ANTIQUE FERROTYPE TINTYPE PHOTOGRAPH WOMAN AT GATE ~ A. E. ALDEN RUSTIC PICTURES

RARE A.E. ALDEN "RUSTIC PICTURE" FERROTYPE IMAGE TAKEN BY THIS FAMOUS EARLY PHOTOGRAPHER. APPROX. 3 1/8" X 2 1/4" UNEVENLY CUT. 1/6 PLATE. PLEASE VIEW IMAGES OF ACTUAL ITEM AND ASK QUESTIONS.

Augustus Ephraim Alden was a direct descendant of the well known pilgrims John & Priscilla Alden. A. E. Alden began his photographic work in the 1860's. His famous lineage gave Alden an inroad to photograph some of the most important people of the time including the poet Henry Longfellow as well as President Abe Lincoln & his wife Mary Todd Lincoln. He however, derived equal pleasure from photographing everyday townspeople. During his photographic career, at one time or another, he operated studios in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York City, Troy, N.Y., & Saratoga Springs, N. Y Alden used both the classic backdrop and what he called "Rustic Pictures" in his Springfield Ma. studio. It became the vogue to be photographed “outdoors”, outdoors being inside the studio, where in this case the photographer provided a painted backdrop with trees, a section of a log fence, and straw scattered on the floor.

A tintype, also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the photographic emulsion. Tintypes enjoyed their widest use during the 1860's and 1870's. Tintype portraits were at first usually made in a formal photographic studio, but later they were most commonly made by photographers working in booths or the open air at fairs and carnivals, as well as by itinerant sidewalk photographers. Because the lacquered iron support (there is no actual tin used) was resilient and did not need drying, a tintype could be developed and fixed and handed to the customer only a few minutes after the picture had been taken. The tintype photograph saw more uses and captured a wider variety of settings and subjects than any other photographic type. It began losing artistic and commercial ground to higher quality albumen prints on paper in the mid-1860s, yet survived for well over another 40 years, living on mostly as a carnival novelty.