Sixth Plate

UNSETTLED BROTHERS. Check out the clever arrangement the unidentified daguerreotypist used to place these boys high enough so he wasn’t required to get on his hands and knees to operate the camera. Underneath the oldest lad he used a step stool on top of a regular chair. I think the younger child was seated on a stack of books put on a similar piece of furniture. However, if you look closely at the right side of the sixth plate with a new seal, there appears to be another chair back. Was it angled to keep that wary youth from escaping sideways? Or was a parent seated just out of our view? And what’s with the lean from the more mature sibling? Making dags of kids for a man not accustom to the task must have been a Herculean effort. He did his job well. Both subjects were rendered as they were on his silver palette that has fine patina, teeny brown dots scattered about and some funky blue haze.