1139
Biography
Born in Welshpool, Wales, July 13, 1809, he immigrated
to America age twelve and studied civil engineering.
He advocated construction of U.S. transcontinental
railroad in 1838. Plumbe turned to photography in 1840
to fi nance railroad advocacy and established twenty-six
galleries in major U.S. cities between 1840 and1846. He
manufactured and imported daguerreotype supplies in
Boston and New York City. Plumbe was awarded med-
als at institute competitions in Boston, Philadelphia,
and New York. He purchased patent rights for color
daguerreotypes in 1842. Plumbe promoted brand name
recognition and advertised extensively. He secialized
in celebrity portraits in Washington, D.C., and New
York galleries and established the National Publishing
Company in Philadelphia in 1846.
Inventor of the plumbeotype process (lithographs
from daguerreotypes), he took the earliest photographs
of the U.S. Capitol and the White House in 1846. He
suspended his photographic business, 1847–1849, and
moved to California (1849–1853) where he continued
to advocate for the transcontinental railroad. Plumbe
committed suicide at Dubuque, Iowa, May 28, 1857. A
monument was erected to Plumbe at the Linwood Cem-
etery in Dubuque in May of 1976. The fi rst retrospective
exhibition of his work was held at the Historical Society
of Washington, D.C., 1997.
See also: Daguerreotype; and Eastman, George.
Further Reading
Fern, Alan, and Milton Kaplan, “John Plumbe, Jr. and the First
Architectural Photographs of the Nation’s Capitol,” Quarterly
Journal of the Library of Congress, January 1974.
King, John, “John Plumbe, Originator of the Pacifi c Railroad,”
Annals of Iowa, 3d ser. 6, no. 4, January 1904.
Krainik, Clifford, “John Plumbe: America’s First Nationally
Known Photographer by Robert Taft with notes by Cliff
Krainik,” The Daguerreian Annual, The Daguerreian Soci-
ety, 1994.
——, “A ‘Dark Horse’ in Sunlight and Shadow: Daguerreotypes
of President James K. Polk,” White House History, White
House Historical Association, vol. 2, no. 1, 1997
——, “National Vision, Local Enterprise: John Plumbe, Jr., and
The Advent of Photography In Washington, D.C.,” Washington
History, The Historical Society of Washington, D.C., vol. 9,
no. 2, 1997.
Miller, Jim, “Dubuque Settler Plumbe ‘Screams To Be Recog-
nized’,” Dubuque Telegraph Herald, 29 September 1974.
Newhall, Beaumont, The Daguerreotype in America, New York:
Dover Publications, 1976.
Rinhart, Floyd and Marion, The American Daguerreotype, Ath-
ens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1981.
Tolman, Ruel Pardee, “Plumbeotype,” Antiques, July 1925.
PLÜSCHOW, PETER WEIERMAIR
WILHELM (1852–1930)
Italian photographer
Born Mecklenburg, Germany 1852. By the 1870s Wil-
helm Plüschow had a photographic studio in Naples
trading in studio portraits and occasional journalism.
First cousin to Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden whom he
assisted in turning his interest in photography into a
business in Taormina, Sicily in 1888. By now both were
photographing the male nude. Infl uenced by Gloeden’s
style, by the time Plüschow moved to Rome as ‘Gug-
lielmo Plüschow,’ he was producing male and female
nudes which gained a reputation throughout Europe and
America for overt homoerotica. Much praised by the
author John Addington Symonds who lived in Rome,
Plüschow, along with his Sicilian assistant, Vicenzo
Galdi (1856–1931), often avoided the more romantic
trappings of Gloeden’s classical props, in favour of
realism, with an emphasis on the sexual promise of
male peasant youth. Forerunners of Pier Paolo Pasolini
(1922–1975) and his love of ragazzi, Plüschow and
Galdi’s overt depictions of potent male sexuality, many
said pornography, landed both of them in trouble and
Plüschow was forced to return to Berlin and obscurity
in 1910. Even now, while Gloeden can still be read as
the poetic homeric dream. Plüschow, with his once only
photographed models in highly suggestive poses, still
challenges and he rarely enters the directories. However
he can be regarded as a pioneer of contemporary gay
culture, perhaps in time more relevant than Gloeden.
Alistair CrawfordPOITEVIN, ALPHONSE LOUIS
(1819–1882)
French chemist and printmaker
Poitevin was born in 1819 in France. He contributed
to several fi elds of photography. He took up the study
of photography while still a student in the Ecole Cen-
trale, almost immediately after Daguerre’s process was
published in 1839. He recognized the one great defect
of this method is that it gives but a single photograph.
He tried to solve that problem by trying to make molds
by electrically depositing copper upon the silver plate
carrying the daguerrean image. During this work he
discovered a method of photo-chemical engraving upon
plates coated with silver or gold. This discovery turned
out, however, to be of no practical importance. In 1847
when working at the Eastern Salt Works he continued
his work on trying to make copies of daguerreotypes on
silvered copper. The details of these methods were pub-
lished in two papers in Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires