Description:
street with carts; buildings
Label Text:
The long exposure times required by nineteenth-century cameras imposed limitations on photography. In order to capture human subjects, for example, a photographer would have to direct them to remain still for the length of the exposure. Often eerily void of human activity, early photographs of city streets betray the inability of the camera to properly record objects in motion.
Occasionally, however, moving objects are half-recorded by the camera, creating whitish blurs in the photograph known as “ghosts.” In this photograph, the ghost of a horse is discernible at the front of the carriage on the right side of the street. (The horse’s front legs are clearly articulated but its torso and head are out of focus.) Two other ghosts that mar the surface of the image—one on the sidewalk beside the horse, beneath the streetlamp, and one on the right-hand sidewalk at the first street corner, between the three square boxes—indicate the presence of people moving through the photograph. By contrast, a single figure, perhaps strategically placed by the photographer, is clearly represented on the left sidewalk, sitting in a chair.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1982.38.838 |
