The first daguerreotypes were made in the United States in September 1839, just four weeks after Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851) revealed the details of the process at a Paris meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, in October 1839. While photographic studios soon appeared in major cities around the world, it was the United States which led the world in daguerreotype production.

The earliest known daguerreotype photography studio opened in New York in March 1840 and, by the end of that decade, every sizeable American city had one, while smaller towns were serviced by travelling photographers, with covered wagons fitted out as mobile studios. Portrait photography was incredibly popular in the United States at this time.

The daguerreotype is a unique direct-positive image, made inside the camera on a highly polished copper plate coated with a thin layer of silver and iodine. Exposure time could be up to 25 minutes and the development of an image occurred when the plate was exposed to dangerous mercury vapours. The surface of a daguerreotype is like a mirror and, depending on the viewing angle, the image could change from positive to negative. As daguerreotypes are very fragile – the image can be rubbed off with a finger – they were kept under glass and housed in a protective frame or case made of wood and covered with leather and velvet.

The ambrotype was invented in Britain around 1848 by Frederick Scott Archer (1813–57). Its name derives from the Greek word ambrotos, meaning ‘imperishable’. However, popular myth attributes the technique’s name to James A Cutting (1814–67), the American who patented the process. At the same time as registering his patent, Cutting changed his middle name from Anson to Ambrose, essentially naming himself after the photographic process.

Like the daguerreotype, the ambrotype is a one-of-a-kind direct-positive image that forms on glass inside the camera. While similar in size and presentation to the daguerreotype – and both were used primarily for portraiture – the two processes are entirely different. Ambrotypes are created by underexposing a glass plate covered in collodion (cellulose, usually derived from cotton, treated with fuming nitric and sulfuric acids), which is then backed with a black lacquer to create a positive image. The collodion-smeared glass is covered by another glass, similar to a microscope slide, which protects it from exposure to the atmosphere. While only marginally less complicated to make than daguerreotypes, ambrotypes were quicker and cheaper to produce and had the advantage of not creating a positive/negative surface reflection. Ambrotypes were also easier to tint or colour by hand – this photograph is an example. The technique rapidly replaced the daguerreotype in the late 1850s, only to be superseded by even cheaper tintypes and the cartes-de-visite paper photographs of the 1860s.

In Japan, the ambrotype became the most popular process for studio portraiture during the late nineteenth-century Meiji era, when a wave of modernisation swept the country and resulted in greater economic integration and cultural exchange with the West. Japanese ambrotype portraits made for the domestic market were found mainly in family collections, and in this respect they are comparable to the other modest portraits in this display. They are very different from the photographs created in Asia during this period for the burgeoning European tourist industry. The fragile glass plates are held in presentation cases made of lightweight kiri (Paulownia) wood.

The tintype, also known as the ferrotype, is derived from the same process as the ambrotype. Both are direct-positive images (i.e. made in the camera and not printed from a negative) and rely on the fact that underexposed collodion negatives appear as positive images when viewed against a dark background. Unlike the ambrotype, however, the tintype is made on a thin plate of iron (not tin as the name suggests), coated with black lacquer. The lacquered – or ‘japanned’ – plates, which were commercially available from the 1850s, were coated with a collodion solution (cellulose nitrate) just prior to exposure and developed immediately following exposure.

The tintype was very popular in the United States, where it was used almost exclusively for portraiture. Despite the limited tonal range and flat appearance of the tintype compared to the daguerreotype and ambrotype, their inexpensiveness ensured their popularity until the end of the nineteenth century. Although this tintype photograph was taken in a studio, the makeshift construction of the set suggests it was temporarily erected, and probably belonged to a travelling photographer.

This small photograph, reproduced at the same size as the negative, is an exquisite and intriguing image of what appears to be a theatrical group. Together, the academic gown worn by the figure on the right combined with the ivy-covered sandstone building forming the backdrop suggest it may be a university society.

In 1842, British inventor and astronomer Sir John Herschel (1792–1871) devised the cyanotype process as a way of reproducing notes and diagrams, resulting in what we now know as blueprints. A cyanotype is created through the combined action of light and chemical processes, whereby objects are ‘contact-printed’. To create this image, a photographic negative was placed on a sheet of paper coated with light-sensitive iron salts, and exposed to sunlight. Following exposure, the paper is then washed in water, and oxidisation produces a brilliant cyan blue – which gives the process its name.

The albumen print was invented in 1850 by French photographer Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard (1802–72); it was the first commercially viable process for making a photographic print on paper. The process derived its name from the albumen contained in egg whites. Albumen was used to create a smooth surface on paper, which was then photo-sensitised with salt and silver nitrate. Albumen prints were most commonly made from wet collodion-on-glass negatives and developed through exposure to the sun, which was known as ‘printing-out’. The albumen print became the most common type of photograph until the 1890s. Carte-de-visite is French for ‘visiting card’, and this type of photograph was so-called because of its physical resemblance to the calling cards used in nineteenth-century polite society. Patented in 1856 by French photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819–89), cartes-de-visite portraits were normally full- or bust-length, and were intended to be housed in albums. From the 1860s, cartes-de-visite were produced by the millions worldwide.

Introduced in the 1860s, the cabinet card, like its predecessor the carte-de-visite, was a full- or bust-length studio portrait adhered to stiff card. However, they were larger in scale (approximately 16.5 x 11.5cm) and designed to be displayed in the home, rather than kept in albums. The space on the face of the card, at the top or bottom, was usually printed with the name of the photographic studio where the portrait was taken.

While little is known of self-proclaimed ‘artistic photographer’ E.D. King of Chardon, Ohio, it is clear from the studio set in which the well-dressed young boy is standing that considerable effort went into King’s attempt to create an atmosphere of culture and taste.