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| Anonymous photographer Pair of Hands ca. 1840-60 hand-colored daguerreotype mounted on a button Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous photographer View of San Francisco ca. 1850 daguerreotype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous photographer Three Men in Shepherd Attire ca. 1850-60 hand-colored daguerreotype Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| William and Frederick Langenheim Eclipse of the Sun 1854 daguerreotypes Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Sonnet XVII, from Sonnets, Second Series
Roll on, sad world! not Mercury or Mars
Could swifter speed, or slower, round the sun,
Than in this year of variance thou hast done
For me. Yet pain, fear, heart-break, woes, and wars
Have natural limit; from his dread eclipse
The swift sun hastens, and the night debars
The day, but to bring in the day more bright;
The flowers renew their odorous fellowships;
The moon runs round and round; the slow earth dips,
True to her poise, and lifts; the planet-stars
Roll and return from circle to ellipse;
The day is dull and soft, the eave-trough drips;
And yet I know the splendor of the light
Will break anon: look! where the gray is white!
– Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)
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| John Adams Whipple and James Wallace Black The Moon ca. 1857-60 salted paper print from glass negative Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| W.L. Germon and W. Penny Family Portrait ca. 1855 salted paper print (hand-colored) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Kennedy & Schenck Excision of the Radius of Brigadier General Penrose, formerly Colonel of the 15th New Jersey Volunteers ca. 1865 albumen silver print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Robert Macpherson Bas-relief of the Biga, Arch of Titus, Rome ca. 1858-63 albumen silver print National Gallery of Canada |
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| William Edward Kilburn Mrs Jane Hamilton with daughters Rose and Eliza ca. 1850 hand-colored daguerreotype National Gallery of Canada |
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| Anonymous photographer Statue of Satyr and Nymph ca. 1850-55 daguerreotype Philadelphia Museum of Art |
from Physics
To please the Sphinx
all life unreels
through black magnetic
stone-strewn fields
where pitchblende blinks
its slow decay
tic-tic-tic
de-lightedly
by alpha, beta,
gamma, delta –
time dilates
and starlight bends
in gravity
like roundelays.
All light, partic-
ulate, licks out
one way, in waves;
electric clouds
expand in spheres
whose uncracked shells
concentrically
unrecalled
across the parsecs
and the years
ring out, shift red
(like Hell), disperse
the edges of
the universe –
– Richard Kenney, from Orrery (New York: Atheneum, 1985)
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| Jeremiah Gurney Relief-sculpture from a tomb (woman contemplating cross) ca. 1850 daguerreotype Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Hansel, Sloan and Company Portrait of a boy mounted in a gold earring ca. 1850 daguerreotype Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
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| W.A. Mansell and Company British Museum - Horse of Selene from the East Pediment of the Parthenon ca. 1870 albumen silver print Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
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| W.A. Mansell and Company British Museum - Antique Sculpture Gallery ca. 1870 albumen silver print Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |