Let the record show, I was first to bid on this Photo

[Archive]

Posted By: ramram

From what I have seen of civil war albumen images, I believe the Unions of Morrisania image was a photo of a touched up photo. I have seen several civil war albumens where the photographer would take a photo and then give it to an artist. The artist would then paint over the photo. Sometimes they would leave the face alone, or maybe just add some color to the cheeks, or sometimes they would paint the face as well. If the artist was good, it would become a beautiful color photo. Subsequent albumen photos would then sometimes be taken of this color image. Obviously, the resultant photo would then be just black and white, but it this photo would then look somewhat lost between a real photo and a painting/engraving. Not sure why they would do this as opposed to using the original but I have a theory. For those familiar with the 1888 Joseph Hall team photo of Boston, you can see a similarity with the Morrisania image. In this case (the Boston image) it is because the image is actually a photo of the Brooklyn team. If you look, the bodies are those of the Brooklyn players and the heads of the Boston players have been added (if I get some time I'll add them to this thread). An artist then painted over the Brooklyn uniforms and put "Boston" on the jersey fronts. This likely is one of two reasons for how the Morrisania image came to be. 1) The bodies may have been from another team and their headshots were added. Some artistic work then was added. Again, I'm not quite sure why an original image just wasn't taken but the team was probably not available so they used old headshots from other photos. Or 2) As Barry mentioned, it may have been for a publication. The Morrisania image is just slightly different from that which is used in the Harper's Weekly. An artist may have added his touch to the original image and then a photo was taken of his work.

Rob M.