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Profile of Albert Sands Southworth
Albert Sands Southworth was an important figure in the early history of photography. He was
born in 1811 to Asa Southworth(1) and Nancy Niles. He left his father's farm at the age of twenty-one to become a school teacher. Seven years later in 1839, a Frenchman by the name of Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre revealed a photographic process that he and another Frenchman by the
name of Joseph-Nicephore Niepce(2) had invented.
Albert quickly recognized the commercial possibilities that this new process presented. With Joseph Pennell he opened a studio in Boston that enjoyed almost immediate success. A short time later Josiah Johnson Hawes replaced Joseph Pennell and the names of Southworth and Hawes quickly became synonymous with the finest daguerreotypes of the early 19th Century. While their speciality was portraits (free of the painted backdrops and contrived poses that were popular in that day), their work also included landscapes and scenes of such things as a hospital operating room. Their subjects included such famous people as John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, Daniel Webster, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
A judges report from a Boston Fine Arts Exhibition in 1847 noted that their portraits were "equal to some of the best produced by our Painters, and in some respects, of course, they are beyond all rivalry by painting...the flesh is preserved in all the beautiful gradations of form and texture, the most delicate lights playing over its surface in a thousand different degrees of intensity...the works of Messrs. Southworth and Hawes and Mr. Whipple are by far the finest in the Exhibition."
The International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York has a collection of more than 1200 of their plates, including three of Albert himself. Many of these have been published in The Daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes by Robert A. Sobieszek and Odette M. Appel (Dover Publications, Inc).
1. His line to Constant Southworth is as follows: Albert Sands Southworth/
Asa Southworth Jr. born 1785 Mansfield CT/
Asa Southworth Sr born 1756 Mansfield CT/
Josiah Southworth born 1719 Bristol RI/
Nathaniel Southworth born 1692 Little Compton RI/
William Southworth born 1659 Duxbury MA/
Constant Southworth born 1615 Leyden Holland
2. Niepce is credited with the world's first surviving photograph. Taken from the window of a country home in France, it required an exposure of eight hours in bright sunlight.
Last Updated on February 5, 1998 by Kerry Southworth