Reconstructing Silent Voices in Southern Photographic History

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 investigates 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 return 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 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.

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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 photograph. 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 processes (i.e., equipment or tools) and their associated technologies. During the nineteenth century, this...