The Daguerrotype was the first photo format– invented in 1839 by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre.

Early practitioners of the new art in America like Southworth, Hawes, Morse, and Brady certainly took many images of the celebrated of the day, but images of performers in this format are extremely rare, and nearly nonexistent.

There are very well-known and famous Daguerrotype portraits of both Tom Thumb and Barnum, but very few images of other performers in this era of the 1840s-1860s that have come to light.


— Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton), ca. 1848, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg and The Howard Gilman Foundation Gifts, 2008

That said, the showhistory collection contains what may be the earliest portrait of a Fat Woman performer on a Daguerrotype, and an as yet unidentified little person performer in the same format. You will also find a most rare and significant Daguerreotype of a man with a facial anomaly, and while it is unlikely that he was a performer, his portrait is important as it documents an aspect of portrait photography in the 1850s that is little seen and perhaps unique.