ClassyArts Blog

The online ebook I have planned on how to identify and date photographs now has its table of contents online. There are only the first few pages done, on those items that have links on that page. Only paid members of ClassyArts.com have access to those pages. When the whole thing is complete, I will try to make the whole thing available as an ebook, though it may be too large to fit in one PDF file.

The current outline is only partial — the main framework. As I identify more detailed characteristics within those categories, many of them will be broken down further, or existing sub-categories will have additional pages added. The section on Named Motifs of Photographers Imprints/Back Imprints only has half-a-dozen names listed now; I expect that to grow into fifty or a hundred or more.

The format I have settled on is similar to that of the post on this blog on Dating Imprints: Floral Bouquet over Picture Frame, with Camera and Palette with Banners — only the summary table will be the first thing on the page. That way, once you have read the explanation, and understand how the terminology is being used, you can quickly look-up the relevant dates by going to the correct page — and there it will be, first thing.

I have no idea how long it will take me to complete this project — I have several other things going on to keep me busy — but I’ll try to add to this as quickly as I can. There is lots of material I have already written up for other uses (such as the above cited post on this blog), so all I have to do is reformat and clean up the text. Other subjects will require more research, including analysis of example photographs in my dated images collection, which now includes nearly 3,000 images and continues to grow.

Speaking of dated images, I have another blog where I am posting one dated image per week (3000 / 52 — I only have enough material for 57 years worth of posts!) The Dated Images blog is a sub-site of my Genealogy Through Pictures blog, where I try to add a post every few weeks. Give them a visit — but don’t forget to come back here for the latest news!

It always amazes me when I read some historian describe the Carte de Visite (CDV) as an ‘instant hit’ in the United States, after its 1854 invention by Disdéri of Paris. They must not have looked at any major CDV collections.

I have a collection of thousands of digital images of dated photographs, which provides a major component of my research into dating images. I went through and looked at each type of photograph, and counted up the frequencies and distribution by type. I’ll share a summary of that study below.

The Collection

First however, I need to point out some of the limitations of the data. Only a small portion of these images are from my own physical collection of photographs — the rest have been found online, at auction sites and through dealers, family and local history sites, etc. Some of them have dates written on them, others are dated by knowing the dates of birth for young children portrayed, and judging their ages when the photos were taken. Sometimes a photographer’s imprint or copyright notice provides the date. As a whole, the majority of dates appear to be sound — the date fits the style of image and mounting, etc. But I’m sure they are not 100% correct.

Moreover, there is a bias in the collection. Images from 1864-66 are grossly over-represented, because so many of them have dated tax stamps on them. Tintypes and cased images are grossly under-represented, because so few have dates written on them — those formats are just not as easy to write on as a card mounted image.

So take the following conclusions with a large grain of salt. I believe the trends are substantially correct, though the percentages are very approximate.

Remember too that these are images from the United States and Canada, the results would doubtlessly be different if the collection were European based. England, for example, had fewer daguerreotypes and more calotypes. The cabinet card and CDV formats seem to have remained popular longer in Europe than they did here. I have also seen ambrotypes from the 1890s from Britain, though none that late from this side of the Atlantic. I’m sure there are other differences I have not yet noticed as well.

The Data by Decade

1840s

Not surprisingly, 95% of the images from the 1840s were daguerreotypes. The rest were calotypes.

1850s

The 1850s saw the introduction of albumen prints, tintypes, and ambrotypes, as well as salt prints (resembling calotypes but made from glass plate negatives). But daguerreotypes are still 85% of our dated collection for that decade. Ambrotypes make up about 7%, and the other types make up the rest. We have no CDVs from the 1850s, though some American photographers had begun making them by the end of the decade.

1860s

The 1860s probably had the greatest diversity of photograph types, as photographers began to experiment with the various new formats discovered in the preceding decade. Still, it was the CDV that dominated the scene, with 80% of all our dated images being CDVs. Ambrotypes still made up just about 7% of the images, tintypes another 6%, and only 4% were daguerreotypes — and those mostly from very early in the decade. The cabinet card was said to be introduced about 1866, but we have none from the 1860s in the dated images.

1870s

Most of the cased images dropped out of the running, with only very few ambrotype and cased tintypes being seen. The CDV continued to dominate the market, with 80% of our dated images being CDVs. Tintypes grew to 10%, mostly in paper mats. Only 5% of our dated images from the 1870s are cabinet cards.

1880s

The cabinet card comes into domination in this decade, with 65% of all images in the database. CDVs still make up a strong 30%, but the distribution is strongly skewed toward the early years of the decade.

1890s

The cabinet card remains dominant in the 1890s, with 75% of our dated images from that decade. Another 15% are what I call matted images — photographs pasted to a board, but unlike the CDV and cabinet card, there is a wide margin around all sides of the image. Some of these matted images are cabinet-card sized, and so are often lumped in with them, but I believe they are sufficiently significant to deserve their own terminology. The decade also saw a wide variety of mount sizes, both for traditional card-mount styles (where the image is nearly at the edge of the card on three sides) and the newly popular matted formats. Note that matted photographs go back to the 1850s in the collection, but were never frequent enough to deserve mention before the 1890s.

1900s

The first decade of the 20th century saw matted photographs of various sizes dominate the scene, with 70% of all images from the decade. Another new format, the postcard, came into play with 12% of the images. About 7% of images were now left loose, unmounted. Cabinet cards fell to just 5% of our examples, and most for those from the first few years of the decade.

1910s

By the 1910s the photo postcard was all the rage, with 40% of our dated images being that format. The unmounted, snapshot style images grew to 30% of the total, and matted images — mostly the work of professional photographers — dropped to 25%.

1920s

By the roaring 20s almost every family had their own camera, and unmounted prints now dominate the collection at 70%. Matted images fall to 15% of the examples, and postcards just 7%.

1930s

With the 1930s the snapshot percentage continues to increase, with 80% of the images now unmounted. Matted images remain at 15%, representing the professional photographer’s share in the market. Photo postcards are only 4% of the collection for that decade.

1940s

With the 1940s the snapshot continues to dominate numerically, now with 90% of all the images for the decade. Just 7% of the 1940s photos were matted.

Conclusion

These are the broad trends for the first 110 years of photography in Northern North America (i.e. North of the Rio Grande). Within each trend are a variety of smaller sub-trends for variants and elements, that allow us to narrow the date of any particular photograph to a span of from one to five years, depending on the particulars. Exploring those variations and nuances is what the Identifying and Dating American Photographs section of the ClassyArts site is all about. That part of the site will go online soon, for paid subscribers only. Subscribe today and support this work, and also gain access to our huge database of photographers, growing archive of old images, and soon-to-be-added database of lesser-known artists.

In the 19th century, some photographers had their cardstock imprinted at local printers, while others purchased customized-standard cards from photographic stock suppliers. I call them ‘customized-standard’ because they start out as standard patterns and then are customized with the specific name and address of the purchasing photographer. Here are some examples of one such standard motif, which I call Floral Bouquet over Picture Frame, with Camera and Palette with Banners — a non-succinct, but somewhat descriptive name:

CDV and cabinet card with floral boquet and banner motif

So far, using my collection of dated images, this imprint appears to have been used from 1879 through 1883 — a period of just five years. This is probably typical of the longevity of most standardized styles, since advertisements of both photographers and the stock houses that supplied them, always emphasize the newest and latest styles being available. That span may increase slightly as we get more dated images, since the sample size for this type of back-mark is small, but the bulk of images with this back-mark probably date within that five year span. Any that fall outside those years are probably not very distant — a year or two — from those limits.

I mentioned in a previous post that I am working on an ebook about dating photographs. At that time I hoped to have the first part of it available to classyarts.com subscribers by the end of this month — but like many things this is taking longer than I expected. More about that later — but for now, here is a table for Floral Bouquet over Picture Frame, with Camera and Palette with Banners imprints that will appear in the ebook. It summarizes and precedes the discussion of this datable characteristic, and gives an estimated time span for 90% of occurrences.

Floral Bouquet over Picture Frame, with Camera and Palette with Banners	Named Cardmount Photographer’s Imprint
Earliest:	1879	_
Latest:	1883
Popular (90%):	1879-1883
Frequency:	uncommon

In this particular case, 90% and 100% of occurrences coincide, because the sample size is small. Other characteristics, that are more common, have smaller spans for the 90% frequency, often as little as half as long as the total observed frequency of occurrence. For more common characteristics, the table will also include a ‘peak frequency’ row, for the years embracing 50% or more of the observed frequency. That shows when the particular characteristic was most popular.

By observing and comparing several characteristics and their temporal frequencies, it should be relatively easy to assign an approximate date to any image. The more of those frequencies that agree, the higher the probability that your assigned date is correct. The only problem is that there are hundreds (or maybe thousands) of relevant characteristics to look for. This is going to be one very large ebook (or website?). If you are interested, you should join the classyarts.com site now, so you can watch as material for the dating site is added. The index page for the dating sub-site will have ‘last changed’ dates for each page, so you will know when each characteristic is added or modified. I’m (almost) sure the new dating sub-site will be available some time in February 2010!

On card mounted photographs, we may see the photographer’s imprint on front, on back, or both. When the imprint is on the back, it can be oriented the way most portraits are, with the ‘upright’ dimension the longer one, so the text runs parallel to the shorter side. Or the text can be oriented parallel to the long side, like a typical business card, which is what I am referring to as ‘lengthwise’ imprints, though they are sometimes called horizontal imprints.

It is also possible that the imprint can be diagonal, though it is rare to see one in which all the text is perfectly diagonal — more often one element, often the photographer’s name, is diagonal, and other text is either parallel to the short side (vertical) or lengthwise.

Here we are going to look only at card-mounted photographs with photographer’s imprints on the back, and see which way they run, and note if that gives us any clues as to the date the photograph was taken. Using my digital collection of dated images, I will compare the frequencies for particular styles, and measure how their popularity ebbs and wanes through time. Remember that this is a large, but not totally random selection of cards, so any statistics generated should be considered indicative of relative trends, rather than treated as absolute percentages.

For this study, the term ‘imprints’ includes only information printed on the back of card mounted images. Many photographers used rubber stamps in the 1860s and later, and after 1900 many card mounted photographs have blind-stamps — but neither of those will be included in this study. Rubber stamps can be oriented any which way, and vary from one card to the next for the same photographer. Blind imprints are usually intended to be read from the front, though they often are also visible from the back, they are really not intended as back-side imprints.

1860s Imprints

My first observation is that probably 99% of prints from the 1860s are vertically oriented — lengthwise imprints are very rare. One little drawing of a cased image has text running lengthwise, but the case itself is vertical. Darrah mentions lengthwise imprints with large type from 1868, but I don’t have any in my collection of dated images.

1870s Imprints

In the 1870s (see image below) we begin to see lengthwise imprints from the very beginning of the decade, and they become popular rapidly, representing about half of all imprints 1871-75. Unfortunately for our use of this characteristic as a dating criteria, the style takes a very long time to die-out, though it is never again as popular as in the early 1870s. Almost 40% of all imprints from the 1870s from our collection are printed lengthwise. Here are some typical examples.

Typical Lengthwise Imprints from the 1870s

The most interesting observation about these imprints is that they are all parallel to the long side — none have any major printed element diagonally angled. This caused me to look more closely at the vertical imprints — and they too are almost entirely without diagonal print in the 1870s — the only exception came from 1879, and is illustrated in the next image, along with several typical examples from the 1880s. No doubt a larger sample would show more with angled print from the late 1870s, but still we can be confident that they are not at all common.

1880s Imprints

When I refer to diagonal elements, I mean straight lines of text, tilted at an angle in relation to the card edges. This is not to be confused with curved text lines, which were very common from the 1860s (how late they extend will be a subject for a future study). Those may be simple curves, or complex double-curves (S shaped).

Diagonal Imprints or Diagonal Elements Within Vertical Imprints

The upper left example is from 1879 and shows a predominantly vertical imprint with one diagonal line and several slightly curved lines. The other three imprints are from the 1880s, and two have just the photographer’s name at an angle. The bottom right example has all of the text angled, not just one line. In such a case it could be viewed as either lengthwise text slanting upward, or vertical text slanting down. Such examples seem more common from the 1880s. It is not unusual to see just the photographer’s name printed on the back at an angle, but that is generally tilted at less than 45 degrees from the long edge, so it is clearly intended to be read lengthwise.

In the 1880s we continue to see lengthwise imprints, though they drop off in popularity to less than 25% of all cards — but nearly twice as many cards seem to have been produced in the 1880s as 1870s, so the absolute numbers are about the same for each decade. Now, however, we see about half of the lengthwise imprints have a major element (or the entire imprint) sloped diagonally. Over the same period, about 1/3 of all vertical prints have a major diagonal element.

Diagonal and Lenghthwise Imprints from the 1880s

1890s Imprints

By the 1890s the lengthwise format falls in popularity even further, to about 10% of all cards with back-imprints. By that time many cards only had front imprints, so the total percentage of 1890s cards with lengthwise imprints would be much lower than 10%. The diagonal element continues to be seen on about half of the lengthwise printed cards, but now vertical cards with a diagonal element are also about 50%, up from the 33% of the previous decade. These percentages for diagonal elements are not evenly distributed through the decade, as are those for presence (or absence) of lengthwise imprints, but are heavily weighted toward the beginning of the decade. So almost 75% of the cards with diagonal elements for the 1890s are found between 1890-93, and none were noted after 1897.

1900 and Later

After 1900 I don’t see any photographer’s imprints printed lengthwise in my collection, but cards in those years only rarely include a back-imprint, so the sample is rather small. I can say with confidence that lengthwise imprints are rare from this period, but probably not non-existent.

Of the vertically oriented imprints after 1900, none are at all diagonally oriented, nor do they include individual diagonal lines of text — but again it is a small sample. Remember too, I am referring only to cards from the USA and Canada: cards from other countries produced after 1900 more commonly include back-imprints, though I have not yet studied their orientation.

Summary

In conclusion then, cards from the 1860s will rarely have photographer’s back-imprints printed lengthwise, while 40% of those from the 1870s are lengthwise, and over the succeeding two decades the format continues to appear, but at frequencies dropping to 25% and then 10%. For major diagonal elements in the imprint, they are rarely seen prior to 1880, but are increasingly popular from that date through the early 1890s for both vertical and lengthwise formats, then drop off to almost nothing after 1897.

Looked at another way, if you have a card with a lengthwise imprint, 85% of the time it dates from the 1870s or 1880s, nearly evenly divided between those decades. If there are diagonal elements in that lengthwise imprint, then chances are 3 out of 4 it dates to the 1880s. If you have a card with a vertical imprint that includes a diagonal line, or an imprint that is entirely diagonal, then half the time it will date from the 1880s, and 45% of the time from the 1890-97.