Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Superintendent of the Census

Mathew B. Brady American, born Ireland
ca. 1857
Not on view
By the mid-1850s, the popularity of the one-of-a-kind daguerreotype was giving way to the advantages of reproducible paper prints from collodion-on-glass negatives. Matthew Brady, who learned the technique of the daguerreotype from Samuel F. B. Morse, was an early and active practitioner, eventually presiding over two gallery establishments in New York and one in Washington, D.C. He adopted the collodion process around 1854 and used it to assemble his documentation of the Civil War. Here, in an intriguing combination of the two techniques, Brady used a glass negative to re-photograph a daguerreotype portrait of a government bureaucrat, creating a strangely poetic picture of a picture.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Superintendent of the Census
  • Artist: Mathew B. Brady (American, born Ireland, 1823?–1896 New York)
  • Date: ca. 1857
  • Medium: Salted paper print from glass negative
  • Dimensions: Image: 22.5 x 15.9 cm (8 7/8 x 6 1/4 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005
  • Object Number: 2005.100.312
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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