Working Stiffs: Occupational Portraits in the Age of Tintypes

by Michael L. Carlebach

The tintype, patented in 1856, was a cheap, fast, easy-to-make, practically indestructible type of photograph that became enormously popular among the working class in the late nineteenth century. For common laborers and their families, the opportunity to join the ranks of those who owned pictures of family and friends--the upper classes--was momentous. This collection exhibits more than eighty examples of a specific kind of tintype: occupational portraits, photographs of working people with the tools of their trade. Michael L. Carlebach examines the historical significance of these tintypes and finds that they reveal a great deal about late nineteenth-century values. The subjects of these images are plumbers proudly holding their wrenches and pipe cutters, carpenters with their saws and lathing hatchets, textile workers with their spindles and yarn, icemen with their tongs. These people lived and worked at a time when a depersonalized factory system run by production and efficiency experts was beginning to dominate American industry and culture. Many of the men and women in these tintypes were part of a disappearing class of self-employed artisans and journeymen; their portraits proudly stress their individuality and the essential nobility of their work. The most common reaction of historians to tintypes has been undisguised contempt or, at best, indifference. The photographs were generally seen as hopelessly unartistic and common. Yet Carlebach celebrates these anonymous portraits and finds that they say as much about today's working Americans--who are much more likely to document their toys and leisure activities than their professions--as they do about the working men and women who proudly sat for them in a much different age.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published September 20, 2002

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among the most poignant relics left to us by preceding generations are the old photographs, snapshots, daguerreotypes, and tintypes bearing their all too often forgotten faces. They’ve become a common antique store item, museum exhibit, and flotsam of numerous family albums or boxes of heirlooms. I carry one of these unknowns acquired in an antique store as a part of my American Civil War reenactment kit as a portrait of my “wife.” A tintype, also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a sheet of iron metal that is blackened by painting, lacquering or enameling and is used as a support for a collodion photographic emulsion.
The anonymous nature of these images limits our ability to interact with them, but Michael Carlebach and others show us in this small book how we can yet learn something about these individuals otherwise lost to history. “Working Stiffs” presents his analysis of sixty-six 19th Century working men and women as they presented themselves for commemoration by the tintype photographer.
A faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami, Professor Carlebach offers 66 plates and 17 figures, each one an image from an original tintypes or daguerreotype. In 50 pages of text accompanying the figures he places the technology of the tintype in its historical and cultural context and then what these images have to tell us about the lives their subjects lived. But his special focus here is on the images that capture and preserve a glimpse of the working lives of the working men and women of the mid-19th Century. This represents a great resource for anyone interested in the social and economic life of early-mid 19th Century America – including especially my friends among reenactors and living historians.
Professor Carlebach’s work in this volume is not unique but it is one of the most accessible executions and presentations of such research and study. He also presents a three page select bibliography and includes footnotes at the bottom of the pages for a sound scholarly and informative presentation.
http://www.city-gallery.com/
City Gallery is a community for persons interested in vernacular images, photographs of the life, work, culture and circumstances of ordinary people. Nearly all photographic images are vernacular images. Thanks to generations of gallery photographers and the introduction of the Kodak camera you very likely have vernacular images in your home, your family album or photographs at the local library, history or genealogy society. City Gallery is devoted to encouraging and enabling the ordinary citizen to participate in the preservation and interpretation of vernacular images.
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/photo...
http://www.tintypes.com/tintypes.html
http://www.phototree.com/id_tin.htm
Michael L. Carlebach, Professor , Department of Art and Art History, University of Miami, Florida
http://michaelcarlebach.com/

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing mindblowing as far as research or history goes, but it’s a tightly contained book, great collection of curated photos, and has a clever title. What more could you ask for?

[Frederic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I want in a photography book. Great collection of images, from a specific genre (in this case occupationals), well reproduced, and complemented with excellent historical and analytical text. I could quibble and suggest that the format might be larger, but most of the images here are reproduced at original size so it's actually rather appropriate. This is one that I learned from, and that I enjoy going back through. Highly recommended.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and cool information with neat antique photos.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great views of regular folks on tin-type. Captures the times and lets you see what it was like in the tin-type period.