Featured CDV by a traveling artist

I was going thru some photos of a recent family album I picked up and I thought this CDV was kinda' cool. The back mark is W.H. Cunningham, Traveling Artist. I had not seen this kind of mark on the back of a CDV or Cabinet before ("artist"). I believe the CDV is from around 1864-1870, based on the square corners, size of image (sitter), double lines (one thick, one thin) & a Google search that came up with a W.H. Cunningham photographer near Independence, Kansas between 1860-1870. Was "traveling artist" a common photographers mark on CDV's? I picture some guy with a horse pulling a wagon full of equipment, on a dusty/lonely trail on the prairie, selling his photographs to recent settlers. Of course, all that in my mind

 

That's very interesting. It looks like a picture has been glued over the original surface. Makes you wonder what's underneath.

 

Yes, traveling photographers were out there, in all parts of the U.S. I have often seen photographers referring to themselves as Artists during the time frame you mentioned (and also earlier and a little later), whether they traveled or not. In the U.S. census, for example, there was an Occupation category listed and sometimes the occupation for a photographer was Artist. I just saw one today in the 1860 census who was listed that way. The term "photographer" was relatively new. Sometimes you see "photographist" as well. Reading the photographers' imprints (their logos and marks on card mounts) can be an interesting study.

Robert O. Brown published a book, Collector's Guide to 19th Century U. S. Traveling Photographers, that lists a W.H. Cunningham who worked in and near Lodi, Ohio from ca. 1864-1870, so fits with your estimated dates. He then opened a permanent gallery in Lodi from 1870-1877. Brown wrote that Cunningham may have started traveling again after that. Sounds like this would be a different person from the one you saw mentioned in Kansas, since the date ranges overlap with each other. Some photographers did travel through several states.

 

Thanks for the replies, I can definitely see early photographers calling themselves artists since it was such a new medium. I keep forgetting that commercial photography was still pretty young in the 1860s! Also, I was wrong about Cunningham's location being Kansas. I suspect the Lodi Cunningham is one and the same, of perhaps a brother or son!