The adventures and various works of a photographer, road tripper, former patron of the local arts, aspiring app developer, and late night coffee drinker and conversationalist.
A long, long time ago, when this site was in its earliest days, I decided to spotlight some of my favorite people, organizations, and things. Alongside descriptions of individual creators and supporters in the local arts scenes and notifications of upcoming local shows, I presented an overly long list of movies deemed to be personal favorites, organized chronologically by decade. This, along with a ton of other early material, eventually got the axe years later, casualties of a major website redesign which deemed them irrelevant. But a while back, a conversation with a friend about old movies and which ones would make it onto our individual top ten lists got the gears turning in my mind. Which titles on my earlier list really deserved a spot, given my current tastes and the changes in my perspective that have taken place over the last decade? This reappraisal is what has resulted in the list presented below.
A couple of weeks ago, whilst making my usual rounds at some area antique stores, I came upon a collection of interesting historical oddities. These were a decent-sized stack of old nineteenth-century letters, carefully unfolded and presented with their original envelopes inside sealed plastic Ziplock bags. The correspondence varied, consisting mostly of everyday life updates, but there were also business-related items and even some love letters included in the mix. Most were from senders inside the state of Texas, and a few were even addressed to recipients located right here in Dallas. I thumbed through the stack, looking at each item in turn, and ultimately decided I would buy one with a Wood Street address. Within the correspondence I saw references to what seemed to be the State Fair of Texas, and I was intrigued.
I like to collect vintage photos, particularly vintage photos of my hometown of Dallas and photos of places I've visited. Most of these date from the era of affordable personal photography and include mostly slides, real photo postcards, and everyday prints with the occasional vintage film negative thrown in. But a handful of items in my collection date to a period even earlier than that. These are not photo reproductions or reprints, period postcards, or facsimiles, but are actual period specimens that hail from the nineteenth or extreme early twentieth centuries. Here are examples of some of these.
Daguerreotype of young lady, 1/6 plate, circa 1840s
This portrait of a young lady is said to date to sometime during the 1840s, making it the oldest photo in my collection as of this writing. The ringlets in the woman's hair are a particular draw for me stylistically, and, unlike most photos from this period, you can see a bit of a smile playing upon her lips. Daguerreotypes consist of sheets of silver-plated copper, very highly polished and chemically treated to be light-sensitive. The image consists of the same silver as the surface upon which it sits, meaning that the appearance of the photo alternates between a positive and negative image depending on how the available light hits it. Daguerreotypes are very fragile objects and are usually presented behind glass-plated frames, which are stored inside latched, decorative cases. Mine came without a case, but I immediately placed it into one upon receipt.
Unfortunately, I have no information on the location, the photographer, or the identity of the woman in the photo. What I can say is that having one daguerreotype makes me want to have another. This was purchased from an online seller in mid-January 2025.
