| | | Tintypes - Exterior views
(1860-1900)
When one looks at salt prints and to a lesser extent Daguerreotypes of exterior views one has the sense that the photograph was taken with an artistic intent in the framing and composition that went beyond a simple documentary record. On those occasions the view might be devoid of people, human habitations or any semblance of civilization. Here we have art for art's sake.
If one looks at vast numbers of tintypes one has a different sense and surviving artistic scenic views are almost totally non-existant. This puzzled me and so I asked Andrew Daneman the possible reasons and he proposed three:
- The tintype process itself lacks tonal range and so there are no pure whites. This would render any landscapes unsatisfactory and particularly snowscapes unattractive and therefore have no artistic purpose making them unsaleable.
- Usually the creator of tintypes was an operator with limited training and lacking any formal, or informal, understanding of art. With the makers of Daguerreotypes and salt prints the best photographers were frequently educated artists and/or scientists with refined tastes, sometimes travelled widely, and had a sophisticated understanding of classical and contemporary artistic traditions.
- At the same time as tintypes were popular there was the move to a negative / positive process and the albumen print offered greater artistic control and room for experimentation. This meant that those inclined to art would not be drawn to making tintypes.
The tintype was a means of recording the everyday and as such it has immense cultural value just as would real photo postcards later. It was a means for largely itinerant photographers to earn a living and there was little or no market for low contrast photographs of a valley, an isolated tree or an untamed stream. If you can show us tintype examples of the wonders of nature we'd both be fascinated to see them and be proved wrong.
Alan Griffiths
[with thanks to Andrew Daneman]
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