Untitled [portrait of a woman seated in the 'Gurney chair'] 1852 - 1858

This is an undated daguerreotype by Jeremiah Gurney, a portrait of an unknown woman seated in what’s known as the ‘Gurney chair’. While the image is formally a portrait, it also opens up a window onto the social conventions of mid-19th century America. Photography was in its infancy, and daguerreotypes like this one were luxury items, accessible only to the middle and upper classes. The woman's clothing, jewelry, and posture all speak to a particular status, but so too does the very act of sitting for a portrait. The ‘Gurney chair’ itself was a studio prop, a readymade stage for the performance of social identity. To understand this image better, we can turn to archives and social histories. These sources can reveal the economic and cultural forces that shaped both the production and consumption of such images, and the ways in which they reflected and reinforced existing social hierarchies. Ultimately, the meaning of this daguerreotype lies not just in the image itself, but in the rich social and institutional context that surrounds it.