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 Photography, the process of securing imagery directly from nature, was introduced to the world in 1839 by the French painter Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. These first photographs were made through the action of light focused onto chemically prepared silver plates and named “daguerreotypes” in honor of the inventor. Each daguerreotype was unique unto itself, as the process created a positive image directly onto the mirrored surface. Because no photographic negative was employed, only one daguerreotype image could be made from each exposure. Initially, the daguerreotype required lengthy exposure times, and portrait making was difficult and tenuous. But rapid improvements in the process within the first few years of its introduction enabled photography to be used in ways previously unimagined. The impact of photography on the arts, science, and communication was incalculable, and it changed at once and forever the way in which the world was perceived. For the first time, portraits could be truthfully recorded devoid of interpretation and free of artistic limitation. Portrait photography arrived in America just in time to record the likeness of the newly inaugurated ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison. All of President Harrison’s predecessors were skillfully portrayed by the greatest artists of their day—George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, John Adams by John Singleton Copley, Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale. None of these likenesses, however, magnificent as they are, could compare to the unerring eye of the camera for fidelity and microscopic detail. Stuart may have captured Washington’s spirit, but photography recorded the very essence of its subject, as Oliver Cromwell advocated, “with warts and all.” On the day President Harrison delivered his ill-fated inaugural speech, March 4, 1841, he paused to have his formal photographic portrait taken in the Capitol. Harrison favored the request of photographers Justus E. Moore, a prominent Philadelphia dentist, and his partner “Captain” Ward. The two men were successfully engaged in taking daguerreotype likenesses of many of the most distinguished members of the House of Representatives
and Senate. In a letter published in the Philadelphia Inquirer,
President Harrison was reported to have been “delighted
with the results” of the sitting.1 Just 31 days after
his inauguration, President Harrison died from pneumonia. Unfortunately,
the present location of the daguerreotype portrait of the ephemeral
President Harrison is unknown. The lost image is of considerable
historical importance, as it represents the first photograph
of a United States president taken while in office. Three of
Harrison’s immediate predecessors, Presidents John Quincy
Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren, had their daguerreotype
likenesses made after leaving office. Several of these images
are extant. The earliest known photograph of a president of the United States is a faint and scratched daguerreotype likeness of John Quincy Adams, who served as chief executive from 1825 to 1829 and later as a member of Congress until his death in office in 1848. This likeness of the former President Adams was taken at the gallery of Bishop and Gray in early August 1843 in Utica, New York. President Adams, then 76 years old, was returning from a visit to Niagara Falls and stopped at Utica to see an old friend, Judge Ezeikiel Bacon. In his diary for August 1, 1843, Adams remarked, “Four daguerreotype likenesses of my head were taken, two of them jointly with the head of Mr. Bacon. All hideous.” Adams continued his diary entry the following day, “At seven this morning Mr. Bacon came and I went with him to the Shadow Shop, where three more Daguerreotype likeness were taken of me, no better than those of yesterday. They are all too true to the original.”2 The humorous account of President Adams’s experience at the photographer’s gallery is not unlike other reports by early sitters. In 1843 photography was still an embryonic industry in which “bolt upright” poses and vacuous stares were considered requisite elements for the lengthy and slow exposure times the daguerreotype camera demanded. The startled reactions of the sitters to their portraits may have stemmed from their initial encounter with reality; after all, the daguerreotype was simply a mirror with a memory. The process may have conveyed too many “warts” for patrons long accustomed to the forgiving brush strokes of the painter. The discovery of the daguerreotype of President Adams was a remarkable occurrence. In the early 1960s a young graduate student at Emory University strolled into an antique shop on Peachtree Street in Atlanta where, for 50 cents, he purchased the earliest known photograph of a U.S. president! The image was dim, tarnished, and abraded but the subject certainly looked like John Quincy Adams and an old inked inscription affixed to the back of the leather case containing the daguerreotype detailed its precise history. Information about the identity of the subject and the photographers, plus the location and date for the daguerreotype, coincided perfectly with Adams’s diary entries, establishing beyond any doubt the photograph’s pedigree.3 The daguerreotype was subsequently sold, then donated to the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, where it holds a place of honor in the permanent collection. There are only three known daguerreotype images of President John Quincy Adams.Andrew Jackson Though feeble and reluctant, the formerly fiery President Andrew Jackson faced the camera on his deathbed. The only known photographs of President Jackson were taken at his plantation, The Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee, just a few months before his death in June 1845. At least four distinct daguerreotype portraits of the 78-year-old general were secured at the sitting, but considerable controversy surrounds the identity of the photographer. Mathew Brady and Edward Anthony, both from New York City, the Langenheim brothers of Philadelphia, and local Nashville photographer Dan Adams have all been given credit or laid claim to the distinction of taking Jackson’s daguerreotype. One eyewitness account of Jackson’s photographic sitting reported, “He was much opposed to having it [the photograph] taken and was very feeble at the time.”4 The photographic portraits show President Jackson attired in a dark formal coat with black tie and a turned-up white collar. His full shock of white hair and worn and weary countenance tell of a lengthy lifetime filled with personal, military, and political conflict. In one portrait Jackson wears spectacles and averts his gaze downward, away from the camera. Two of the images are in profile, and in these we can clearly see the pillows used to prop up the subject. A fourth likeness depicts President Jackson sitting erect, though again he directs his view off to the side. His head seems precariously perched on his body. It is this likeness that was selected for an engraving entitled “Andrew Jackson in His Last Days, Hermitage, April 15, 1845.” Presently there are only four known daguerreotypes of Andrew Jackson.5 Upon William Henry
Harrison’s sudden death in April 1841, John Tyler of
Virginia became the first vice president to assume the highest
office of the land. In 1842 the noted portraitist George
P. A. Healy received his first presidential commission to
paint the likeness of President Tyler. Healy, in years to
come, would rely on photographs taken by Brady to assist
in the creation of numerous and highly detailed presidential
portraits. However, no photograph of President Tyler taken
while in office is presently known to exist, though Brady
did secure a handsome, full-length likeness of Tyler posed
beside a table with his hand placed on a large volume. This
daguerreotype was made shortly after President Tyler left
office in 1845. In addition to the Brady image, another formal
daguerreotype portrait of Tyler was made showing the tenth
president later in life.6 The most successful
one-term president, James Knox Polk, the “dark horse” Democratic
candidate from Tennessee, was the first president to be extensively
photographed in office. As president-elect, Polk indulged
the request of the nationally renowned daguerreotypist John
Plumbe Jr. for a formal sitting in his gallery on Pennsylvania
Avenue. Copies of Polk’s daguerreotype portrait were
displayed and sold at Plumbe’s gallery before the March
4, 1845, inauguration. Even during the tumultuous days of
the Mexican War, Polk found time to accommodate artists and
photographers alike. During the spring of 1846, President
Polk and his cabinet assembled in the State Dining Room—Thomas
Jefferson’s old office—and sat for a formal portrait
by Plumbe, the first photograph of a president and his advisers
and the first photograph known to have been taken inside
the White House. President and Mrs. Polk also hold the distinction
of being the first first family to be photographed while
in office. Mathew Brady and possibly George P. A. Healy also
took daguerreotypes of Polk and his family while residing
at the White House.7 Just like William Henry Harrison, the only other Whig to be elected president, Zachary Taylor was a war-hero candidate but, unlike Harrison, Taylor was untrained in the art of politics and totally lacked any experience of elected office. The Whigs tapped the Mexican War general as their presidential candidate for his immense national popularity; this, coupled with the switch of Van Buren from Democrat to Free Soil candidate, assured Taylor’s election. There are at least
a half dozen distinct daguerreotype portraits of General
Taylor, mostly in uniform, taken prior to his inauguration.
Four extant daguerreotypes portray Taylor as the twelfth
president of the United States. Mathew Brady is generally
credited with the circa 1849 daguerreotype of President Taylor
standing among his seven-member cabinet. This exceedingly
rare group portrait is owned by the Library of Congress.
The original image is in very poor condition with numerous
scratches and abrasions to the surface of the silver plate.
Two other daguerreotype portraits show President Taylor in
profile, one attributed to Brady; the other, unattributed,
is identified as “General Taylor taken at the White
House March, 1849.” Taylor appears much distressed
in the White House photograph, suggesting that a more accurate
date for the image would probably be August 1849, following
a serious illness. The fourth photograph of President Taylor
is a pensive formal portrait revealing in great detail the
weathered and tested character of the career soldier who
was fondly referred to by his men as “Old Rough and
Ready.”8 Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce held office during the 1850s, the apogee and final days of the daguerreian era. Each man stood before the camera and had his likeness frozen in time on the silvery plate. Filling the vacancy of office upon the death of Zachary Taylor, Fillmore and his administration grappled unsuccessfully with the issue of slavery. Western exploration, the implementation of a transcontinental railroad, the debates over the compromise of 1850, and California’s admission into the Union were major issues during Fillmore’s term. At least 10 daguerreotype portraits of Fillmore were noted to have been taken, either just prior to his presidency or while in office. Many were transformed into lithographic prints.9 Franklin Pierce,
the compromise Democratic candidate of 1852, emerged on the
35th ballot above Stephen Douglas and James Buchanan to win
his party’s nomination. In his efforts to appease impossible
factional interests, Pierce succeeded in pleasing neither
North nor South, and his party renounced him as a failure.
Handsome, well educated, and a Mexican War hero, General
Pierce presented a striking figure for the camera that belied
his political difficulties and personal tragedy. More than
two dozen daguerreotype portraits of Franklin Pierce have
been cataloged; several were taken by the prestigious firm
of Southworth and Hawes of Boston while Pierce was president.10 Toward the end of President James Buchanan’s administration in the late 1850s a new photographic process was introduced that revolutionized the industry. The elegant silver daguerreotype plate was replaced by the paper photographic print. Paper photography held several advantages: the prints were inexpensive to produce, they could be quickly made from the glass negatives, and, best of all, an almost unlimited number of photographs could be printed from a single negative. The daguerreian era of photography ended on the eve of the Civil War, and the paper print would remain dominant until the advent of digital photography in the 20th century. A career diplomat, James Buchanan had served in both the House and Senate representing the interests of Pennsylvania. It was his fate to assume the presidency at a time when the nation was being torn apart by bitter sectional interests. In June 1846, Buchanan, as secretary of state in Polk’s cabinet, had his daguerreotype portrait taken in front of the White House—his future residence. Buchanan had faced Brady’s camera on several occasions, although he was “a notoriously difficult portrait subject, with wall eye, a squint, and a crooked back.”11 Brady provided paper photographs of President Buchanan to the artist George P. A. Healy, who modified the image to create a more pleasing likeness of the president. Not all who viewed Healy’s rendering, however, felt that he had done Buchanan justice. “When journalist Gail Hamilton visited Brady’s studio in Washington, she immediately compared Healy’s portrait to Brady’s and she preferred the latter. Healy’s elegant technique raised her suspicions. Instead, she favored the immediate, transparent appearance of the photograph, as if the sheer absence of art testified to the truthfulness of the portrait.” Comparing Healy’s paintings to Brady’s photographs, Hamilton wrote: In oil paintings we see Washington through Healy’s eyes, nor can we be certain how much is the man Washington and how much is the painter Healy, but here, [Mathew Brady’s photographs] is no allowance to be made for the imagination of the artist. They are facts. The sun is a faithful biographer, and no respecter of persons. He gives us men as he saw them shining down on their faces at noonday.12 Hamilton, of course,
was not allowing for the behind-the-scenes magic that occurred
in every professional photographic studio, where retouching
of the negative and diffused lighting became a standard feature
of the “formal portrait.” Still, she saw in the
Brady photographs a more realistic, a more democratic representation
of President Buchanan. Undoubtedly, Abraham Lincoln was the first American president to recognize the publicity value of photography, and he successfully used the media to help secure his election. Reportedly Lincoln once claimed that he owed his nomination to his Cooper Union speech and his widely distributed photograph taken by Brady. Lincoln allowed himself to be photographed more frequently than all of his predecessors combined. While Polk, Taylor, and Pierce may each have had 10 photographs taken, Lincoln sat for well over 100 portraits. In Washington, D.C., Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner collectively produced 40 different portraits of President Lincoln.13 The most unusual photograph of President Abraham Lincoln, and his very last, was not taken in Brady’s elegantly appointed salon on Pennsylvania Avenue but in the White House itself on a windy Monday afternoon, March 6, 1865. It was during the closing days of the Civil War that Henry F. Warren, a photographer from Waltham, Massachusetts, attempted to obtain a pass to photograph the Union forces in front of Richmond. He arrived in Washington in time for Lincoln’s second inauguration when the historical importance of photographing the president occurred to him. Though turned away with the daily throng of office seekers and lobbyists, Warren was told by a White House guard that “the surest way to obtain an audience with the President was through the intercession of his little son, ‘Tad.’” When Lincoln’s son appeared in the White House garden on his pony, it didn’t take Warren long to devise a plan to photograph the president. “Tad” and his pony were soon placed in position and photographed, after which Mr. Warren asked “Tad” to tell his father that a man had come all the way from Boston, and was particularly anxious to see him and obtain a sitting from him. “Tad” went to see his father, and word was soon returned that Mr. Lincoln would comply. In the meantime, Mr. Warren had improvised a kind of studio upon the south balcony of the White House. Mr. Lincoln soon came out, and saying but a very few words, took his seat as indicated. After a single negative was taken, he inquired: “Is that all sir?” Unwilling to detain him any longer than was absolutely necessary, Mr. Warren replies: “Yes, sir,” and the President immediately withdrew. At the time he appeared on the balcony the wind was blowing freshly, as his disarranged hair indicates, and, as sunset was rapidly approaching, it was difficult to obtain a sharp picture. Six weeks later President Lincoln was dead, and it is doubtless true that this is the last photograph ever made of him.14 Lincoln interrupted his busy day—a meeting with former Congressman John T. Stuart of Illinois, a noon reception of a diplomatic corps, a conference with Marcus L. Ward, later governor of New Jersey—simply to comply with his son’s request to be photographed. The slight scowl on the president’s face, as clearly seen in the Warren photograph, might reflect his annoyance over the intrusion, or perhaps Lincoln was simply preoccupied. The account of President Lincoln’s White House portrait was related in a letter published by the photographer’s friend in a magazine article 17 years after the event.15 Lincoln actually posed for three portraits that March afternoon, one standing and two seated. “The two seated poses were made on a chair which Lincoln himself carried out on the balcony, but the standing pose has never come to light.”16 Both of the seated versions of Lincoln’s portrait were published and sold by Warren with a printed caption that stated the photographs were taken on the balcony of the White House, March 6, 1865. After Lincoln’s death on April 14, Warren added the poignant caption “The Last Photograph of President Lincoln.” By the mid-1860s, photography (specifically paper prints made from glass plate negatives) enabled photographers to take portraits quickly and accurately. Thousands upon thousands of photographs, portraits, and views were produced during the Civil War—often under extreme conditions. The camera had been taken along on Western expeditions, invited to presidential inaugurations, used in forensic investigation, submerged to the depths of the ocean, even pointed to the heavens to portray the face of the moon. The camera’s presence was ubiquitous and accepted. Along with the familiarity of photography came a generalized change in attitude regarding the concept of portraiture. Once, the taking of a photographic portrait by definition was a formal event replete with stiff and unnatural poses—very serious business. The decade following the Civil War witnessed a change in photography’s style and form. Generally speaking, the camera was no longer a dreaded recorder of “bad hair days.” Photographic proofs were made from multiple exposures, and if the work was still unacceptable the cameraman could quickly take another set of portraits. Photographers became receptive to the artistic pose and positioned their subjects in more natural and representative forms. The photographic portraits of the presidents of the United States from Abraham Lincoln to William Howard Taft include some of the most evocative and artistically stunning examples of formal portraiture in America—works by Brady, Gardner, Frances Benjamin Johnston from Washington, D.C., and Napoleon Sarony and Rockwood & Company of New York, to name but a few. Consider the resolute
full-length photograph of Andrew Johnson taken by Brady in
his Washington, D.C., gallery. Johnson appears to have just
risen from the ornately carved chair (one “borrowed” by
Brady from a friend in the U.S. Senate); his hand is clenched
and a look of determination grips Lincoln’s former
vice president. He appears to realize that his policies are
lightning rods in the storm of Reconstruction. Here is a
man about to do battle with the Radical Republicans, whose
sole design is to remove him from office. One intriguing
photograph of President Ulysses S. Grant bears special notice—a
profile taken in Washington, D.C., in 1875 by Lewis Emory
Walker. The portrait was made at the request of Julia Dent
Grant, who wanted to have a cameo cut in the likeness of
her husband. Mrs. John A. Logan, a close friend, had just
returned from Italy where she had a cameo made of General
Logan. If Mrs. Grant could provide a profile photograph of
the president, Mrs. Logan would arrange to have a cameo cut.
When asked to sit for his profile photograph President Grant
responded coolly, saying that it would “be a good deal
of trouble.” Mrs. Grant pondered exactly what “trouble” her
husband referred to, as he had never before shown any reluctance
to be photographed: it seemed to be a simple matter. A few
days later the president gave Mrs. Grant proof copies of
his profile photograph. It was then that Mrs. Grant saw the “trouble” her
husband had anticipated. Evidently, Grant thought that the
actual lines of his face were needed to be seen in order
for the cameo cutter to complete his work. So, to comply,
the president shaved off his mustache and chin whiskers!
Undaunted, Mrs. Grant explained, “I waited for his
beard to grow, and then the kind of picture I wanted [with
a full beard] was taken.” The first lady mused that
the photograph sans beard showed the firmness of her husband’s
chin and mouth and disclosed “the private man himself,
firm as a rock indeed, but benevolent and warm of heart.”17 The closely elected
Rutherford B. Hayes followed Grant into office and brought
an end to Reconstruction in the South. As president he sat
for a formal studio portrait accompanied by his wife, Lucy
Webb of Chillicothe, Ohio. Mrs. Hayes was the first wife
of a president to graduate from college and to be officially
called “First Lady.” In this intimate and beautifully
arranged photograph by José Maria Mora of New York,
Mrs. Hayes relies on her husband’s shoulder for stability
during the still relatively lengthy exposure. President Hayes
rests his hand on a small volume upon his knee. For many
sitters the book was simply a studio prop, but for Hayes
it was much more. An ardent bibliophile, Hayes owned an enormous
personal library and had just purchased a major addition
to his collection before entering the White House. The mysterious-looking
portrait of President James A. Garfield was taken by the
flamboyant New York photographer Napoleon Sarony. The location
of the sitting and the exact date are unknown. The half-length
profile of Garfield is dramatically composed with darkness
shrouding the president’s back and light playing across
his bearded face. The presence of his wide-brimmed hat and
overcoat suggest that the president is in transit, certainly
not at his desk for business-as-usual. Garfield was a brilliant
scholar from humble origins, the last president born in a
log cabin. He became a teacher and lawyer before his enlistment
during the Civil War. Garfield’s nomination by the
Republican Party was a compromise over Grant and John Sherman.
He was shot by Charles Guiteau, a mentally troubled office
seeker, at Washington’s Baltimore and Potomac Station.
Lingering from his fatal wound during the hellish summer
of 1881, the first form of air conditioning was invented
and introduced into the White House to ease Garfield’s
suffering. His cruel and senseless assassination evoked worldwide
sorrow. Frances Benjamin Johnston, the prolific photojournalist from Washington, D.C., at the turn of the century, once advised women who considered photography as a career, “[You] must have good common sense, unlimited patience, . . . good taste, a quick eye, and a talent for detail.”18 Johnston’s talent for detail and her perseverance in a field dominated by men brought her assignments from the leading illustrated periodicals of the day. Her subjects included Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, and the president of the United States, William McKinley. In 1898, the year
America went to war with Spain, Miss Johnston was granted
permission to photograph President McKinley in his office
at the White House, and a series of portraits were taken.
One unflattering likeness shows the president hunched in
his chair with his hands dangling, marionette-style, before
him. But Miss Johnston rose to the occasion when she requested
that McKinley stand full figure in front of his desk. The
president obliged her directions, and the resulting portrait
is a powerful image of the chief executive in harmony with
his surroundings and equally at ease as chief commander and
world diplomat. Miss Johnston’s trademark “talent
for detail” failed, however, to notice that in the
back of the room a balding clerk moved into the corner and
left his blurred figure in an attempt to be inconspicuous. The President’s
Room in the new temporary Executive Office Building (later
the West Wing) served as the backdrop for the larger-than-life
photograph of President Theodore Roosevelt taken by the New
York firm of Rockwood Photo Company on February 24, 1903.
The portrait embodies Roosevelt’s personal confidence
and his vision for the United States’ role in the world
community. With feet firmly planted and one hand jauntily
placed on his hip, Roosevelt grasps the globe behind him,
asserting his position of leadership. An ardent outdoorsman,
hunter, war hero, and explorer, Roosevelt established his
presidential reputation as trust buster and prime mover in
building the Panama Canal. |
