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Charles D. Fredricks, American, 1823-1894
Fredricks' Photographic Temple of Art, Broadway, New York, 1857

Salt print
Image: 16 1/8 x 13 1/2 inches (40.97 x 34.29 cm)

Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc., 2005.27.291

Location: Not on view

Of the many notable portrait studios in New York City in the 1850s, Charles Fredricks’s was one of the most lavish. His gallery was adorned with the giant logo "Fredricks Photographic Temple of Art," and large wooden representations of an eagle, a camera and the sun. Fredricks himself is visible in the central window on the second floor, and several of his employees are posed in other windows. The studio's entrance at street level carries an eye-catching display of framed daguerreotypes and paper prints. This remarkable print was made by a then-new process: the wet-collodion technique, which utilized a glass negative coated with an emulsion that had to be exposed and developed while damp. This work documents a time of rapid change in photography--the era of the daguerreotype was giving way to that of the glass negative and paper print.