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If you were a photographer in the 1800s you had to have been strong. The cameras were huge and the film that went in them was just as large. Using them required some patience, and a great deal of skill. A strong back would have also been a plus. The large format cameras were made from glass, brass, leather and frequently some wood. The film that went in them was normally 8×10 inches or in some cases 5×7. I have an Agfa 8×10 camera from 1898 that is a joy to look at but must have been extremely hard to use.
These cameras captured photos on very large film using in most cases very long exposures. The glass plates used were exposed by placing them one at a time in the back of the camera. Prints were normally made by making a contact print. A contact print is made when you sandwich a piece of photographic paper and the negative under glass and expose the two to light for a short amount of time. The resulting print is exactly the same size as the negative.
There have been many photographers in Marietta that have documented the city for a long period of time. One of them was Thomas Biscoe. Biscoe was a professor at Marietta College, and he tended to record a lot of information about the photos that he took. The settings on his camera, for instance, and the date and time.
On May 17, 1883, he wnt out and took several photos. Four of those survive to this day. One of them is featured on the Local News page of Today's Times. Because Biscoe recorded the date and time, we know exactly when the photo was taken. The photo shot at 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon does not show some major news events in the city, in fact it does not show anything remarkable, and that is the point. It shows Marietta on a typical day.
Because the photo was shot on a large negative, it has an incredible amount of detail. Viewed online (the photo is part of the Marietta College's Legacy Library Special Collections) you can simply zoom into different parts of the photo. View the garden of a Harmar resident, for instance, or check and see what is going on along the river.
Since we know the exact date and time he took the photo, it was easy to match it up to the newspaper that was published that day 140 years ago. Using the two pieces of media you can not only view what was going on that day, you can read about it too.
Still photographs are unique because they freeze a moment in time forever. I have been a still photographer for a long time I am well aware of how a photo can capture not only the time and place, but also the emotion of the moment.
Hanging a photo on a wall, putting it on the fridge or sticking it in your wallet are all ways that we preserve still photos. Now we put them on our phones. Everyone takes a lot more photos than they once did, but most do a poor job preserving them. What is going to happen when your phone dies, or the format of the images changes? I doubt the selfie you shot last weekend will be around in 2163.
Even when there is a video of an event, it is normally the still photo that is remembered. Take for example the iconic photo of the flag being raised on Iwo Jima. Joe Rosenthal's photo would win him journalism's highest award, the Pulitzer, and the photo would become the model for the Marine Corps monument in Washington.
Most events captured long ago by still photographers were not history changing like that of Rosenthal. They were like Biscoe's photo, of typical people, doing typical things on a typical day. I find it remarkable that we can look back on that average day 140 years later.
Art Smith is online manager of The Times, he can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com