- L.
Wallak (Vienna, Austria)
- Double
Portrait: Barber and Customer
- Albumen
print carte de visite
- (2.15
x 3.5 inch image on imprinted card mount 2.25 x 4
inches)
- circa
1885
- In
the second half of the 1800s photographers formed
trade organizations, attended conventions, and read
professional journals. The trade press often offered
practical technical articles as well as advice on
international trends and fads. Thus, double exposures
of the type shown in this exhibit could be made in
galleries around the world.
This
double portrait of a barber and his doppelganger
customer demonstrates both creativity and sloppy
technique. Note how the two sides of the image fail to
match at the center; both the painted backdrop and the
pattern on the floor are out of kilter. (The likely
cause: slight movement of the camera between
exposures.) A line roughed-in by pen along the center
of the photograph may have been intended to obscure
the poor registration between left and right images,
but succeeds instead at drawing the viewer's attention
to the very area where the problem is most easily
seen.
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