Two picture reveals supply photos of the previous

Two wonderful and really completely different exhibitions look at these early years, with one among them taking the story all the best way as much as 1900. That could be “‘Look Pleasant, Please’: Early Portrait Photography in New Bedford.” It runs on the New Bedford Whaling Museum via Sept. 8. The different, “The Scenic Daguerreotype in America: 1840-1860,” is at The Wadsworth, in Hartford, via March 22.

As anybody who’s visited the whaling museum is aware of, its title is considerably misleading. It’s as a lot in regards to the historical past of New Bedford and bigger social and financial historical past, for all of which whaling affords a superb entry level. “‘Look Pleasant, Please’ — that’s what the New Bedford studio photographer George F. Parlow would say to those posing for him — is very much an example. The wealth generated by whaling meant many customers for professional photographers. Between 1840 and 1900 more than 200 worked there. And as whaling declined, other industries replaced it, drawing many immigrants, eager for work — and to have their picture taken.

Some of the photographers were immigrants. Edward and Charles Bierstadt (brothers of the painter Albert) were German. Manuel Goulart was Azorean. Valentine Von Wolfenstein — what a name! — was Swedish. Many of their clients were immigrants, too: Irish, Eastern European, Portuguese, Azorean. Several photographers were Black. Among them was James E. Reed, who took one of the show’s three portraits of Douglass, who lived in New Bedford from 1838-1841.

The contents of Reed’s studio are in the museum’s holdings. The show includes a reproduction of a backdrop, with a sitting chair placed in front of it. There are also beakers and scales (for measuring photographic chemicals), Reed’s lab coat, a studio ledger, an embossing press, a timer, unexposed glass negatives.

To go with the more than 300 photographs in the show, there are a hundred or so other items: cameras and camera equipment, a dozen photo albums (some as weighty as Bibles — and, clearly, no less prized by their owners), signage, an 1850 city plan. “‘Look Pleasant, Please’” is teemingly ample and captivatingly different. The idiosyncratic handsomeness of the first-floor non permanent exhibition galleries provides to the captivation.

The centerpiece of the present is a grouping of greater than 125 small-size portraits taken by Reed and organized inside three classic frames. The association testifies to his craftsmanship. Even extra, the mass of faces bespeaks the sense of humanity the medium can convey. Behind every sitter’s gaze lies a novel ready to be written.

The grouping remembers one among Walker Evans’s most well-known pictures, “Penny Picture Display Savannah,” which reveals a window show of small portraits taken at a pictures studio. “I look at it,” Evans mentioned of the unique pictures, “and think, and think, and think about all those people.” That’s true right here, too.

The New Bedford present, because the subtitle says, is about portraiture, proper right down to together with three pairs of a really specialised kind of portrait, the mugshot. It encompasses far more, in fact. It additionally options a number of photographic codecs: daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, albumen prints, cyanotypes.

The Wadsworth present is all daguerreotypes, the primary photographic format, however they arrive with a twist. The huge preponderance of daguerreotypes have been portraits. What individuals most wished to see again then was different individuals — together with themselves — not that that’s modified. Also, daguerreotypes required publicity instances of a number of minutes. Unless a topic might reliably keep nonetheless, a blurred picture would consequence. Portraiture wasn’t simply what individuals wished. It was what the format finest lent itself to.

So the Wadsworth present is notable for 2 causes. First, the 83 daguerreotypes are of such prime quality. (Nearly all of them belong to the famous collector Greg French, who lives in Jamaica Plain.) Second, they aren’t portraits. People do determine in lots of them, however their presence is incidental.

For all that their subject material is comparatively uncommon, daguerreotypes are so distinctive they’re unmistakable: the precision of element, the reflective sheen, their being metallic plates making them as a lot object as picture. In their gilded frames, typically with a going through velvet lining, they’re like relic and reliquary each.

These are secular artifacts, although, not sacred. Subjects embody winter scenes, mills, the California Gold Rush, ships, buildings, landscapes, waterfalls (the blurring of the floor makes the water appear virtually geologic). Horses and oxen, these affected person creatures, seem in 16 and 4, respectively, with each animals in one other two. With uncommon exceptions, the daguerreotypes are attributed to that the majority vital determine in photographic historical past, “Unknown.”

In a separate gallery, as a form of corollary, or commentary, there are 15 daguerreotypes from this century. Fewer than a dozen practitioners at the moment work as daguerreotypists, the last word photographic choice for analog over digital. It’s fascinating to see how kind can have an effect on how we course of content material — or temporality. Michael Robinson’s 2024 view of New Orleans may simply be mistaken for one from 1844, though his two 2025 daguerreotypes of downtown San Diego wouldn’t. Appearance can alter the expertise of content material solely a lot.

That’s not the top of daguerreotypes on show. Another dozen hold just a few steps away, past the museum’s Avery Court. They’re from the Atheneum’s assortment. Or, slightly, The Wadsworth’s. What had been the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is now merely The Wadsworth. Daguerreotypes, stored out of the sunshine, are unchanging. Names are usually not.

“LOOK PLEASANT, PLEASE”: Early Portrait Photography in New Bedford

At New Bedford Whaling Museum, 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, via Sept. 8. 508-997-0046, www.whalingmuseum.org

THE SCENIC DAGUERREOTYPE IN AMERICA: 1840-1860

At The Wadsworth, 600 Main St., Hartford, via March 22. 860-278-2670, www.thewadsworth.org

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Mark Feeney might be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.