Some Research

To more fully understand how my mannequin tintypes do (or do not) relate to actual 19th century portraits, I've been doing a lot of research on antique photographs. The above images come from two books: Geoffrey Batchen's wonderful book Forget Me Not, and a book by collector Stanley Burns titled, Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype & The Decorative Frame. The latter book was a bit of a revelation to me. I was unaware of the common practice to hand-color tintypes in the 1800s. It's interesting how the application of paint complicates the reading of the photograph by obliterating its surface. I also happen to LOVE some of the frames the portraits were placed in. They're so large and bold! The gilding and elaborate matting in some of these is just ridiculous.

Another thing I wish to explore is the practice of including hair of the sitter inside the frame's glass. Placing hair, dried flowers, and even butterflies in the glass was an attempt by the owner to make the person in the portrait more "real," more immortal. It also turns the final portrait into a fetish object. I can't help but wonder what would happen if I cut off some of the wig hair from the mannequins and placed it with the portrait. Think the antique store owners would go for me giving their dummies a little haircut?

Some quotes from Batchen's book that I must ruminate on:

• "In early photos, it seems if one wanted to look lifelike in the eventual image, one had to pose as if dead. Not surprisingly, the resulting portraits have all the animation of a wax effigy."
• "One of the interesting things about this genre of photo-portraiture is how easily its images depart from the realism we associate with the photograph. The portraits of children, in particular, often look strangely surreal."
• "Memory is always in a state of ruin; to remember something is already to have ruined it, to have displaced it from its moment of origin. Memory is caught in a conundrum - the passing of time that makes memory possible and necessary is also what makes memory fade and die.
• "The act of remembering someone is surely also about the positioning of oneself, about the affirmation of one's own place in time and space, about establishing oneself within a social and historical network of relationships. No wonder we surround ourselves with memory objects. One's sense of self, of identity, is buttressed by such objects."