Featured Any ideas on this family daguerreotype?

That's it...stir the pot !!! Heehehehe!!!!!

 

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.” ~Thomas Paine

 

Someone mentioned pot?! (Sorry, I am suffering from cabin fever silliness).

 

Because their belief is so tightly held that nothing....even facts, can dissuade them...

Think...... Trumps base...

 

BaseballGames - I'd give my right arm AND pay good money to have a front row seat when that last synapse you're running on finally blows. I'm guessing it would look like that seagull on the business end of a Randy Johnson fastball.
You're pretty good with that photo lineup thing you do. Kudos to you! Tell you what .... how about doing that with all 130 photos of Lincoln - and then we can separate em all out into about 10 different piles.

Lincoln's private secretary ... John G. Nicolay ... "The question of looks depended in Lincoln's case very much upon his moods ... the large framework of his features was greatly modified by the emotions that controlled them. Lincoln's features were the despair of every artist who undertook his portrait. Graphic art was powerless before a face that moved through a thousand delicate gradations of line and contour, light and shade, sparkle of the eye and curve of the lip, in the long gamut of expression from grave to gay, and back again from the rollicking jollity of laughter to that serious faraway look that with prophetic intuitions beheld the awful panorama of war, heard the cry of oppression and suffering. There are many pictures if Lincoln; there is no portrait of him."

Walt Whitman, noted contemporary poet and admirer of Lincoln ... "Though hundreds of portraits have been made, by painters and photographers, (many to pass on, by copies, to future times), I have never seen one yet that in my opinion deserved to be called a perfectly good likeness; nor do I believe there is really such a one in existence. May I not say too, that as there is no entirely competent and emblematic likeness of Abraham Lincoln in picture or statue, there is not - perhaps cannot be - any fully appropriate literary statement or summing up of him yet in existence."

 

all that did was confuse me..........

 

2manybooks - Lincoln started growing his beard in October of 1860. He shaved his beard for the first time just prior to his inauguration. The Abe & Mary dag image is the only presidential era photo where his beard is shaven low enough to reveal the cleft in his chin. As has been documented and supported with visual evidence, Abe and his barber experimented with different styles and length of beard throughout his presidency. There is no inconsistency with Lincoln's beard.
Question: were daguerreotypes still being produced in 1861?
Answer: yes
Question: was daguerreotypy on the decline and a small fraction of the overall production of photographs in 1861?
Answer: yes
Question: were there photographers who, although having crossed over into the newer processes of Ambrotypes, Tintypes, and Carte-De-Visites, were still proficient in the art of daguerreotypy and had access to the materials necessary to produce them?
Answer: yes (John Craig ... Daguerreian Registry)
Question: are daguerreotypes considered, even today, the finest photographs ever produced?
Answer: yes
Question: has there been a modern resurgence in the art of daguerreotypy due to a fascination with, and desire to reproduce (albeit using a safer methodology), the finest photographs ever produced?
Answer: yes
Question: would the brass mat and preserver used on a daguerreotype produced in 1861 resemble those that were manufactured in the mid to late 1850's?
Answer: yes
Question: would Mary Todd Lincoln, if given the option of a daguerreotype, ambrotype, tintype, or CDV, choose the finest photographic image ever known to commemorate a special occasion that she had dreamed about since she was a teenager to keep as a memento?
Answer: DUH!

 

and here I thought it meant something of a more derogatory nature.....

 

Go right ahead and continue with your lame attempt at insulting the fine members of this forum (we're members of this forum, but not fine ones). In no case, however, attempt to refute a single one of the facts laid out for you here, but instead divert into irrelevancies. Yes indeed, portraiture, when we're discussing photographs. Yes indeed, your impostor has that rarely-seen dimple ("cleft") in his chin... which Real Lincoln did not have. Pointless arguing with the willfully deluded... we're done with this one.

 

Where's admin?

 

Yes, Someone PLEASE put a stop to his inane ramblings .. he appears ridiculous .. Joy.

 

Definitely not Lincoln. He didn't wear a beard much at all, according to the photographic record until he became interested in government.

 

@Joseph Mason

Alexander Gardner, Feb. 24, 1861

Inauguration Mar. 4, 1861

Mathew Brady, April 6, 1861


So, you are saying that shortly before the inauguration, his beard was trimmed in a straight line, lower than it had previously been, close to the jawline, and by April 6th it had resumed the shape it had in late February? That's some fancy beard.

But I imagine your retort is that these are nefarious Lincoln conspiracy photographs that cannot be trusted.

I believe you have misinterpreted the quotes from John G. Nicolay and Walt Whitman. They most probably meant that a still portrait or photograph could not fully capture Lincoln's expressive and vivacious face as it appeared in life. I doubt that they meant that one day he had a mole, and the next day he did not. Or that he sometimes had detached earlobes and other times they were firmly attached.

As to the daguerreotype fittings - as I noted earlier, a daguerreotype from 1861 is not impossible. And I suppose the photographer could have rummaged around in his studio and pulled out an older style of mat and preserver. And I suppose Mrs. Lincoln could have rummaged around in her closet for a 10 year old dress to wear for her very special daguerreotype, while she was losing her plump face and adding several years to her appearance.........

It is clear that you have a lot invested in your misapprehensions. But I choose not to waste any more of my time trying to disabuse you of them.

 

Sorry Kathy, it was agreed early on that the original photograph at the start of this thread was not Lincoln (never a serious contention). But the thread got hijacked down a rabbit hole by the topic of a purported daguerreotype of Abe and Mary (not), and we have been dealing with the fallout for the last two pages. Sigh.

 

Well I guess I'm done here. Just got called to the principal's office and chastised for my manner of communication on here. You folks have a nice day. My apologies to Melissa for being complicit in hijacking her thread!

 

That's the nicest thing you've ever posted. Thank you.

 

What is the ruckus about? Mr. Mason clearly needs new glasses if he thinks the man pictured is Abraham Lincoln when there are far more differences in their facial features then similarities. The face is like a fingerprint, you need to break it down to its individual features and then compare them. I see far too many differences for there to be any reasonable explanation why Lincoln's features changed to suit this imposter.