. While the cloth support was no more expensive to produce, it was less economical in the long run than paper photography since multiples could be made from a single glass negative while the pannotype was a singular picture unable of being copied. This was likely a factor in the rapid abandonment of the pannotype process. Pannotypes are even more rare photographic curiosities today due to the fragility and deterioration of the black waxed linen and leather supports.

Cyanotype 1842-1930s .

Cyanotypes were first invented by Sir John Hershel of England in 1842, and were most popular from 1842-1848 and from 1885-1895. The name is derived from the Greek word meaning “dark blue impression,” cyanotypes are a relatively simple and inexpensive non-silver process. To make a cyanotype print, a photographic negative was placed in direct contact with a sheet of paper or cloth pre-soaked in a solution of light-sensitive iron salts, and was exposed in direct sunlight. A simple wash in a bath of water permanently fixed the image. The final photograph is blue.

It was mainly used by amateurs and for documentation of industrial products and for print proofs.

Crayon/Charcoal Enlargement approximately early 1850s-approximately 1915 .

In the early 1850s, photographers began for the first time to produce enlarged photographic images by utilizing reflectors or copying lens to transfer beams of sunlight through a glass plate negative and onto a large piece of albumen paper. The first practical solar enlarger was patented in America in 1857, and by the mid-1860s, solar enlargers were common fixtures on the roofs and windows of major photographic studios around the nation.

The enlarged crayon or charcoal portrait was produced by placing a wet-collodion glass negative exposed with the likeness of the sitter into a solar enlarger, whose adjustable mirror collected sunbeams from outside the window and printed the image onto the albumen paper. The portrait was lightly printed to produce a weakened, or dim, image on the paper to then act as a guide for reworking with either crayon, chalk or some other medium. The artist then drew over the picture with charcoal or pastels, trying to duplicate the photograph while making it look hand drawn. The quality of the picture was entirely dependent on the artist’s skill. Tinting or gilding was sometimes added to enhance the effect. From a few feet away, it is often taken for a photograph but viewed up close, it can be seen to be a drawing. An alternate method was to fully develop the portrait on the paper and, following the hand-retouching, the silver image was removed by “a chemical treatment.” While the exact chemistry at present time is unknown, it has been proposed that a diluted bleach, such as sulfuric acid, was used to remove the photographic image; thereby, giving the appearance of a hand-drawn or painted portrait.

These large-scale pictures were intended to be hung on the wall. This development encouraged photographs to adopt some of the aesthetic criteria associated with drawings and paintings. The print was then hand-accented with chalk or crayon, and sometimes ink or pastel, thereby giving the finished product an appearance of a drawing or painting.

Autochrome 1907-1930s .

The Autochrome was patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907; it was the principal color photography process in use before the advent of subtractive color film in the mid-1930s. Autochrome plates are covered in microscopic red, green and blue-violet colored potato starch grains (about four million per square inch). When the photograph is taken, light passes through these color filters to the photographic emulsion. The plate is processed to produce a positive transparency. Light, passing through the colored starch grains, combines to recreate a full color image of the original subject. The glass plate Autochrome was most commonly viewed in a diascope, which was a folding case with the Autochrome image and a ground glass diffuser fitted into an opening on one side, and a mirror framed into the other side. The user would place the diascope near a window or other light source so that light passed through the diffuser and the Autochrome, and the resulting back-lit, dark-surrounded image would be viewed in the mirror.

Chromolithograph 1820-1930

In the mid to late 19th century, at the height of commercial color lithographic printing, color lithographs began to be known as chromolithographs. The term color lithograph was then reserved for the work of artists or “up-market” prints. In either case, making a color print required a separate stone for each color to be printed; up to twenty stones could be used. Typically, an outline of the image was drawn in red chalk (which was visible but not receptive to ink) and transferred to each stone. The colors were then separated by eye and transferred to the stone by a technician or artist referred to as the color-separator. The color was sometimes built up by layering colors, but often it was built up using a range of hues and tones of the same color. The ink was applied using the same techniques used in monochromatic lithography. In the mid to late 19th century, stippling (applying dots with a pen) became a common technique, giving color lithographs a dotted appearance.

Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and occasionally tintypes (approximately 1856-1862) were protected within a small case intended to be held in one’s hand. The brass mat frames —whose contoured interior shapes, textures and ornately embossed or acid-etched patterns varied with time, aesthetically enhanced the sitter’s image and shielded the image from direct contact with the protective cover glass on top. A thin, ornamental strip of brass known as a preserver would surround and bind together the photograph, brass mat, and cover glass prior to placement within a case. This bound bundle including the cover glass, photograph, brass mat and preserver was known as the package.

The "plate sizes" used in referring to 19th-century daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and other photographs stem originally from the daguerreotype, for which the first plates manufactured were approximately 6.5 x 8.5 inches (16.5 x 21.5 cm) in size. Smaller size daguerreotypes were then defined in terms of how many plates of the smaller size could be cut from such a "full" or "whole" plate. These plate sizes became standardized and were subsequently used for the photographic formats which followed on the daguerreotype. Plate sizes are still the standard method for referring to the dimensions of these 19th century images. The following are approximate 19th-Century image plate sizes: Whole Plate: 6.5 x 8.5 inches (16.5 x 21.5 cm), Half Plate: 4.25 x 5.5 inches (11 x 14 cm), Quarter Plate: 3.25 x 4.25 inches (8 x 11 cm), Sixth Plate: 2.75 x 3.25 inches (7 x 8 cm), Ninth Plate: 2 x 2.5 inches (5 x 6 cm), Sixteenth Plate: 1.375 x 1.625 inches (3.5 x 4 cm).