Tin Type Photos
March 22, 2019
If you go to antique shops and such you’ll sometimes run across these old photographs known as tintypes. I picked these up at an estate sale of a person that collected old photography equipment. These photos are on thin sheets of metal coated with lacquer or enamel. There are three basic versions of old non-paper photos. The earliest are known as daguerreotypes, which were printed on polished silver on copper plates. They were generally most popular between about 1839 and 1860. The next type were ambrotypes. Ambrotypes were printed on emulsion-coated glass and needed a background behind it to be viewed. Ambrotypes were at the height of their popularity between about 1853 and 1870. The last type, of which these are, are tintypes. Tintypes were popular during the same time as ambrotypes, from about 1853 until the 1890s. One thing to note is that the subjects had to sit very still for several seconds during the exposure (which was better than the minutes it took in the previous decades). Also, I’ve yet to find someone smiling in these 19th century images. It seems the idea of smiling for a photograph didn’t come around until the 20th century. A fascinating thing about these images is that they represent an era of dress, and society, from a timeframe of more than a century ago. What intrigues me the most is what I can never know. Who are these people?! What were their daily lives like? What did they do? What happened to them after these images were taken? They might be someone famous, or just one of the countless people that have made up our country. They have passed, and have been long forgotten, but here they are in 2018, staring at me over the great span of time. They live once again in my thoughts and pondering.
The images of the photos below have been reduced in size to fit on this webpage. If you want to see them in a larger resolution, right click on them and save them to your computer or viewing device.
