Photography in the 19th Century and the Birth of the Celebrity

For centuries, the only way to depict major events and dignitaries was through art. Whether it was on canvas, stone, or wood, art was the visual medium, until French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce changed the portrayal of history with the world’s first permanent photograph 200 years ago.

When Nicéphore Niépce leant out of an upstairs window at his estate in Burgundy and took the hazy and indistinct photo View from the Window at Le Gras, little did he know that two centuries later it would be celebrated as the earliest surviving photograph made with a camera.

Requiring an exposure of several hours, the almost ghostly monochrome doesn’t hold a candle to modern photography, but the fact that light had been manipulated to draw a realistic picture would transform how we people across the world in the late 19^th century saw life and celebrity.

From celebrities, to politicians, and circus curiosities, the camera was everyday magic at a time when painting was still king of portraiture. With the arrival of the camera came the opportunity to portray realistic depictions of people, and create photos in their own image, as the photograph fundamentally changed how people recorded history and viewed the world.

One person that understood the power of this new technology was Abraham Lincoln, who became one of the most photographed Americans of the 19th century.

The Commander in chief and President was regularly photographed by prominent Civil War photographers Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner, but these weren’t merely vanity projects to be displayed on his mantlepiece, as Lincoln used the portraits both as a campaign tool and to craft his public persona.

Capturing numerous portraits of Lincoln, Gardner’s photos showed the heavy physical toll the conflict took on Lincoln, and he even captured historic moments like his visit to the battlefield at Antietam. Distributed to the public as prints, engravings, and stereocards (two nearly identical photographs mounted side-by-side that appeared three dimensional when viewed through a handheld device called a stereoscope), these photos – from the earliest known photographic likeness in 1846 through his presidency – showed the human face of a leader that hadn’t been seen before.

Perhaps the most striking portrait of Lincoln was taken by Gardner on February 5, 1865, just ten weeks before the president’s assassination. Known as the “cracked-plate” portrait due to a crack on the upper half of the glass-plate negative, Gardner produced only a single print from the damaged negative, making copies showing the weary Lincoln highly collectable.

Much like Lincoln, the poet Walt Whitman understood the power of a photograph, sitting for over 130 portraits throughout his life to become the most photographed American writer of the 19th century.

Best known for his landmark poetry collection Leaves of Grass, Whitman took the revolutionary decision replace his name on the title page with an engraving of a daguerreotype showing him in working-class clothes, unbuttoned collar, hat tilted, and hand on hip.

This shocked a public accustomed to formal, stuffed-shirt author portraits and helped establish Whitman’s image as a relatable working-class hero. He was conscious of his image and worked hard to cultivate a perception of him, long before his contemporaries even considered it.

Such was his dedication to image that in one of his most famous photos, he posed with a butterfly perched on his finger to show his “oneness with nature” even if it was discovered decades later that the butterfly was actually made of cardboard and wired to his finger.

The dawn of photography marked the passing of one era and the emergence of a new industrialised age. And far away from the world of celebrity studios in the Northern Great Plains was Sitting Bull.

Today celebrated for his opposition to the US government’s intrusion into Sioux land, the Hunkpapa Lakota leader’s mythology was established by prominent 19th-century photographers like D.F. Barry, whose photos routinely command thousands of dollars, especially if they carry Sitting Bull’s signature.

Fleeing to Canada following the Battle of Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull returned to the US to tour with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, where he earned about $50 a week (approximately $1,792 today) to ride once around the arena, much to the delight of an audience fascinated by the idea of the Wild West.

Sitting Bull stayed with the show for four months, as audiences flocked to see this new romanticized celebrity warrior. He earned a small fortune by selling autographed photos to people wanting their slice of the Wild West, although it’s said he donated his fee to the homeless.

Sitting Bull was used to being on the road, having toured Canada and the northern United States in a show called the Sitting Bull Connection. It was during this time that he met Annie Oakley in present-day Minnesota. He was so impressed with Oakley’s sharpshooting that he offered $65 (equal to $2,329 today) for a photograph of the two together.

Oakley’s stock would only rise from there, as the folk heroine and crack shot toured the US and Europe, impressing the likes of Queen Victoria with her ability to shoot a cigar from her husband’s hand and split a playing-card at 30 paces.

Annie met her husband Frank E. Butler at the age of 15 after beating the experienced marksman in a shooting contest, and they married in 1876. Together they toured with Buffalo Bill, where she was the second highest earner behind Buffalo Bill himself.

An immediate star of the circuit, Oakley’s promotional photographs a not only helped transform her into an international celebrity, but also made the image of a young woman holding a shotgun synonymous with her. It was marketing at its best.

William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, ensured that he remained the star of the show. His touring extravaganza of cowboys, Native American performers, shooting, and re-enacted battles made him a wealthy man and one of the most recognizable celebrities on Earth at the turn of the 20th century.

Purported to have killed 4,282 buffalo in 18 months between 1867 and 1868, Buffalo Bill was given his nickname after the Civil War, when he supplied Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat. And the name helped establish his legend, which blossomed in New York Weekly features about his life and a highly successful novel, Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen.

 

“I could never resist the call of the trail,” he said of his lifelong passion for the American frontier and exploration. His travelling show was such a success that by 1893, it had added Calamity Jane as a storyteller and become a major influence on depictions of the Wild West in film and literature. The show toured Europe for years, entertaining audiences including Pope Leo XIII and Queen Victoria during her Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1887.

Capitalizing on the show’s success, Cody sold portraits of himself, Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Sitting Bull, and the show’s other performers, allowing fans to collect souvenirs of their favourite stars. And they still appear at auction today.

 

If Cody, Oakley, and Sitting Bull used their image to sell their ability, then the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt used it to construct an image of her own creation.

And she did it masterfully with the help of French photographer Felix Nadar and Napoleon Sarony, a master of celebrity portraiture on the 19^th century. Using photography to construct, control, and commercialize her public image, Bernhardt effectively pioneered the concept of modern celebrity self-branding.

Born just a few years after the invention of photography, Bernhardt was the first major performer to fully recognize how the camera could extend their presence beyond the stage, with many people of the era said to have known her photos better than her acting performances.

Using her theatrical background, Bernhardt stood out from her formal and rigidly posed contemporaries. Instead, Bernhardt draped herself across sofas, wrapped herself in fabric, and posed in artistic and sensual ways. And so the modern celebrity photograph was born.

Napoleon Sarony was well known for his portraits of late-19th-century American theatre stars, so when Oscar Wilde visited New York in 1882, he sat for a series of portraits that would sow the seeds of his celebrity.

Known for his wit, style, and ability to cultivate his own image, Wilde wore velvet silk knee breeches, stockings, and decorated slippers for the playfully theatrical photos. He was just 27 and had not yet written The Picture of Dorian Gray or the plays that would establish his fame, but with the photographs he created the image of a celebrity that remains with him to this day.

But, quality isn’t everything when it comes to branding, just ask the Sex Pistols. And this was certainly the case with the outlaw whose fame grew because of a single, rather unimpressive little photograph.

Produced in around 1879 or 1880 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, a small tintype of Billy the Kid is regarded as the only authenticated surviving portrait of the outlaw. Standing in a hat and holding his Winchester rifle, the image of a young man defies the reputation he earned as a notorious gunslinger, but that didn’t stop the original selling at auction in 2011 for $2.3 million.

By the end of the century, photography was more sophisticated and much better at capturing performers in action. Harry Houdini was beginning his career in the 1890s, but a promotional photograph from around 1899 accompanied by the text ‘Here is a man in chains. He is smiling. You should probably come and see what happens next’, helped establish his legend and penchant for the impossible.

Audiences longed to capture a glimpse of the spectacular in the late 19^th century and the circus drew massive crowds of all social classes across Europe and North America.

Cartes-de-visite (calling cards) or larger cabinet cards of the performers were the must have souvenir. Photographed by the likes of Charles Eisenmann, who photographed sideshow and circus acts in New York’s Bowery, they were eagerly collected and still draw strong interest from collectors.

This was a pioneering enterprise at the time that opened new revenue streams for the performers and set the template the celebrity culture that would bloom in their wake. From Nicéphore Niépce’s first photograph from his upstairs window in 1826 to the carefully crafted publicity portraits of the late 19th century, photography transformed the nature of fame and revolutionised the way we viewed the world.