Daily Kos: GFHC: Tintype Photos

Wanna play detective? Then help me date the photos below. My hope is that a date will help me identify the people in these photos. I'm not expecting a specific date; a reasonably narrow range, like 10 to 20 years is probably the best I can hope for.

All photos embiggen and link to my Photobucket account. A tip: if you use Firefox, right click to view image, then hold down ctrl and scroll up with the mouse and you'll get an even bigger image than Photobucket allows.

I found these photos in an album while I visited with my ailing mother recently. Unfortunately, she is no longer able to identify the people in the photos. That's where y'all come in. I'm hoping someone will be able to narrow down the date from the clothing, hairstyles, whatnot, and I'll try to see if I can match it to someone in my family tree.

All, but one, are tintype photos. Photo 6 was from my mom's computer and appears to be a paper photograph, judging from the dog-eared corner and a torn-out piece on the left side.

I won't go into the technical aspects of tintype photography, but for the uninitiated (like me), and to put it simply, tintype photos are made of very thin sheets of metal. Their corners were usually snipped off or blunted, like the ones above, because they were very sharp. Different sources disagree on whether or not tin was actually one of the metals used, but iron was the most common. Another name for it is ferrotype. They were cheaper and quicker to produce than the fragile daguerreotypes, and became more common.

Just a FYI from The Daguerreian Society

Daguerreotypes (1840-1855) are on polished silver so they are very reflective, like a mirror. Since they are on silver and subject to tarnish, daguerreotypes were put behind glass and sealed with paper tape so air cannot tarnish the plate (there often is some tarnish around the edges of the picture). This was then put into a small hinged case, similar to a woman's compact. But, the easiest way to tell if you have a daguerreotype is to see if it has that reflection, just like a mirror. You have to tilt it back and forth to see the image

Here below is a modern-day video showing how tintype photos were made. Note the neck brace used to keep the subject still.

Tintype was patented in 1856. The time range for when they were in use varies from one source to the next:

family-lore: Although the heyday for tintype photographs faded in the 1860s, tintype photo studios were still around into the early 1900s as a novelty.

ehow: Tintypes were wildly popular for just a few decades, but remained in use until the 1950s.

Wikipedia: Ferrotypes waned in popularity by the end of the 19th century, relegated to niche markets...

Phototree: Appeared: 1855; Peaked: 1861-1871; Waned: 1872-1900

Phototree is an interesting site, full of antique photos and grouped into different categories (some questionable), but it didn't really tell me how to narrow down the dates. Maybe someone with a sharp eye for history and fashion knows what to look for.

Keep in mind that these are photos of the tintypes, and I don't have the actual tintypes in my possession. As far as I can recall, I think I did check the backs of all of them, and they all had a black coating, with no discernible markings, except for a few scratches and some spots of black album paper glued to them. I don't have them to measure now, but I'd say they are 1/6 Plate - 2 5/8" x 3 1/4", to use the sizes from Phototree. All photos were edited and enhanced for better viewing.

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/13/1101266/-GFHC-Tintype-Photos

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