Photographs in La Crosse, Wis.:

From Pioneers to Professionals

 

 

Summarized by Anita Taylor Doering

 

 

The La Crosse Area Genealogical Society was pleased to host Ed Hill, retired Special Collections Librarian at UW-La Crosse, as their speaker at the March 25, 2006, meeting.  Mr. Hill’s master’s thesis, A History of Photography in La Crosse, Wisconsin, 1853 to 1930 was completed in 1978 and is still the standard work on photography and photographic studios in the area.  You can also read this book online at http://murphylibrary.uwlax.edu/digital/thesis/1978/hill.pdf.  If you have photographs with a La Crosse photographer’s imprint, this book will help you!

 

Hill’s book and other La Crosse related materials are available online, full text at the La Crosse History Unbound web site http://lacrossehistory.org.

 

Some notes I took during the presentation were enlightening as to when some of these technological advances in photography came to middle America and the La Crosse area.  Just like fashion in clothing, it came later!

 

During the 1840s daguerreotypes were in fashion.  They came in cases and have a mirror like quality that when reflected in the light seem to have both a negative and positive look.  However, sometimes the case was kept and the photography was swapped out for a later photograph.  So the case cannot always tell you how old the photograph is.  Most people who came to La Crosse from the east (Yankees) would have likely carried with them images of older relatives taken “back home.” 

 

Plain brass designs around the case are early, usually ca. 1846-1847 in the Midwest (New York and the east coast was earlier).  More ornate Victorian elements tend to occur on ambrotypes.  Ambrotypes was a process by which a unique image was painted on glass with an emulsion.  This was an expensive process, costing around $40-50 each, and was evident from 1855-1870.  The first know resident photographer in La Crosse was Wilcox in 1853.  [La Crosse was incorporated in 1856].

 

Photographers used natural light from a northern exposure until the 1880s when flash powder began to be used.  Some photographers even had traveling galleries on boats or railroad cars.

 

Men often did not have a suit coat, so men in particular may have borrowed clothes from either the photographer or a friend or family member for the photograph.  Few older photographs were candid; they were all very posed.  People had to hold still for 10 seconds as there was no shutter on the camera of those days.  Women’s clothing was more true to fashion of the time and tended to belong to them.

 

In the early 1860s-1870s and even some in the 1880s, carte de visite images were popular.  The photographer name is usually imprinted on the backside and these were meant for putting into an album rather than to be framed or cased.  They were cheaper to produce.  Cabinet photographs had a negative process so that they could be reproduced easily and cheaply at $1.75 each.  This process usually produced larger sizes than the smaller carte de visite, and was available during the same time period, stretching even into the 1890s.

 

The tintype was the “everyman’s” photograph and became popularized during the Civil War.  Photographers followed the troops around and these were small enough that they could be mailed back home to loved ones. People could buy a set of six of $2.  How do you distinguish a tintype?  If you use a magnet, it will hold onto a tintype but will not hold on any other type of photograph.

 

Almost all photographs had some level of touching up including a hand painting process to give the cheeks a bit of color.

 

Stereoview cards were seldom of families or individuals, but were used more for educational and recreational purposes.  They generally were commercially produced and sometime reproduced illegally by others.  Real picture postcards came into being in 1895 and surged in popularity from 1903-1920s.  The idea that photography could be used as a form of advertising began to take off, such as the Wisconsin Dells and other resort areas, drug stores, etc.

 

In the 1890s, a medallion or button photograph was popular.  These are the types of images found on tombstones.  Charcoal or chalk drawing of photographs was typical of the 1890s-1910s.  Itinerant photographers would enlarge a photograph onto card board then filled in the image with chalk or crayon.

 

For some general history of photography, check out some books from your local library, or visit a web site such as http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/.