1335
ried Maria Kilmer, Squier’s own mother’s sister after
Katherine’s death when Ephraim was twelve.
As a young man he wrote poetry and edited several
poetry journals. His literary interests switched from
poetry to social issues when he became involved with a
publication, The New York State Mechanic, which sup-
ported “...the interests, rights, and social advancement
of the laboring classes of America,” according to his
biographer, Terry Barnhart. Squier went on to obtain
an M.A. and a degree in Civil Engineering.
Squier’s interest in archaeology began in 1845 with
his writings about the Indian mounds in Chillicothe,
Ohio, and culminated in one of his most important
works Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the
Land of the Incas, published in 1877. This extensive
record includes 295 engravings based on drawings and
photographs—using the wet-plate process—made under
Squier’s supervision by the Lima based photographer
Augustus Le Plongeon, who also probably taught Squier
basic photography, a photographer named only as “P,”
and even Squier himself. His use of photography served
him well because the renderings of architectural plans
and monuments remain accurate even today.
Some of Squier’s other signifi cant works include
Nicaragua: Its People, Scenery, Monuments, and the
proposed Inter-Oceanic Canal, published in 1852, and
Observations on the Uses of the Mounds of the West,
With an Attempt at their Classifi cation, published in
1847.
Ephraim George Squier died April 17, 1888 in Brook-
lyn, New York. The Library of Congress, the New York
Historical Society, the Indiana Histroical Society, and
the Latin American Library of Tulane University, are
some of the institutions that hold Squire materials and
photographs.
Michele M. Penhall
STAHL, THÉOPHILE AUGUSTE
(1828–1877)
Born in Bergamo, Italy, on May 23, 1828, Théophile
Auguste (Augusto) Stahl came from an Alsatian fam-
ily. His father was a Lutheran pastor. Stahl arrived in
Pernambuco, Brazil in 1853, and in 1862 moved to Rio,
where he and Germano Wahnschaffe became Photog-
raphers of the Imperial House. A renowned landscape
photographer who sold multiple copies of his prints, he
portrayed remote parts of Pernambuco, documented the
Recife and São Francisco Railway works and recorded
Emperor Pedro II’s visit to Recife in 1859. The resulting
album, “Memorandum Pittoresco de Pernambuco,” is
considered a pioneering example of photojournalism.
Stahl also produced anthropological and anthropometric
pictures of “Brazilian types” for the Agassiz expedition
(1865–1866), published in Journey in Brazil, by Louis
and Elizabeth Agassiz (1868). He participated in the
First and Second National Exhibitions in Rio (1861
and 1866), the Great London Exposition (1862) and the
Exposition Universelle, Paris (1867). He died in Alsace
on October 30, 1877.
Collections: Brazilian Historical and Geographic
Institute (IHGB), National Library (Brazil); Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts (USA). Also published in Augusto
Stahl. Obra completa em Pernambuco e Rio de
Janeiro, by Bia Corrêa do Lago (2001), and O negro
na fotografi a brasileira do século XIX, by George
Ermakoff (2004).
Sabrina Gledhill
See also: Exposition Universelle, Paris; and
Expedition and Survey Photography.STANHOPE
A Stanhope, sometimes called a peep, is a micropho-
tographic image on glass attached to its own small
magnifying lens. The construction allows a person to
see the image clearly. Stanhopes were produced from
the 1860s to the 1970s, primarily in France. They can
be found in a variety of decorative, souvenir, and utili-
tarian objects that were manufactured and distributed
around the world.
Microphotography is nearly as old as photography. In
1839 John Benjamin Dancer produced some of the fi rst
microphotographs on slides. After collodion came into
use in the 1850s, microscope slides became more popu-
lar, but people needed an easier way to see the images.
Sir David Brewster used the more portable Coddington
lens, invented about 1820, but suggested microphoto-
graphs could somehow be mounted into jewelry. René
Prudent Patrice Dagron was issued a French patent in
1859 involving the use of microfi lms and lenses to be
placed in novelty items. He produced Stanhopes as we
know them today, referring to them as microscopic
jewels. He also used the term “Stanhope.”
Stanhope is named for Charles, Third Earl of Stan-
hope (1753–1816), an inventor who lived prior to the era
of photography. He did not invent the Stanhope, but he
had developed a hand-held lens on which the Stanhope
is based. Charles Stanhope’s lens had two rounded ends,
but Dagron made one end fl at so that he could attach the
image directly to it. In this way he was able to place the
units into holes in novelties so that people could carry
them in a fashionable manner.
The images were produced by using a camera with
microscope lenses. Although the fi rst cameras had one
lens, the later ones had as many as twenty-fi ve. Through
these lenses photographic images were made onto a mi-
croscope slide by using the collodion on glass process.