Lorin E. Miller

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN

ca. 1880s

A series of photographs, reminiscent of the several early portraits, dominate the next section of the exhibition. They are all drawn from cities in the north or the Midwest and, with one exception, are of unidentified men and women. In photographic terms, they are albumen prints in either carte-de-visite or cabinet card formats or tintypes. They span the decades between the 1860s and 1890s. Those for which the photographer’s studio is known are from Hartford, Connecticut, Troy, New York, and Alliance, Ohio. The identified portrait is Fred S. Philips of Salem, New Jersey, taken by Pach Brothers, a prominent New York City studio. As in the earlier daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, the sitters appear well-dressed and at ease posing in the photographer’s studio.