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William Bell of Philadelphia’s life and career differ-
entiate him decisively from Dr. William Abraham Bell,
with whom he is often confused and confl ated, even
in major references, because of the similarity of their
names, because they were contemporaries, and because
they both photographed in the American West.
William Bell was born in Liverpool, England, and
brought to the United States as a young child by his
immigrant parents. Orphaned in a cholera epidemic,
he was adopted and raised by a Quaker family living
outside Philadelphia. Notwithstanding this pacifi st up-
bringing, the 16-year old-Bell enlisted in the Army to
fi ght in the Mexican War. He became a photographer
when he returned to Philadelphia from Mexico in 1848
and went to work for his brother-in-law, who owned a
daguerreotype studio. Over the next half century Bell
was associated with a string of portrait and commercial
studios in Philadelphia, either as sole proprietor or as
a partner. The relatively few images from any of these
studios that are known are notably conventional: Bell’s
signifi cant work was done in non-commercial arenas.
In 1865, after three year’s service as an infantry-
man in the United States Army during the American
Civil War, Bell joined the staff of US Army Medical
Museum as its chief photographer, with the rank of
Hospital Steward. Founded in 1862, the Army Medical
Museum was mandated to advance the study of mili-
tary medicine and to produce a medical and surgical
history of the on-going “War of the Rebellion.” The
Museum’s staff included Dr. Joseph J. Woodward,
one of the leading photomicrographists of the era, and
photography was considered a vital tool of this mis-
sion. From the beginning, the Museum had acquired
photographs of war injuries and the results of unusual
operations and amputations; during his two years of
service with the Museum Bell contributed hundreds of
photographs of to its collections, including images of
specimens as medical portraits of servicemen who had
survived diseases, horrendous wounds, and operations
or amputations, which are among the most poignant
of American Civil images. Many of these photographs
were used as illustrations in the monumental, ground-
breaking Medical and Surgical History of the War of
the Rebellion (1870–1883) and other Army Medical
Museum publications—either as tipped-in original albu-
men prints, sometimes as woodburytypes, collotypes,
or photolithographs or other forms of reproduction. In
addition to this medical work, Bell took portraits of
dignitaries visiting the Army Medical Museum, as well
as landscape views of Civil war battlefi elds, and in April
1865, he and his staff printed some 1500 copies of por-
traits of the conspirators involved in President Lincoln’s
assassination for use on wanted posters.
In 1867, Bell returned to Philadelphia and opened
his own studio, but in 1872 joined George M. Wheeler’sOn January 18, 1845, Alexander Baron von Minutoli,
a Royal Prussian offi cer of the Liegnitz area, an indus-
trial district in Lower Silesia, announced the foundation
of “a collection of good pattern images for the education
of taste“ for all industrial branches. In the industrial area,
arts and crafts had undergone radical changes towards
poverty and only small textile, glass, ceramic, and metal
industries survived. Minutoli, himself a noted collector
and conoisseur of the arts, had no money to spend on
buying quality products of the past years to show to
these industries in the hopes that examples of good
design for household goods would be helpful. His idea,
apparently conceived as early as in 1842, was to collect
daguerreotypes of well-known articles in arts and crafts,
which he did until the late 1840s. The announcement of
1845 therefore provided an invitation for manufacturers
to borrow these daguerreotypes from him.
By the early 1850s, most of the daguerreotypes
Minutoli had used, became worn out or destroyed, and
some of the original works collected were on the edge
of destruction by the borrowers. Minutoli decided to
print smaller catalogues after having heard of similar
examples by the imprimery of Blanquart-Évrard, and
he looked for help with a local mechanic who encour-
aged his young apprentice, Ludwig Belitski, to take
up photography to help with the planned albums. Be-
tween 1853 and 1855, no less than 150 photographs
were taken and published in large albums, the whole
process receiving numerous reviews and wide acclaim.
By 1862, Minutoli published another 663 photographs
showing no less than 4,000 items but this work was
not as successful. Minutoli sold his collections to the
Prussian government, and Belitski who had already
withdrawn from the project by 1856, never gained
copyright for his participation in this fi rst virtual mu-
seum of arts and crafts.
Rolf Sachsse
BELL, WILLIAM (1830–1910)
English-born American photographer
William Bell’s extraordinary, sixty-year career as a
photographer began in the daguerreotype era and ended
well after dry plates and fi lm had transformed the mak-
ing of photographs, but he is remembered primarily for
the work he did as chief photographer for the U.S. Army
Medical Museum, 1865–1867, as Timothy O’Sullivan’s
replacement on the Wheeler Survey in 1872, and as an
accomplished practitioner of the dry collodion process.
His role as photographer for the U.S. government spon-
sored 1882 Transit of Venus Expedition to Patagonia is
also noteworthy, but is little known, and photographs
he made for the Kentucky State Geological Survey in
1884 have never been identifi ed.