Reconstructing Silent Voices in Southern Photographic History

Terry Ownby

Distant and silent voices of the past can bring fresh life to long forgotten photographs. All too often, historical photographic research tends to focus its gaze on the well-known and the famous within a limited circle of nineteenth century photographic practitioners, and we lose touch with the everyday photographer or patron of that era. European contributors such as Niépce, Daguerre, and Talbot readily come to mind. In America, historians focus on northerners such as Draper, Southworth & Hawes, or Brady, while nineteenth century Western photographers Jackson, Russell, O’Sullivan, or Muybridge receive much investigation. What is missing here? Beyond a mere cursory nod, the contributions of southern photographers is what I find missing.1

On the other hand, my research takes a less traveled path that investi-gates the construction and reconstruction of social- and self-identity through daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and wet-plate collodion processed photographs. As such, researching nineteenth century images attempts to reconstruct the life stories of either the photographer or the patron in the photograph as the primary goal. Oftentimes these individuals have been forgotten over the decades in dusty cased images or fading albumen prints. Therefore, by pursuing this type of research, these long neglected individuals’ voices re-turn across the distant passage of time and their stories are now heard in the twenty-first century.

This article will focus on methods employed for this task and the resulting narrative identities of two nineteenth century southern photographers from Mobile, Alabama: Chauncey Barnes and Harry E. Wallace. These methods include scholarly research methodologies such as photographic criticism and

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critical visual methodology, combined with traditional genealogical research activities. Through these combined efforts, biographical narratives are created of the individual lives under investigation. First, a brief overview of these research methodologies will be provided, followed by a case study on Barnes and Wallace, illustrating results from these methods. Thus, the reader will see how this line of inquiry brings forward silent voices from the distant past of our unique southern photographic history.

~ 1 ~

When attempting to recreate the social- or self-identity of individuals from nineteenth century imagery, I approach the task from three directions: (a) describing the image as a form of photographic criticism, (b) critically analyzing the photograph through visual methodologies, and (c) tackling traditional genealogical methods through primary and secondary sources. Thus, as I write a biographical narrative on one of my daguerreotypes or cartes-de-visite, typically I begin with descriptive detail of what is contained within the image. In other words, I explain the subject matter of the photo-graph. This process is known as photographic criticism (Ownby 9) and is best illustrated in professor Terry Barrett’s book, Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images (3). When we critically examine a photograph, whether from the nineteenth century or more contemporary times, Barrett suggests that we begin with description. The process here is to develop a list of subject matter content within the photograph. This activity he calls a “data-gathering process” (17). As we gather this data, therefore, we establish a typology of the photograph’s content. In turn, this allows us to interrogate the image, asking questions regarding the who, what, where, when, and why of its creation and its contents. To aid in this stage of my research methods, I apply a process known as critical visual methodology, developed by a British professor of visual culture, Gillian Rose.

After describing the photograph, I turn to the second direction from which I approach interpreting and understanding an image: investigating the three sites of image interpretation (Rose 19) and their associated modalities or aspects. The three sites at which photographic interpretation occur are: (a) the site of image production, (b) the site of the image itself, and (c) the site of the audience. Additionally, at each of these interpretive sites there are three modalities concurrently contributing at various levels to help understand photographs: (a) the technological modality, (b) the compositional modality, and (c) the social modality.

The technological production of images involves various physical pro-cesses (i.e., equipment or tools) and their associated technologies. During

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the nineteenth century, this could range from one-off daguerreotypes to mass-produced, wet-plate collodion albumen prints. Compositional modality, on the other hand, refers to how the photographer arranged the subject matter within the photographic frame. The use of highlight and shadow, lines of di-rection, symmetrical versus asymmetrical balance, become the compositional elements are used in the denotation of visual content within the borders of the photograph. Finally, social modality concerns external forces that come to bear on the photograph’s implied or connotative meaning. Coming into play here are social and cultural nuances of the generation under consider-ation, which might include such considerations as institutional or economic practices, along with political or cultural ideologies. Rose, therefore, situated each of these modalities within the three major sites of image interpretation. Her work shows this concept in relation to questions the researcher might ask regarding the interaction of sites and modalities. Not all sites of inter-pretation or modalities may be applicable to all photographs being studied, but, they do provide structure for the researcher to work within, and they aid the analysis of the photograph at hand.

The third direction, from which I reconstruct the narratives associated with now-silent photographs from our collective past, is that of traditional genealogical research. I learned this methodology after completing my intro-ductory and advanced genealogical research training at the Wisconsin State Historical Society. This genealogical research is very fluid with emphasis placed on primary sources, while secondary and tertiary sources play sup-portive roles within the overall research process. By using multiple sources to confirm initial findings, we create what qualitative researchers call a trian-gulation of validation (Miles and Huberman 266). In other words, multiple sources can establish trustworthiness within the genealogical research.

Types of resources regularly consulted through the National Archives and Records Administration—Central Plains Regional facility and its online collaborators, Ancestry.com and Fold3.com, include federal and state cen-suses, passenger and immigration lists, city directories, Civil War military records, and vital records (such as birth, marriage, and death records). The federal census schedules are available from 1790 to 1940, which provide tremendous amounts of information. I cautiously investigate family histories, provided they can be verified through multiple sources. The researcher needs to proceed with care when dealing with unsubstantiated family histories, as many such stories may be apocryphal. Online family anecdotal stories published through genealogical organizations can potentially serve to fill-in the blanks, so to speak, but as mentioned, judicious selection needs to be exercised in this realm. Some family researchers perform methodically and excellently in preserving their family’s history, while others simply rewrite

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hearsay without factual documentation; hence, the need for primary sources of information with any researcher’s work.

Armed with information derived from the various sources outlined, I reconstruct the identity and stories of forgotten individuals from America’s early decades of its rich photographic history, and specifically those of southern heritage. Some of these individuals were daguerreotypists and later photographists (a nineteenth century term equivalent to photographer), while others were the patrons posing for their unique portraits. In the following case study, I demonstrate the research process involved for analyzing one carte-de-visite photographic print from the nineteenth century. While not all the critical questions suggested earlier by Rose can be answered for all antique images, they all can be critically described as noted by Barrett. The following case study on Barnes and Wallace demonstrates this research process while simultaneously providing the reader a sense of the reconstructed narratives of these individuals and their contributions to early southern photography.

~ 2 ~

The following case study stems from the nineteenth century photograph depicted in Figure 1. Thus, in this carte-de-visite (CDV) photograph, we see a vignetted portrait of a mature lady wearing a white or light colored lacy headscarf. Although her hair is white or light gray, her complexion is extremely smooth and fair. Additionally, she wears a matronly veil or shawl over her head and shoulders, possibly depicting her religious values or her social standing in the community. Unfortunately, there is no identification of this person and her memory is lost to bygone days along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The cream colored card for this CDV, with its rounded corners, suggests a creation date in the early 1870s, possibly between 1871 and 1874 (Darrah 194). Condition of the overall image is rather good, considering its age. Lastly, there are minor tears in the card stock along the top each and minimal foxing (spotting) in the albumen print.

From the verso of the CDV, interesting stories begin to unfold from the port city of Mobile, Alabama. The photographers’ imprint (or backmark) appears to be in the style of a large rubber stamp that used purplish colored ink. Its reads: “Wallace, Barnes & Co. Artist Photographers, 87 Dauphin St, Mobile, Ala.” (Figure 2). This evidence allows us to address Rose’s question regarding the site of production, specifically the authors of this work. In this case, the CDV’s authors are stamped onto the backside of the photograph. Thus, we can explore the social setting and its question regarding who made the image. Additionally, we could investigate the compositional and the technological aspects and their attendant questions relating to image genre,

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and how the image was created. Armed with this information I was able to pursue some genealogical sleuthing in order to piece together their individual and personal narratives.2

Figure 1Harry E. Wallace & Chauncey Barnes. Portrait of Unknown Southern Lady. Carte-de-visite, c. 1870. Mobile, Alabama. Author’s collection.

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~ 3 ~

Long before British subjects settled American colonies, the Barnes’s family roots were being established in Essex, England during the mid-six-teenth century (Higgins 1). Eventually, this family would resettle in New England within two decades of the Jamestown colony establishment. Several generations later, Amasa Barnes was born in Connecticut and he would even-tually reside in up-state New York. With his second wife, Mary, he would father several children, including one son who becomes the protagonist for the story that follows (9).

Chauncey Barnes was born near Rochester, New York around 1817. By his late twenties he had established himself as a professional photographer, making daguerreotypes in Baltimore, Maryland and Mobile, Alabama. While information has not surfaced to indicate from whom Barnes learned his da-guerreian art, he was certainly within the early wave of 1840s practitioners as America’s obsession with this European photographic novelty swept the

Figure 2 Backmark showing Wallace & Barnes's business imprint on pho-tograph's verso. Author’s collection.

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populace in its westward expansion (Hirsch 23). Baltimore’s newspapers and local city directories show that Barnes was a daguerreotypist operating at 163 Baltimore Street in 1844 and at 217 West Baltimore Street in 1845 (Kelbaugh 3; Craig 2). Interestingly, during this timeframe, Barnes was expanding studio operations to Mobile, Alabama, as evidenced by the 1844 city directory (Rinhart and Rinhart 381). Eventually Barnes relocated to Mobile, and there he resided another forty years, as indicated on his 1884 death certificate (Carmelick 875).

According to genealogist Cheryl Higgins on her ancestry web-page, by 1850 Amasa Barnes’s last will-and-testament listed Chauncey as one of his sons and that he resided in Mobile, Alabama with his brother David W. Barnes, along with their minor nephew, Ira Baker. Family photographs re-veal that Amasa visited Chauncey’s Dauphin Street studio in Mobile, where Chauncey produced his father’s likeness before Amasa’s death in 1861 (Figure 3). Chauncey maintained his studio on Dauphin Street for around a decade beginning in 1859. Previously from 1848 until 1858, he operated his Skylight Daguerrian Gallery one block down the street at No. 48 Dauphin (Rinhart and Rinhart 84, 381).

Figure 3 Amasa Barnes’s portrait taken by son Chauncey Barnes in Mobile, Alabama, c. 1859 to 1861. Personal collection of Kate Pope, fourth great granddaughter of Amasa Barnes..

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Harvey S. Teal, photo-history scholar and researcher of South Carolinian photographers, notes the common practice among northern daguerreotypists from the eastern seaboard (principally Boston, New York, and Philadelphia) to travel throughout the South during winter months, establishing temporary studios in various towns and cities (7, 41, 43). These itinerant visits could last from a few days to several months, depending on business and the pho-tographer’s preferences. Three primary southern port cities factor into these dynamics, these were Charleston, South Carolina; Mobile, Alabama; and New Orleans, Louisiana. Many enterprising daguerreotypists of those early years created franchise studios or galleries and hired additional photographers or “operators” to manage these studios on a more permanent basis during their absences (88). This may have been the case with Chauncey Barnes, as he managed operations in both Baltimore and Mobile during the mid-1840s. From his 1844 advertisement in the Mobile city directory we learn that he would furnish operators with stock, or studio working materials (Rinhart and Rinhart 84). Stock may have been in the form of daguerreotype plates and associated developing chemicals.

At his Skylight Daguerreian Gallery located at 48 Dauphin Street, not only did Barnes have two separate departments for image making but also one exclusively for his female clientele. Barnes employed a Mr. Spalding at his Mobile gallery, whom he boasted of as being the finest artist in the Union (Rinhart and Rinhart 84). The term “artist” was used rather loosely during the nineteenth century and could refer to either the photographer or to a person hired by the photographer who would retouch or paint the image in order to render color similar to the subject in the photograph. This may be in the form of “pinking” of the sitter’s skin or adding gold gilt to jewelry (Mace 16). In some cases the artist would completely paint the sitter’s clothing with watercolors. These retouching techniques were applied to many early image genres, including: daguerreotypes (silver plate images), ambrotypes (glass plate images), melainotypes (tintypes), and cartes-de-visite (albumen prints). In addition to providing coloring, Barnes also boasted of being able to furnish his clients with their likenesses completed within ten minutes time.

During the mid-1840s at the Skylight Daguerreian Gallery, Barnes served as both mentor and teacher to upcoming photographers. For exam-ple, he trained a soon-to-be prominent, itinerant photographer in the South, Professor Albert George Park (Teal 88). After training with Barnes, Professor Park went on to work with such famous photographers George S. Cook in Charleston, South Carolina, and Mathew Brady in New York City. In fact, Park made rather bold claims in his Charleston newspaper advertisements when he declared in August 1853 he was the “Celebrated Southern Artist” (Teal 53). According to the 1850 federal census for New York City, Park

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was listed as an “artist” and later during the same year, he had returned to his family in Alabama and was listed on that census as a “Daguerreian Artist.” This illustrates the dynamic and fluid nature of early professional photographic practice in America.

By 1850, it appears Barnes transferred all business operations to his new southern coastal home. No historical sources explain why Barnes relocated to this port city on the Gulf. Teal’s inference to northern itinerant photogra-phers (41) passing through coastal cities of the South certainly may be the case with Barnes. Perhaps the southern climate and hospitality was more to Barnes’s liking than his former northern residencies. Between 1852 and 1858 he operated his studio at 48 Dauphin Street and around 1855 Barnes introduced the ambrotype (a new photographic technology during that era) to his Mobile clientele (Rinhart & Rinhart 381), which was around the same time daguerreotypist George S. Cook, of Charleston, South Carolina, was producing ambrotypes in Mathew Brady’s New York gallery (Teal 45, 48). Over the course of his forty-year career in Mobile, Barnes adapted and prac-ticed every technological advance in photography.

Beginning with the daguerreotype, Barnes worked every technical reit-eration of photography’s progress up to the point of his death in 1884. This meant not only beginning his career as a daguerreotypist, but adapting his practice to provide ambrotypes, melainotypes (tintypes), cartes-de-visite, and other forms of albumen prints. All advertisements placed by Barnes and Wallace in Mobile’s city directories for the years 1871 to 1878 noted their ability to produce “pictures taken in every style known to the art,” (Figure 4). In Barnes’s obituary, Mobile’s Daily Register states “He was one of the first to adopt the business of daguerreotyping, and was a popular photographer at the time of his death. His reminiscences of the changes and improvements in that business were both interesting and entertaining” (“Late Chauncey Barnes”). Additionally, he produced a daguerreotype of a solar eclipse and displayed it as a curiosity at his Mobile Daguerreian Gallery (Rinhart and Rinhart 381; Craig). By 1859, he had expanded his operations to encompass three storefronts at 54, 56, and 58 Dauphin Street (Rinhart and Rinhart 381).

Barnes’s career takes an interesting twist by the end of the 1850s when he is sued by one of his employees. According to daguerreian historian John S. Craig’s website, Barnes employed a number of “artists,” who hand-painted and colored his ambrotypes and cartes-de-visite, these included I. S. Clark in 1853 and 1855-56, Willey in 1856, J. S. Clark in 1856, and J. W. Turner in 1859. Here is where the twist in his circumstances occurs. The trial of Barnes versus Ingalls commenced on May 15, 1860, in which the artist, Gardner Ingalls, brought action against Barnes for failure to pay nearly one thousand dollars due from promissory notes for work conducted from August

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16, 1859, until January 1, 1860 (Barnes v. Ingalls). Apparently the outcome of this trial was not the best since Barnes was listed that year as operating a “sewing machine depot at 56 Dauphin” with his brother David (Rinhart and Rinhart 381).

Also of interest during this time of occupational shift for the native New Yorker turned Alabamian compatriot, is that he became a slave owner according to the 1860 federal census slave schedule. Line six of that year’s schedule shows Barnes as owning two slaves, both female, ages nineteen and six years. The schedule also reveals that he provided a separate “slave house” for these two young women. This record, as did others of that era, distinguished between slave colors: B was used for black, while M was used for mulatto. The document showed both slave girls as being black.

During the Civil War years however, history is silent about Barnes’s photographic endeavors. Did he contribute to the war effort, leaving his wife Lois and his slaves to look after his studio and sewing machine depot? Interestingly, there were a number of soldiers named Chauncey Barnes who served during the Civil War. These included soldiers in both New York and Mississippi units. Further research is needed in this area to determine if Barnes indeed served either his native or adopted home. A few years after the Civil War’s ending, in 1868, Barnes is once again listed as a photographer with his studio located this time at 87 Dauphin Street. At some point during his early fifties, Barnes partnered with a younger man named Harry E. Wallace, as evidenced by the backmark on the CDV under investigation in this case study. Based on extant documentation, it appears this partnership was short-lived, but not without significant results, as the glowing review for Wallace in the 1883 annual report for the Mobile and Ohio Railway makes no mention of Barnes (14). This could have been due to deteriorating health conditions for Barnes that caused his absence from the photography business, as he died the following year of lung congestion at an age of sixty-seven (Olliphant 875). Now I will consider Barnes’s partner, Harry E. Wallace and his narrative that emerges from this investigation.

~ 4 ~

Of the two proprietors of this photographic enterprise, “Wallace” at first presented himself as an enigma. However, evidence suggested this person was Harry E. Wallace who eventually became known as “Mobile’s most successful photographer” (Mobile & Ohio Railway 14). Born during the early spring months of 1842 in Scotland (South Carolina 7729), Harry was the oldest child of William R. Wallace of Glasgow, Scotland, and Mary A. (née Job)

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Wallace, of Dublin, Ireland (Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin 903). Harry was born into an interesting family of financial means. His grandfather was Alexander Wallace, who was a purported lineal descendant of Sir William Wallace and Harry’s father, William R. Wallace, was a world traveler and lithographer. Harry’s maternial grandfather, William Job, was a “landed proprietor” and holder of numerous Irish governmental positions in Dublin (903).

At age five Harry and his parents, along with an infant sibling, arrived in New York City on August 22, 1848, aboard the Queen of the West (New York Passenger 9), which had set sail from Liverpool, England several days earlier. The Wallace family remained in New York City for nearly a year af-ter their arrival in America before they moved to Washington, DC, in 1850. There, William was employed as a lithographer and engraver. By 1853, the family relocated westward to Cincinnati, Ohio, where William continued his lithography and engraving trade in a partnership and firm known as Middle-ton, Wallace & Company (Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin 903). For reasons not explained, William left his business in 1857 “when he started a tour around the world,” which ended in Australia where he received a government posting given under the hand of Queen Victoria (903). At this point it is unclear if William was traveling alone overseas or if his family, including Harry, had accompanied him.

As tensions continued to fester between Northerners and Southerners, Harry’s father returned to America in 1860 and set up residence in Ludlow, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Here, William advocat-ed the Confederacy’s position, while his oldest three sons, including Harry, aligned themselves with the North (Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin 903). Harry’s father became such an advocate for the Southern Confederacy that he con-tracted himself as a lithographer and engraver for printing their currency, for which he was briefly imprisoned and later released for insufficient evidence. During the latter years of the Civil War, William moved further south and settled in Mobile, Alabama, where he engaged in his trade producing maps of the southern railways during the Reconstruction Era. It would be here in Mobile that William would eventually die in 1870 from yellow fever (903). Data is silent regarding Harry’s whereabouts during the war years. As men-tioned earlier, Harry was in opposition to his father’s political stance and since he was living in Cincinnati region at the time, he may well have joined the Union forces as an act of rebellion between father and son.

Around 1870 Harry appeared on the scene in Mobile, Alabama about the time of his father’s death. He then established a studio at 87 Dauphin Street (Figure 4). This is the same address that appears on the backmark of the CDV under investigation. Apparently this would be when the young Scottish immi-grant partnered with the older Barnes. Possibly this partnership was designed as a means of conveyance of studio ownership between the two. But, the

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fact of Wallace’s marriage to Chauncey Barnes’s daughter, Emma A. Barnes, on October 3, 1871 (Alabama County Marriages 365), certainly played as a contributing factor. Wallace would have been about twenty-nine years of age, while Barnes’s age would have been about fifty-three. Undoubtedly, Barnes would have functioned as a photographic teacher to the younger Wallace, as demonstrated earlier when he trained Professor Park in the daguerrean trade.

Wallace’s shared studio with Barnes located at 87 Dauphin Street was in the heart of the port city of Mobile, just a short distance from its wharf district and opposite the public square known as Bienville Square. At this location, Wallace developed his reputation as the city’s best photographer, and, within ten years of establishing his studio, he was exhibiting prints in Chicago and New York City using a professional permanence photographic technology known as carbon prints (Mobile & Ohio Railway 14). Carbon prints were to become the printing process of choice for exhibition prints among art photographers at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries (Mace 162). His larger cabinet card images (Figure 5) were declared the finest at a photographic convention held in New York City in 1881. Wallace was also commended for his abilities to produce portraits with oil paint, India ink, and watercolors, along with crayon portraiture (Barhydt 16). Extant photos demonstrate Wallace’s ability to produce miniature cameos of photos within photos, as seen in a set of husband and wife portrait cabinet card prints (Fig-ure 6). Not only did his studio produce fine portraits of Mobile’s citizenry, it was producing a variety of commercial images including landscape and urban views, along with architectural renderings. These found their way as artist etchings into the 1883 annual report for the Mobile and Ohio Railway.

The 1880 federal census indicates Harry was still a photographer and he was residing in Mobile with his wife Emma, along with their children Xavier, Gertrude, and Emma. Census data from the 1890 is silent about the Wallace

Figure 4 Barnes and Wallace advertisement in the Mobile City Directory for 1878. Image source: U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989, Ancestry.com..

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family; however, the 1892 Mobile city directory lists his new photography partner as William A. Reed (Matzenger 332, 402). Although, by 1900 this partnership dissolved and the federal census reveals Harry had moved his photography business and family to the northwest Tennessee town of Union City. However, within the first decade shortly after the turn of the century, the 1910 federal census records indicate when Harry was sixty-seven, he relocated yet again. This move took him to Aiken, South Carolina, along with his wife Emma and daughter Gertrude. He still listed his occupation as photographer and daughter Gertrude was his assistant photographer.

Wallace’s moves to Union City, Tennessee, and Aiken, South Carolina, seem such random occurrences as to beg the question of why these locations. One theory that emerges from this mysterious past suggests there was a con-nection to the long-time established studio of J. A. Palmer, an Irish native by way of Rochester, New York, and Savannah, Georgia. Palmer established his studio in Aiken around 1871 and provided commercial photographs to the local and regional communities in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, in the form of portraits, interior and exterior architectural views, landscapes, and news worthy events (Teal 125). Palmer employed additional operators in his business and to ensure continuation of his operation he sold the studio to

Figure 5William A. Reed and Harry E. Wallace. Uncle John L. Murphy and Aunt Frances Murphy of Mobile, Alabama. Cabinet cards, c.1890s. Author’s collection.

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his wife a few years before his death in 1896. The community of Aiken enjoyed the seasonal visits of northern tourists, which the locals called the “Winter Col-ony” (129). Possibly this was the draw for Wallace’s relocation. The question regarding Union City in rural western Tennessee remains shadowy.

Wallace was still photographing well into his seventies, in the Pied-mont region of South Carolina. As with Barnes, there are no records that indicate what precipitated this move, especially since he had successfully established himself as Mobile’s preem-inent photographer. According to Teal, in 1914 Wallace had a studio at 110½ South Main Street in Anderson (218). Two years later, in 1916, he had relo-cated operations to 124½ North Main Street, where he stayed for a number of years. Before and during World War I, 1913 and 1917 respectively, Wallace completed commercial photographic assignments for a local college publication known as The Sororian (Teal 220). He photographed street scenes, along with commercial and residential architecture, in addition to his portraiture, just as he had in Mobile.

Information from the 1920 Census for Anderson, South Carolina, shows his daughter Gertrude, a single forty-one year old, as working in the studio as a photographic retoucher. Ten years afterward when Harry was eighty-eight years of age, he was still a practicing photographer but now, daughter Ger-trude had moved from retoucher to full-fledged photographer and business manager. According to Teal, Harry had moved his studio to 132 North Main Street by 1934, when he was ninty (218). At this point, he had “a combination studio and gift shop” (218). Very possibly, during his latter years, Gertrude, his abiding daughter, may have taken reigns behind the camera, which may account for Teal’s comment that Wallace had photographed in Anderson for sixty years (218). Harry passed away at age ninty-seven leaving a remarkable photographic legacy among southern photographers.

Thus, from a simple backmark imprinted on an 1870s carte-de-visite from Mobile, Alabama, personal identities and their concomitant stories have been reconstructed and brought forth from the dusty past of collective southern history. Most importantly however, by tracing the partnership of

Figure 6Detail of Figure 5, showing cameo worn by Aunt Frances. Note the photo of her husband John is reversed, indi-cating that the original photograph was re-photographed.

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Barnes and Wallace, a larger picture of photographic history in the South emerges. Between these two men and later partners, all nineteenth century photographic technologies were employed in their southern studios and not just those of the northeastern states. Beginning with Chauncey Barnes’s solo studio in 1844 at Mobile, I have traced nearly a hundred year history of continuing photographic practice through the partnerships of Wallace and Barnes, Reed and Wallace, and ultimately, Wallace and Wallace in Ander-son, South Carolina. This history shows photography as a well-established professional industry in the South, and not one of solely itinerant northern photographers escaping their winter climes. Additionally, in this article I have closed some gaps in previous histories, such as the connection between Barnes and Wallace. The same can be said concerning accounts that solely place Wallace in South Carolina, with no mention of his operations in Alabama or Tennessee. In any case, both photographers in this case study lived interesting lives during extraordinary times and contributed in their unique ways to the professionalism of their trade within the antebellum and postbellum South.

In conclusion, I have attempted to demonstrate the reconstruction process I use when recreating the personal identity of long forgotten American pho-tographers or their patrons from the nineteenth century, in this case Chauncey Barnes and Harry E. Wallace. By establishing an underpinning framework grounded in photographic criticism and critical visual methodologies as set forth by Barrett and Rose, I am able to analyze nineteenth century images by asking questions regarding the image itself, its production, its creator, or its intended audience. With this framework in place I can then move to traditional genealogical research in order to investigate more fully who these unknown persons may have been, where they lived, what their occupations may have been, and possibly how their lives impacted not only their im-mediate families but also the larger community in general. Some of these reconstructed life-stories reveal simple, ordinary lives of people concerned with raising their families, while other stories develop the complexity and intrigue of a suspense novel. In this instance, a burgeoning southern pho-tographic industry is revealed through a nearly one-hundred-year legacy of partnerships spanning the South.

Colorado State University

Notes

1For example, George S. Cook was probably the most notable Southern photographer during the Civil War years, yet photo historian Robert Hirsch only devoted one sentence to Cook’s stereoviews taken within Fort Sumter (88). Another famous Southern photographer

Vol. 52, no. 4 (Summer 2015) 25

from Charleston was Solomon Nunes Carvalho, who joined Fremont’s expedition west in 1853. More has been written about Carvalho (Carvalho 1-113, Korn 360-368), however his photographic contributions were in the western territories and not the Southern states.

2Earlier research on Barnes and Wallace was previously published on the author’s Anti-quarian Images weblog. While of similar content, this current essay expands the dialogue with fuller, more complete data research.

Works Cited

“Alabama, County Marriages, 1809-1950.” Marriage Certificate, Harry E. Wallace and Emma A. Barnes, 03 Oct. 1871 (Mobile, AL): 365. FHL microfilm 1294426. FamilySearch. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Web. 9 Oct. 2014.

Barhydt, J. A. Crayon Portraiture: Complete Instructions for Making Crayon Portraits on Crayon Paper and on Platinium, Silver and Bromide Enlargements. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1892. Project Gutenberg. Web. 15 Nov. 2014.

Barnes v. Ingalls. 39 Ala. 193. 1863. Action on Promissory Note, and Common Counts. “Hearsay of the Sun: Photography, Identity, and the Law of Evidence.” (Sources—Cases. Transcript.) Thomas Thurston. American Quarterly: Hypertext Scholarship in American Studies. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. 1999-2001. Web. 30 July 2011.

Barrett, Terry. Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.

Broyles, M. “Old Chauncey Barnes and or Wallace Photography Studios in Mobile.” Message board post. 27 Feb. 2010. Ancestory.com. Web. 30 July 2011.

Carmelick, Albert, undertaker. Return of a Death, September 20, 1884. Health Department, City of Mobile Death Records: Microfilm Roll 07: 875. Mobile County Alabama Death Records, 1876-1908 Index: 11. Print.

Carvalho, Solomon Nunes. Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West with Colonel Fremont’s Last Expedition. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2004. Print.

Craig, John S. “Barnes, Chauncey.” Craig’s Daguerreian Registry. n.d. Web. 30 July 2011. Darrah, William C. Cartes de Visite in Ninteenth Century Photography. Gettysburg, PA:

Darrah, 1981. Print.Higgins, Cheryl L. “Descendants of Thomas Barnes.” Family History of Cheryl Lynn Hig-

gins. n.d. Rootsweb/Ancestry.com. Web. 30 July 2011. Hirsch, Robert. Seizing the Light: A Social History of Photography. 2nd ed. Boston: Mc-

Graw-Hill, 2009. Print.Kelbaugh, Ross J., compiler. “Directory of Baltimore Daguerreans, A-J.” Baltimore: Historic

Graphics, 1998. Web. 30 July 2011. Korn, Bertram W. “Some Additional Notes on the Life and Work of Solomon Nunes Car-

valho.” The Jewish Quarterly 57 (1967): 360-368. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.“The Late Chauncey Barnes.” Daily Register [Mobile, AL] 21 Sept. 1884: 5. Print.Mace, O. Henry. Collector’s Guide to Early Photographs. Radnor, PA: Wallace-Homestead,

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