Victorians & Their Photos

---

Home ~ Discovering ~ The Victorian Census ~ Scrapbooking ~ Victorian Paper Crafts ~ The More Things Change Archive ~ Home

The Photograft Album, c. 1915 from the internet archive. A very humorous "turn of the century" take off on the old Victorian Photograph Albums!

About Photographs - The Art of Home Making, c.1898 "I remember very well when daguerreotypes and ambrotypes first came in. They were the predecessors of the photographs which are now so common and which have been brought to such wonderful perfection. The first sun-pictures, as we called them, were enclosed in little leather cases, and the centre-tables of those days, way back in the forties, used to be adorned with piles of these little embossed cases which were among the precious possessions of every family. By swift degrees these pictures were superseded as the fine art of the camera was better understood. During the war we had the little carte de visite, as well as the imperial photograph, and many times as the soldiers sat by the camp-fires and read the letters which came from home out from among the folds would drop the pretty little picture sent by a sweetheart, wife or sister, or maybe it would be the baby's picture for her father to see and to notice how she had grown since he went away. In these times almost everybody can afford to have pictures taken often, and our boys and girls carry Kodaks and have great success in taking likenesses of those they love and beautiful interiors. Whenever one can do it, it is well to have frequent pictures taken of children, for these darlings of the home change a great many times as they grow up, and it is interesting to watch the development, both of body and mind, as the little rosy, dimpled baby face changes to the older countenance of school-boy or school-girl, and then as that gives place to the look of the youth or maiden, and finally as the face takes on the beauty of maturity."

Photography as an Art - Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, July 1862 "In commenting on the present rage for photographs in London, an English writer dwells pathetically on the trials of sitting for these pictures; but he gives strong reasons to prove that the fashion will be permanent, and, on the whole, advantageous. We agree with him in believing that the fashion of photograph collecting will continue, because, in the first place, the gain of having cheap portraits of friends is so great that there is a solid advantage in photographs which would counter balance a great many nuisances of a very serious sort. And then the collections, when made, are very useful; they supply a fund of talk to people who have nothing to say. “Every one can find something to remark about a collection of photographs. Either they do not know the people represented in it, or they do know them, or they wonder whether they know them. Then, if they know them, they can say they are like or unlike; or they can pay adroit compliments and make acceptable remarks on the photographs most cherished by the collector; or they can gratify a little quiet malice, and say that they never could have believed so very unfavorable a likeness is a true one, and yet every one knows the sun must be right. It is this fund of easy small-talk which will be the real foundation of the permanent success of photography as a fashion. It might easily have happened that photograph books would have shared the fate of albums. Thirty years ago, young ladies used to keep albums, and people used to be decoyed or frightened into writing in them. Authors of all sizes and degrees of reputation were entreated to add their mite. Charles Lamb's letters, for example, are full of the references to the albums he had been writing in. But the weak point of albums was that, where they were not occupied by magnificent water-color representations of perfectly round roses in the fullest bloom, they were too intellectual. People in an ordinary drawing-room think there is a sort of plot to find them out if any demand is made on their intellect; and to write verses, or even to copy correctly a piece of poetry out of a standard author, is dangerous and embarrassing. It is true that writers in albums were occasionally allowed to get off by writing out in their best hand one of the very poorest and best-known riddles they could recollect, such as “Why is Athens like the wick of a candle?” but even this is precarious, for the answer has to be remembered and understood. In photographs all is plain sailing. All that has to be done is to make gossiping remarks about other people, and this is a duty to which the most timid intellects feel competent.” Photographs are, then, a fashion; but it is possible they may be what, considering the mutability of human things, deserves to be called a permanent fashion, because they tend to supply a want that will always be felt."

Example of a Young Ladies Signature Album, circa 1851 - "Scriptural Album with Floral Illustrations"


The above inscription reads:

To Ellen

When looking o'er this book of thine
Whatever time, where'er you be,
Turn thee, to where this hand of mine
Hath kindly traced, remember me.

B.M.N.

Saugus July 10th 1853.



Free Image Hosting

Home

---

Send E-Mail to: avictorianwhisper@yahoo.com

---

This page created using the webpage creation facilities of Webspawner.
Copyright © 2008 D Phillips. All Rights Reserved