Realism and Illusion in a Sacred Landscape Southworth & Hawes, Daguerreotypists
A Treasured Source of Inspiration
Realism and Illusion in a Sacred Landscape Southworth & Hawes, Daguerreotypists
By Melissa Banta,
Program Officer for Photographs at Harvard University Library, Weissman Preservation Center; Historical Collections Consultant at Mount Auburn
Mount Auburn Cemetery’ s beloved landscape has inspired photographers since the introduction of the medium in the mid-19th century. In 1853, two pioneering practitioners of the art, Josiah Johnson Hawes( 1808-1901) and Albert Sands Southworth( 1811-1894), known for their magnificent portraits of Boston’ s illustrious citizens, ventured outside their studio to create a series of daguerreotypes of Mount Auburn.
The first publicly announced photographic technique, the daguerreotype realized a centuries-old dream of fixing the reflection of a natural scene onto a surface. The wondrous process involved treating a silver-coated copper plate with light-sensitive chemicals, exposing it in a camera, and developing the plate with mercury vapor. The resulting picture— a single, unique plate— was sometimes referred to as a“ mirror image” for its smooth reflective appearance, exquisite tonal range, and faithful rendering of the most minute detail.
The daguerreotypes taken by the Southworth and Hawes studio document the Cemetery as it looked 20 years after its founding in 1831 and include a number of scenes of favorite vistas and noted monuments. 1( These scenes were often represented as engravings in contemporary guidebooks of the day, such as Dearborn’ s Guide Through Mount Auburn.) The studio’ s images reveal how Southworth and Hawes experimented with elements of radiance and darkness. Their daguerreotype of the Winchester family lot, for example, captures the sunlight streaming through the trees and the dappled light and shadow on the lovely hillside tomb.“ As far as possible we imitate nature in her most beautiful forms, by a mellow blending of lights and shades,” Southworth explained. 2 In their daguerreotype of the Lawrence family lot, the photographers bathe the scene in a subdued glow that evokes the otherworldly nature of the landscape.
Southworth and Hawes produced a number of daguerreotypes of the Cemetery as stereo views, a new development that allowed the photographers to push the boundaries of the medium to a seemingly miraculous form of realism. 3 The studio designed an apparatus called the“ Grand Parlor and Gallery Stereoscope,” which housed a series of daguerreotype stereo pairs that when seen together, created a three-dimensional view. Southworth noted that the daguerreotype had surpassed engraving and painting in“ faithful and life-like delineation,” and now along with the stereoscope, would“ invade the precinct of sculpture.” 4 The richly intricate and muti-layered landscape of Mount Auburn presented the ideal setting for their stereo images.
Southworth and Hawes issued tickets to their Gallery Stereoscope( 25 cents for a single view and 50 cents for the season) to individuals working at various cultural institutions, including Mount Auburn Cemetery. Photograph historian Grant Romer explains that the studio’ s foray into stereography also presented an opportunity to generate business from the city’ s elite— many of whom, such as the eminent doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, had family lots in the Cemetery. 5 Holmes,
6 | Sweet Auburn
whom Southworth and Hawes photographed many times, described stereo views as providing“ the same sense of infinite complexity which Nature gives us.” 6( The doctor himself would eventually invent an improved stereo viewer.) One can imagine that the studio’ s magnificent cemetery scenes would have intrigued Holmes as well as another photograph and technology enthusiast, Jacob Bigelow. A physician as well as a founder and designer of Mount Auburn, Bigelow mused about the“ beautiful perfection” of the daguerreotype“ by which the external picture is depicted in miniature, light for light, and shade for shade, to the minutest gradation of each.” 7
While the studio valued the fidelity of the medium, Southworth also contended that the,“ artist, even in photography, must go beyond discovery and the knowledge of facts.... Nature is not at all to be represented as it is, but as it ought to be, and might have possibly been.” 8 Having earned a reputation as among the most celebrated artistic photographic innovators of their day, Southworth and Hawes created a magical blend of realism and illusion as they set about capturing the sacred landscape of the young Cemetery.
1
Daguerreotypes of Mount Auburn by Southworth and Hawes currently reside at the George Eastman House, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of New Mexico, and in private collections. The studio’ s daguerreotypes of the Cemetery include views of the Binney monument, Central Avenue, Cushing tomb, Davenport lot, Forest Pond, Gentian Path, Lawrence lot, Magoun monument, Mead and Read tombs, Shaw monument, Story monument, Tisdale-Hewins lots, Torrey monument, Walcott- Frothingham lots, and Winchester tomb.
2
“ Artists’ Daguerreotype Rooms,” Massachusetts Register for the Year 1853 Containing a Business Directory of the State, with a Variety of Useful Information( Boston: George Adams, 1853), 326.
3
The British scientist Charles Wheatstone introduced the idea of binocular vision in the 1830s, and the technique was later applied to photography.
4
Albert Sands Southworth,“ Daguerreotype Likeness No. IV,” Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 7 May 1852, 1 in Grant Romer,“‘ A High Reputation with All True Artists and Connoisseurs’: The Daguerreian Careers of A. S. Southworth and J. J. Hawes,” in Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes, eds. Grant Romer and Brian Wallis( Rochester and New York: George Eastman House and International Center of Photography, 2005), 37.