Nineteenth-century group photographs

The late 1850s and early ’60s produced some remarkably modern-looking photographic portraits in the US. For example, of the song-writer Stephen Foster and of the young Henry James. The Civil War also produced the first large collection of war photographs.

Near the end of this post are four group photographs from a Civil War site. They illustrate points which apply to group photographs of males generally in the nineteenth century, not only in the US.

1. In nearly all photographs, a pair of figures lies in the foreground to create a symmetrical motif, as in this picture of medical students at the University of Melbourne in the 1870s.

Were photographers all over the world trained in composition with the same manual, or was this just a spontaneous importation from pre-modern architecture? The symmetrical reclining figures might be on a pair of spandrels.

2. In photographs taken before c 1895 (as below) there is informality in the grouping. The group poses, but there is rubato (to borrow a musical term) in the composition, an imprecision and give and take in the arrangement of figures, without cost to the design; and an easy physical intimacy, with something raffish and bohemian in the attitudes and postures.

This changes at the end of the century. There is less physical contact. Masculinity has become a more clipped affair. The age is more militaristic. The groups are more regimented. Disorder in them is merely disorder.

From http://www.civil-war.net/cw_images/index.htm, reading from left to right:

Company A, US Engineer Battalion, Petersburg, VA, August 1864

Scouts and guides of the Army of the Potomac, Brandy Station, VA, March 1864

Staff of General Fitz-John Porter; Lieutenant William G Jones and (then Lieutenant) George A Custer reclining, the Peninsula, VA, May 20 1862

Engineers of the 8th New York State Militia, 1861

The later style, from http://www.calgaryhighlanders.com/: Calgary Highlanders, 10th Battalion NCOs, probably early 1918