Compare this image of Scottish stonemason and geologist Hugh Miller, one of
the earliest portrait images of any individual (1842!).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/HughMiller.jpg  The
photographer was a friend of his and took several photographs to use as
display pieces in his studio. Posed photographs, the equivalent of genre
paintings, were popular in the early days of photography, and the models
were not necessarily people of means or note (though in the case of Twain
and Miller, they later became so) - the main requirements were that the
model be good looking and be able to hold absolutely still for the long
exposure.

Martha Sherwood

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 3:13 PM Dave Davis <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> What is the consensus on the early (1850) photographic image of SLC?
>
> Image is reproduced here, among others --
>
>
> https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/03/05/mark-twain-celebrity-photographys-first-superstar-and-critic
>
>
> " Twain at age 15, photo attributed to GH Jones, circa 1850, courtesy of
> Bancroft Library Pictorial Collections"
>
> (At that link, the text suggests he was a cabin boy at that time, which I
> believe is almost certainly wrong.)
>
> I recently hazarded a guess:
>
> (ME) "I've known that photograph for years. And I've seen Orion's printing
> equipment. And -- I just now realized: He's holding those letters that way
> because they are set in the compositor's rule! It just *looks* like a belt
> buckle. It is a clever hack-- and I bet he had to put those letters back
> where he found them.
>
> Photographic reproduction (whatever the actual process, like
> daguerreotype)  was not all that common to mere working people in the US
> Midwest at that period, as far as I know. So one wonders how it is that
> such an image came to be created (and paid for) .
>
> Who knows the real story?
>
> DDD
>