Those indispensable Assistants?

Edwin Long

Eagerly I looked at the pages of the Chester County Tax List ledger for 1865 West Chester. Scanning the column listing the occupations, I turned the pages one by one. It seemed like a fruitless search. Suddenly to my surprise the word “photographist” jumped out at me. It was the occupation listed for Edwin Long! This was a name I had never heard before, never seen an imprint for on a carte-de-visite. Who was this Edwin Long?

Finding new names on the tax list took me on an unexpected journey into the world of photographic assistants. In the days of the craze for the carte-de-visite (CDV) or photographic visiting card, a photographer needed help in the studio. There were many steps to completing an order a dozen cartes-de-visite.

It began with preparing the wet-plate collodion negative, which the photographer exposed in the camera to capture an image. This negative needed to be developed, fixed and washed in the darkroom. Several images may have been taken at the sitting, so a proof (a quick positive print of the negative) was made using a cyanotype of salted paper process.

After the customer selected a portrait, it needed to be printed a dozen times, since cartes-de-visite were sold by the dozen. Glossy albumenized paper was sensitized with silver nitrate and dried in the dark. Then the negative was placed in contact with the sensitized paper and image printed out in the sun. After the print was fixed and dried, the finished prints were trimmed and glued to the photographer’s imprinted mounts. A monumental job for one person alone.

My research journey with Edwin Long is presented in his biography posted here. No photographer could succeed without good assistants.