1151
Williams, Linda, ”Corporealized Observers: Visual Pornographies
and the ‘Carnal Density of Vision.”’ In Fugitive Images: From
Photography to Video, edited by Patrice Petro, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1995, 3–41.
PORTER, WILLIAM SOUTHGATE
(1822–1889)
American photographer
At the Great Exhibition of 1851 at London’s Crystal
Palace, a panorama of the Cincinnati waterfront was
exhibited. Comprising eight separate whole plate da-
guerreotypes, the panorama measured over fi ve and
a half feet in length, and was of a quality so high that
historians have been able to identify every vessel moored
along the banks. The panorama was photographed across
the river from the rooftop of a building in Newport, Ken-
tucky, by Charles H Fontayne and William Southgate
Porter in September 1848.
Porter had fi rst worked with Fontayne in his Bal-
timore studio in 1844, and after Fontayne moved to
Cincinnati in 1846, appears to have operated the studio
alone until, in the spring of 1847, he opened another stu-
dio—Porter’s City Daguerreian Gallery—in Pittsburgh.
By late 1847 he had employed S. Hoge as an assistant,
but by the spring of 1848, he had sold the Baltimore stu-
dio to Hoge and worked in Pittsburgh, where on May 22
he produced another remarkable panorama— compris-
ing seven whole plate daguerreotypes—of Fair Mount
Waterworks. This time the images were vertical and
presented in a mount measuring 367mm x 998mm.
He rejoined Fontayne in Cincinnati later that year,
and their partnership lasted until 1852, when Fontayne
once again left the business. After a succession of other
partners, he operated alone after 1863 from several
addresses.
John Hannavy
PORTUGAL
The fi rst news of the discovery of the technique of fi x-
ing images obtained with a camera obscura arrived in
Portugal in 1839 through periodicals imported from
France and the United Kingdom. In the same year Por-
tuguese periodicals published notices presenting the
calotype (Revista Literária, Porto, March 1839) and
the daguerreotype (O Panorama, Lisbon, May 1839)
processes The earliest recorded photograph taken in
Portugal dates from 1841, a daguerreotype portrait
taken by the English painter, William Barclay. In the
early years, all equipment was imported, and experi-
ments with the daguerreotype process were conducted in
several institutions from ca.1842, including the physics
department of the University of Coimbra.
During the 1840s and 1850s some European da-
guerreotipists, mainly French, travelled through Spain
and Portugal, to make a business in portrait photogra-
phy. Amongst the fi rst in itinerant photography of the
two fi rst decades were Blackwood (Porto, 1843–44),
the French Giles (Lisbon, 1843–44), Madame Fritz
(Lisbon, ca.1843–45), E. Thiesson (Lisbon, 1844–45),
who did a lot of commercial portrait photography in
Lisbon and took some photographs of Africans with an
anthropological approach, Adolpho and Anatole (Lisbon
and Porto, 1845), Chambard & Poirier (1846), Dubois
& C.ª (Lisbon; Porto, 1849; Coimbra, 1855, 1856),
Juliette de Humnichi (1851), P. K. Corentin (Porto,
1851, 1853, 1856; Lisbon, 1851–52; Coimbra, 1852;
Minho province, 1853), who taught photography and
wrote the Resumo historico da photographia desde a
sua origem até hoje (1852), the fi rst photographic book
published in Portugal. Some found here conditions
for a more permanent business like the French Pedro
Cochat (1849–57), J. Rodrigues Marten (ca.1849–53)
or Martin (1857–63), Louis Monnet (Porto, 1856–62;
Braga 1856–57, 1861; Coimbra, 1859), probably the
fi rst to do stereoscopic work and instantaneous pho-
tography in these towns, Alfred Fillon, established
in Porto (1857–59), and then in Lisbon (1859–ca.69,
ca.71–81). Wenceslau Cifka was probably the fi rst
to open a permanent photographic studio in Lisbon
(1848–ca.80). To improve their incomes, some of
these early foreign photographers made digressions to
take portraits in the province where there weren’t any
established photographers. Many gave photographic
lessons and sold photographic apparatuses, performing
a major role in the formation and establishment of the
fi rst Portuguese photographers. These also established
their businesses in the main cities: Francisco Augusto
Metrass (Lisbon, 1847–ca.1848), Lucas de Almeida
Marrão (Lisbon, 1851–97), Miguel Novaes (Porto,
1854–68), also painters, Francisco Augusto Gomes
(Lisbon, 1852–71), Vicente Gomes da Silva (Funchal,
Madeira island, ca.1848–1906), and António da Con-
ceição Matos (Coimbra, 1856–69), also a painter. While
most of these photographers offered only daguerreo-
types, some also offered prints from paper and glass
negatives—albumen on glass and wet collodion—and
ambrotype positives In this early period there were al-
ready a few amateurs like the Count of Farrobo (1849),
the painter João Baptista Ribeiro (1852–54) and Carlos
Alexandre Munró (1857–66). Calotype practicionners
were rare in Portugal. We should mention the British
amateurs Frederick William Flower (ca.1853–58), and
Joseph James Forrester (ca.1854–59), both in Porto.
Forrester was also the author and editor of the earlier
known Portuguese publication illustrated with a tipped-
in photographic print (1855).
In the 1860s, with the popularity of the carte de visite
format, a reduction in costs, and the popularity of the