#nineteenth-century-photography

#nineteenth-century-photography

I admired their simplicity and generosity and thought of the pictures I made as agreements. I wanted to pay attention to the body and personality that had agreed out of love to reveal itself.

In 2007, John Maloof bought the contents of an unclaimed Chicago storage locker, discovering over 100,000 negatives and slides shot by Vivian Maier, leading to her posthumous fame.

In my head, I'm still that guy from the photo. Still strong, still capable, still got it. Then I catch my reflection in a store window and think, who's that old guy? The disconnect is wild. I'll go to lift something heavy and my brain says 'no problem,' but my shoulder reminds me about those thirty years of overhead work.

The nineteenth-century Italian aristocrat Virginia Oldoini, Countess de Castiglione, has been cast in many lights: narcissist, courtesan, spy, exhibitionist. In the photo studio of Mayer & Pierson, she played all these parts and one more-the role of self-portraitist. For decades, Oldoini helped conceptualize and starred in more than four hundred portraits so experimental and expressive that they have drawn comparisons to works by Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman.

I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera. Parks recognized photography's potential as a tool for social change and advocacy, viewing the medium not merely as documentation but as an active means of confronting systemic injustices and giving visibility to marginalized communities.

I recently gained a new obsession, and I'm ready to share it with the world: finding and analyzing rare vintage images. A picture speaks a thousand words, and these photographs tell us more about history than a textbook chapter ever could. So even if you think history is boring, I'm well-equipped to change your mind, and give you some delicious food for your brain to chew on today.