Knickerbocker Photo (Update)

SteveS · #1 09-03-2021, 02:28 PM

prewarsports, while I disagree respectfully with your date on the stereoview, I totally understand your questions about the ages. I am also very familiar with the 1862 photo, which has been used for most of the comparisons here. Initially it frustrated me, as I couldn't reconcile my IDs with some of the men's sizes. However, I then discovered that the 1862 photo is an artist-enhanced composite. It's unclear if any of them were even in the same room together, but the photographer took separate pictures and assembled them using a cut-and-paste method, and then used a marking device to fill in the details that became obscured during that process and the enlargement. This is most evident in Charles De Bost. He looks like The Hulk in the 1862 photo, and makes Doc Adams look like a tiny ant. But in the 1859 picture, he is standing next to Doc and Doc is actually a bit taller. The man looking down, whom I ID as Fraley Niebuhr, was also a bit frustrating. My initial inclination was that he is Harry Wright, who joined the Knicks in 1857 at age 22. He was about 30 years younger than the other men, which would fit pretty well. He also does resemble Harry at that age, and I can't rule it out. But when I do the face-to-face comparisons, he matches up extremely well with Niebuhr (who was younger than the others by about seven years). Finally, regardless of the age of the stereoview, I suspect that the photo was taken earlier and the stereoview was made by taking a picture of it or using its negative. But once again, thank you for your contributions, which I definitely take into account, and I will continue to research it.

Leon · #2 09-03-2021, 02:57 PM

Here is one and I suspect the date is correct. I will try to get a few earlier ones out in the next day or so. I believe I have some from the 1860s....

SteveS · #3 09-03-2021, 03:42 PM

Very cool pic, Leon. Also, see what I was saying about the orange color and rounded corners being from a later date? Here are a few of mine from the 1860s.

Leon · #4 09-03-2021, 03:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveS

Very cool pic, Leon. Also, see what I was saying about the orange color and rounded corners being from a later date? Here are a few of mine from the 1860s.

Yeap... I have some others like this also...

prewarsports · #5 09-03-2021, 03:54 PM

I want to walk away from this debate very badly. Once passion enters an objective assessment, you can no longer have a rational discussion. You are passionate about wanting this to be a Knickerbocker photo badly, which I get, but it is clouding your rational assessment of the history of photography which is pretty easy considering how fast the genre changed between the 1850's-1870's. It really is not that hard to date the "approximate" age of photographs as a result.

I have handled perhaps as much as half a million stereoview cards since I started collecting photography and am not a novice. Online research is one thing, handling these things consistently over years and years (more than 30 years), you start to learn things that hold true over time. I've also handled as many or more 1860's-1880's albumen prints on CDV cards etc. Here are some useful facts for you.

Fact 1: The stereoview "viewer" was not really invented until 1859. Before that date, these things were mostly daguerreotypes and ambrotypes that had to be developed and then another one shot and redeveloped at a slightly different angle and then viewed through cumbersome devices hand made one at a time. These were done as novelties and nobody owned them aside from businesses and the ultra wealthy. Paper stereoview cards may have been "invented" in 1859 as well (nobody knows for sure) but that literally means nothing. CDV and albumen technology was in its absolute infancy by the start of the Civil War. You essentially do not find albumen prints before 1862 and yours is 100% albumen. Your photo was done after the famous 1862 salt print, well after actually.

Fact 2: The oval top cut on your stereoview was not in vogue until the late 1860's and 1870's. Do a quick Google search for Civil War dated stereoviews or other images concretely dated to have been MADE in the early-mid 1860's. All have square cuts. The ones that do not were done after the Civil War as commemorative issues which were popular throughout the 19th century. I have never seen a pre-Civil War era stereoview with the larger oval cut at the top, if you find one, it was almost certainly made in the late 1860's at the earliest using an older image. This was a "style" of photography and it did not become popular until after the Civil War.

Fact 3: Absent Civil War scenes where photographers like Matthew Brady and a few others operated completely out of wagons with all their equipment including darkrooms available to them, outdoor photography was almost impossible in the 1860's and basically did not exist in the 1850's. It was an expensive and cumbersome process until the 1870's. There are almost no known outdoor albumen photographs because the lighting was tricky, the camera weighed a ton, the exposure time was ridiculous and things like clouds and wind could not be controlled and would destroy portrait shots. It was many, many times easier to produce an image in a studio so you find 99.9%+++ of all portraits and groups taken inside, until the technology got better in the 1870's.

I would bet money that if you took the "Knickerbocker" angle away and just approached 100 antique photography experts about the approximate age of your image based on style, dress, outdoor setting, oval top stereoview style etc., you will get all 100 answering that the image is c. 1870-1876. I can not imagine a scenario where a single one would estimate Civil War era and you would be laughed out of the room if you suggested 1850's because it is impossible.

Others can debate the facial accuracy, I am just going off photography style here since you said you "disagree" with my dating which I will stand behind with extensive experience.

Now I think I can walk away and wish you the best of luck on your research project. If you still question the dating, you will be fighting a VERY uphill battle but I wish you well. Take care.

SteveS · #6 09-03-2021, 04:26 PM

Leon, awesome! I would look forward to seeing them if you have the chance.

prewarsports, please don't be frustrated. I would never question your expertise. All I'm saying is that my research has led me to other directions. I am posting a pic showing a stereoview from the 1850s with the same characteristics as mine, and also info about the availability of outdoor stereoviews in the 1850s. But again, the date of the stereoview isn't necessarily the most crucial thing. It could have been taken from an earlier image and made into a stereoview at a later time (which, as you point out, was known to have been done). That is why a photograph expert would need to see it in person rather than just scans.

Finally, I wanted to post something I mentioned above. In both of these known pictures of the Knickerbockers, Charles De Bost is to the left of Doc Adams (from our view). In the 1859 pic (standing), Adams appears to be slightly taller than De Bost. But in the 1862 pic (sitting), De Bost towers over Adams to a ridiculous degree. A close look shows the cutting and pasting that was done. My point is just that I don't think the facial matches of six people can be ignored. If it was just one or two and I was saying, "Well, just ignore the other four," that would be one thing. But all six that close seems to be a stretch to say it's not them.

GaryPassamonte · #7 09-03-2021, 06:26 PM

Albumen stereoviews first showed up in the mid-late 1850s, I believe. Frederick Langenheim of Philadelphia made the first stereoviews on glass circa 1854.
Shortly thereafter, he began making albumen stereoviews. I have a few non-baseball Langenheim 1850s albumen stereoviews with the curved top photograph style. Their date is confirmed by their reverse "American Steroscopic Company Langnheim and LLoyd" identifier. Langenheim and Lloyd were partners in the American Stereoscopic company from circa 1857 until 1859, thus the positive late 1850s dating. Although in the photography business for years, the Anthony brothers didn't start making stereoviews until 1859. This means the "Knickerbockers" stereoview can be as early as 1859 per my Langenhein Lloyd stereoviews of a similar style. I can not speak to the identification of the men in the stereoview, but the stereoview can be circa 1860. Seeing the reverse of the stereoview might also help with determining its age.
I will also add that if the stereoview in question is a larger "imperial" size stereoview, it would almost certainly be post 1870.

SteveS · #8 09-03-2021, 06:35 PM

Thank you so much for that info, Gary! I have no idea whether this is an Anthony photograph, as it's unmarked. And while they didn't open their stereoview business until 1859, it's possible that this could have been done before that for their personal use. Also possible that some other photographer took it. But I appreciate that you were able to confirm that this type of photograph did exist during that period.

Snowman · #9 09-03-2021, 07:59 PM

This is a fascinating discussion. I'll start out by saying I know nothing at all about Civil War era photography or stereoviews. But I do have two comments to add that I think supports both arguments.

1. Male pattern baldness comes in several different forms, but the form in which an individual experiences it is determined by their genetics. One can't switch between types of male pattern baldness, they can only continue to lose hair that is consistent with their type. The man with the eyebags (I believe you identified him as Duncan Curry?) appears to have two different types of male pattern baldness in the two photos. Perhaps the younger photo is a combover of sorts? Perhaps they're not the same person? I don't know.

2. Probability theory informs us that the probability of the group photo being the Knickerbockers based on the individual probabilities associated with facial recognition algorithms of each individual is proportional to the product sum of those probabilities. In other words, if the probability of each person being a "match" is 90%, then the probability of the group being the Knickerbockers is equivalent to the 1 - (0.1^6) = 0.999999 or 99.9999% chance that this is the Knickerbockers. However, this is based on the assumption that a "90% match" actually means the individuals in two photos are 90% likely to be the same person. I don't know if this assumption holds true, and wouldn't be surprised at all if it didn't. I don't know enough about facial recognition software to make that claim. But I do know enough about probability theory to know that if all 6 are high matches then the group as a whole is a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher likelihood of being a match as well.

Snowman · #10 09-10-2021, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by prewarsports

I have been doing photography for a very long time and could write paragraphs about stereoview photography and it's evolution but suffice it to say you have a c. 1870 stereoview on your hands with it actually in my opinion most likely dating to about 1872-75...

Quote:

Originally Posted by prewarsports

Your photo is 100% more recent than the 1862 known Knickerbocker photograph. The clothing and facial hair combined with photography method and presentation place this to c. 1870-1875...

Quote:

Originally Posted by prewarsports

I want to walk away from this debate very badly. Once passion enters an objective assessment, you can no longer have a rational discussion. You are passionate about wanting this to be a Knickerbocker photo badly, which I get, but it is clouding your rational assessment of the history of photography which is pretty easy considering how fast the genre changed between the 1850's-1870's. It really is not that hard to date the "approximate" age of photographs as a result.

I have handled perhaps as much as half a million stereoview cards since I started collecting photography and am not a novice. Online research is one thing, handling these things consistently over years and years (more than 30 years), you start to learn things that hold true over time. I've also handled as many or more 1860's-1880's albumen prints on CDV cards etc. Here are some useful facts for you.

Fact 1: The stereoview "viewer" was not really invented until 1859. Before that date, these things were mostly daguerreotypes and ambrotypes that had to be developed and then another one shot and redeveloped at a slightly different angle and then viewed through cumbersome devices hand made one at a time. These were done as novelties and nobody owned them aside from businesses and the ultra wealthy. Paper stereoview cards may have been "invented" in 1859 as well (nobody knows for sure) but that literally means nothing. CDV and albumen technology was in its absolute infancy by the start of the Civil War. You essentially do not find albumen prints before 1862 and yours is 100% albumen. Your photo was done after the famous 1862 salt print, well after actually.

Fact 2: The oval top cut on your stereoview was not in vogue until the late 1860's and 1870's. Do a quick Google search for Civil War dated stereoviews or other images concretely dated to have been MADE in the early-mid 1860's. All have square cuts. The ones that do not were done after the Civil War as commemorative issues which were popular throughout the 19th century. I have never seen a pre-Civil War era stereoview with the larger oval cut at the top, if you find one, it was almost certainly made in the late 1860's at the earliest using an older image. This was a "style" of photography and it did not become popular until after the Civil War.

Fact 3: Absent Civil War scenes where photographers like Matthew Brady and a few others operated completely out of wagons with all their equipment including darkrooms available to them, outdoor photography was almost impossible in the 1860's and basically did not exist in the 1850's. It was an expensive and cumbersome process until the 1870's. There are almost no known outdoor albumen photographs because the lighting was tricky, the camera weighed a ton, the exposure time was ridiculous and things like clouds and wind could not be controlled and would destroy portrait shots. It was many, many times easier to produce an image in a studio so you find 99.9%+++ of all portraits and groups taken inside, until the technology got better in the 1870's.

I would bet money that if you took the "Knickerbocker" angle away and just approached 100 antique photography experts about the approximate age of your image based on style, dress, outdoor setting, oval top stereoview style etc., you will get all 100 answering that the image is c. 1870-1876. I can not imagine a scenario where a single one would estimate Civil War era and you would be laughed out of the room if you suggested 1850's because it is impossible.

Others can debate the facial accuracy, I am just going off photography style here since you said you "disagree" with my dating which I will stand behind with extensive experience.

Now I think I can walk away and wish you the best of luck on your research project. If you still question the dating, you will be fighting a VERY uphill battle but I wish you well. Take care.

Experts can be wrong sometimes, but never THIS wrong. It would be one thing if prewarsports had said something along the lines of, "I believe this is most likely from the 1870s because of x, y, and z. Earlier dates are possible, though very unlikely." But it's something else entirely to go off on a multi post rant like this, babbling on about how much of an expert you are, having handled over a million similar prints by hand, and saying that there is no possibility whatsoever of it dating to the 1850s and that 100 out of 100 experts would unanimously agree that this would date to the 1870s.

Oops.

Prewarsports, any comment on the above agreement from from 4 actual experts all dating this to the 1850s? When I'm this wrong, I follow it up with an apology and accept it as a learning opportunity and adjust my understanding accordingly going forward.

carlsonjok · #11 09-10-2021, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snowman

Prewarsports, any comment on the above agreement from from 4 actual experts all dating this to the 1850s? When I'm this wrong, I follow it up with an apology and accept it as a learning opportunity and adjust my understanding accordingly going forward.

I don't have a dog in this hunt, and I probably should just keep my mouth shut, but I have to ask: what experts?

The American Museum of Photography is an online only museum that appears to have not been redesigned since it was hosted on Geocities, AmericanPhotographs.com is a flickr site that you can't actually view, and the Stereoscopy Blog is run by Rebecca. They may very well be experts, but we don't actually know who they are or what their CV looks like. Furthermore, without actually seeing the question posed and the answered received, we have no idea what they said other than what Steve has told us they said.

I spent way too much of my misspent youth mucking about in the evolution-creation wars. This whole discussion triggers flashbacks for me. Motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, anonymous expert opinions, sciency sounding explanations. It's all here. Including question begging when you are asking someone to respond to expert opinions when it hasn't been established the people are actually experts.

Snowman · #12 09-10-2021, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

I don't have a dog in this hunt, and I probably should just keep my mouth shut, but I have to ask: what experts?

The American Museum of Photography is an online only museum that appears to have not been redesigned since it was hosted on Geocities, AmericanPhotographs.com is a flickr site that you can't actually view, and the Stereoscopy Blog is run by Rebecca. They may very well be experts, but we don't actually know who they are or what their CV looks like. Furthermore, without actually seeing the question posed and the answered received, we have no idea what they said other than what Steve has told us they said.

I spent way too much of my misspent youth mucking about in the evolution-creation wars. This whole discussion triggers flashbacks for me. Motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, anonymous expert opinions, sciency sounding explanations. It's all here. Including question begging when you are asking someone to respond to expert opinions when it hasn't been established the people are actually experts.

Fair enough. I made an assumption, and could be wrong. Although I do believe the museum curator that he was referred to probably knows what they're talking about.

It's funny to me that you mentioned the creation vs evolution debates. I was thinking the exact same thing earlier when reading through this thread.

SteveS · #13 09-10-2021, 01:59 PM

GaryPassamonte, thank you for posting that. It's a very cool pic!

carlsonjok, I googled "stereoview expert" and variations of that. Clearly I was able to access the websites to get the contact information and send messages which they received and responded. I posted who they are so that anyone can find out for themselves their level of knowledge and expertise when it comes to stereoviews. Without insulting anybody here, I trust their experience in the field more than some of the people here whose expertise is based on the fact that they run auctions. I sent out a bunch of e-mails, and I'll see how any other responses come back. I certainly would post contrarian opinions, but so far, all have been consistent. I uploaded the front and back of the stereoview here so anybody seeing it can render an opinion. God/Science bless you (I don't know on which side of the argument you were.

smokelessjoe, here are the results I promised. I ran the people in the back against the people in front of them. The results were 42%, 52%, and 59%, with all showing "from different persons."

SteveS · #14 09-10-2021, 02:05 PM

Snowman, yes, I figured anyone reading through this thread can see the name of the museum I posted earlier. There aren't a plethora of people in this world who specialize in stereoview expertise, but I found the ones I could. If anyone here who doubts them would like to recommend someone I haven't already contacted and hasn't already seen it on this board, please provide me the contact information and I will be more than happy to send the images to them for an opinion.

bnorth · #15 09-10-2021, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveS

GaryPassamonte, thank you for posting that. It's a very cool pic!

carlsonjok, I googled "stereoview expert" and variations of that. Clearly I was able to access the websites to get the contact information and send messages which they received and responded. I posted who they are so that anyone can find out for themselves their level of knowledge and expertise when it comes to stereoviews. Without insulting anybody here, I trust their experience in the field more than some of the people here whose expertise is based on the fact that they run auctions. I sent out a bunch of e-mails, and I'll see how any other responses come back. I certainly would post contrarian opinions, but so far, all have been consistent. I uploaded the front and back of the stereoview here so anybody seeing it can render an opinion. God/Science bless you (I don't know on which side of the argument you were.

smokelessjoe, here are the results I promised. I ran the people in the back against the people in front of them. The results were 42%, 52%, and 59%, with all showing "from different persons."

Awesome, now since they are obviously different people how do those percentages compare to 2 random people? Like if you ran a pic of you and me.

OldOriole · #16 09-10-2021, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveS

carlsonjok, I googled "stereoview expert" and variations of that. Clearly I was able to access the websites to get the contact information and send messages which they received and responded. I posted who they are so that anyone can find out for themselves their level of knowledge and expertise when it comes to stereoviews. Without insulting anybody here, I trust their experience in the field more than some of the people here whose expertise is based on the fact that they run auctions. I sent out a bunch of e-mails, and I'll see how any other responses come back. I certainly would post contrarian opinions, but so far, all have been consistent. I uploaded the front and back of the stereoview here so anybody seeing it can render an opinion."

Steve, I probably would have tried googling experts too, much the same way you did. I'm just not sure - and this may be part of Jeff's point - that I would say "All are worldwide-recognized photo experts, specifically stereoviews" (as you did in post 245). Not from one google search, anyway.

slightlyrounded · #17 09-10-2021, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveS

GaryPassamonte, thank you for posting that. It's a very cool pic!

carlsonjok, I googled "stereoview expert" and variations of that. Clearly I was able to access the websites to get the contact information and send messages which they received and responded. I posted who they are so that anyone can find out for themselves their level of knowledge and expertise when it comes to stereoviews. Without insulting anybody here, I trust their experience in the field more than some of the people here whose expertise is based on the fact that they run auctions. I sent out a bunch of e-mails, and I'll see how any other responses come back. I certainly would post contrarian opinions, but so far, all have been consistent. I uploaded the front and back of the stereoview here so anybody seeing it can render an opinion. God/Science bless you (I don't know on which side of the argument you were.

smokelessjoe, here are the results I promised. I ran the people in the back against the people in front of them. The results were 42%, 52%, and 59%, with all showing "from different persons."

To be fair, now that we're using unmanipulated (ie no longer reverse images) comparisons, the original "matches" you were claiming (see post #56) have now fallen apart as well.

smokelessjoe · #18 09-10-2021, 02:33 PM

Steve,

Lets avoid summarizing and try to be as detailed as possible. This way we can all learn from the experts and have a better understanding of the photo in question.

1. What specifically about the clothing led all three experts to the mid 1850s date?

2. What specifically about the mounting design led all three experts to the mid 1850s date?

3. Can the experts explain how an overlap in the photo is indicative of dates in mid 1850s

Also, I was not asking that you compare the guys who are front and back of each other but rather the ones you feel most resemble each other - as you did with the Knicker photo.

For example, can you run a report on these two guys.

Thanks for running those reports

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