Looking at the Backs of Things

Curators and catalogers spend quite a bit of time looking at the backs and bottoms of things, trying to glean information about pictures and objects.  Labels on the back of the frame of an oil painting may tell where and when it was exhibited or purchased.  Marks on prints and drawings may prove clues to previous owners.  Photographer’s names often appear on the backs of nineteenth-century photographs rather than on the fronts.  If the photographer moved frequently, then the address in the imprint can help determine the date of the photograph as well.  Other kinds of museum objects such as ceramics and silverware often bear their makers’ marks as well.  As a graphics curator, I’m not only fascinated by the artifacts that I work with, I’m fascinated by the people who made them.  The imprint of the Hartford photographer Daniel S. Camp appears on the backs of a lot of photographs of local landscapes and people taken in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

One of Hartford’s Heroes

In this photograph taken in the early 1870s, the men of Hartford’s Blake Fire Engine Company No. 7 pose with their steam engine. Although the photograph shows only the engine itself, giving the impression that it was self-propelled, it would have been drawn by fire horses. We don’t know much about the men in the photograph, but we do know quite a lot about the man who took their picture, thanks to research by Emma Curry-Stodder, a student at Smith College, who interned in the CHS Graphics Collection in January. To find out more about the short, tragic life of Daniel S. Camp, Civil War veteran, professional photographer, and firefighter, read the article One of Hartford’s Heroes at yourpublicmedia.org.