Untitled (Portrait of Seated Man with Headdress) 1850

This haunting portrait, of a seated man in a feathered headdress, is an early photograph by an anonymous maker. This type of image is called a daguerreotype: created on a silvered copper plate, treated with chemicals, exposed in a camera, and then developed over mercury fumes. The reflective surface gives the image an ethereal quality, enhanced by the soft focus. The man’s gaze is direct, yet seems to look beyond us. The photograph is housed in an ornate case, edged with gilt decoration. This would have been quite precious and would have required a lot of skill and labour to create. Daguerreotypes were luxury objects, and making one was a labor-intensive and potentially dangerous process. The mercury fumes used in developing the image were highly toxic. Consider the social context of this portrait. It was produced during a period of intense cultural conflict, as the US government dispossessed Indigenous people of their lands. As a relatively expensive object, the image thus speaks to a fraught relationship between the sitter, the photographer, and the wider culture.