283
not registered for copyright, a decision that allowed it
to be reproduced on biscuit tins, commemorative plates,
mugs and souvenir artefacts of every description. In the
Diamond Jubilee photograph, the very lack of offi cial
control over the photograph was the way that the iconic
fi gure of Victoria was constituted. In a defi ning moment
for celebrity photography, the media image took over
the role of the traditional court portrait.
John Plunkett
See Also: Carte-de-Visite; Illustrated London News;
Mayall, John Jabez Edwin; Victoria, Queen and
Albert, Prince Consort; Disdéri, André Adolphe
Eugéne; Marion & Son, A.; and Downey, William
Ernest, Daniel, & William Edward.
Further Reading
“The Carte de Visite,” All the Year Round 7 (1862): 165–168.
“Cartes-de-visite,” Art Journal n.s. 7 (1861): 306–307.
Homans, Margaret, Royal representations; Queen Victoria and
British culture 1837–1867, Chicago: Chicago UP, 1998.
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne, A.A.E Disdéri and the Carte de Visite
Portrait Photograph, New Haven: Yale UP, 1985.
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne, Industrial Madness, commercial pho-
tography in Paris, 1848–1871, New Haven; Yale UP, 1994.
Photographic Portraits of Living Celebrities, executed and pub-
lished by Maull and Polyblank, London: Maul and Polyblank,
1856–59.
Plunkett, John, Queen Victoria—First Media Monarch (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003)
Root, Marcus, Camera and Pencil, Philadelphia: M.A. Root and
J.B. Linnictott, 1864.
Trachtenberg, Alan, Reading American photographs: images as
history, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1989)
Wynter, Andrew, Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers, London:
Robert Hardwick, 1863.
CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE
CARIBBEAN (EXCLUDING MEXICO
AND CUBA)
During the fi rst two decades of photography, the da-
guerreotype and other procedures were employed by
explorers and adventurers, most of them Americans
and European, who had crossed nearly all political and
geographical boundaries in their travels.
They were generally infl uenced by Alexander von
Humboldt, the most relevant scientist devoted to the
study of the New World, who encouraged the use of
photography as a tool for naturalists and scientists.
Several explorers repeated Humboldt’s travels, reach-
ing the places visited by him and Bonpland some years
ago, as did the Austrian citizen Emanuel von Friedenthal
(1809–1842), who daguerreotyped along the Yucatán
peninsula between 1839 and 1841. An exhibition of 25
images from this travel took place in London and Paris
in 1841; all of them are today considered lost.
Also noteworthy is the North American archaeologist
John Lloyd Stephens (1805–1852) and the English engi-
neer Frederick Catherwood (1799–1854), who explored
the maya cities in Guatemala and Honduras. In their
second trip, between 1841 and 1842, they took daguer-
reian views of the extant ruins of the palaces of Copan,
acheiving success with only few of their images.
Robert M. J. Douglass (1809–1887), an Afri-
can American itinerant daguerreotypist, visited
the main Antillian islands in 1847. Afterwards he
made trips through several countries of Central
America, and fi nally settled in the Bahamas in the
70’s. Another daguerreotypist, but one of Canadian
origin, Thomas Coffi n Doane (1814–1896) travelled
along the Antillian region between 1844 and 1846.
The legendary brothers Ward -Charles and Jacob- from
Bloomfi eld, New Jersey, US, frequented the Caribbean
islands between 1841 and 1846, as well as did the Hun-
garian prince Pal Rosti, who in a private photographic
tour visited the U.S., Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba,
between 1856 and 1858.
An early photographic documentalist, Claude Joseph
Desirée Charnay (1828–1909), who in 1857 visited sev-
eral countries of Central America and Mexico, recorded
in large size plates the ruins of Chichen Itzá and Güija
lake (El Salvador), empoying both salt print and albu-
men techniques.
The French painter and photographer Ernest Charton
arrived to Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador from
Panamá in 1852, on his way to California. The North
American William Buchanan visited the same region,
including Costa Rica, fi rst in 1853 and then between
1857 and 1862, recording the ruins of Cartago monas-
tery, the parochial church of Heredia, and the church
of Orosí.
Charles DeForrest Fredricks, an American photog-
rapher (1823–1894) started his long career in 1846, in
Angostura (Venezuela), continuing to Tobago, Saint
Vincent, and then Trinidad. After this fi rst voyage he
returned sick and without money to the U.S. After
recovering, he returned in the pursuit of a destiny of
adventure and success.
In 1858 John H. Fitzgibbon another American pho-
tographyer (1816–1882) departed for a voyage along
Central and South America. He visited El Salvador and
Nicaragua, and in 1859 arrived to Guatemala, photo-
graphing the just opened Teatro Carrera.
Emil Herbruger, a German Photographer (1820–
1890) settled in the U.S. in 1841 and received, in 1843,
a prize for his daguerreotypes. He visited the Antilles,
El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras (Tegucigalpa) and
then remained in Guatemala.