View of Niagara Falls from prospect point 展望台からのナイアガラ滝の眺め

This is a valuable example of an early tourist photograph. BABITT,Platt D. worked at Niagara Falls between 1853 and 1870. Here the focal point is the people in the center, with the falls in the distance and an expanse of land in the foreground. BABITT composed his images based on precise calculations and placed the human figures, probably tourists, perfectly. Portrait photography using the daguerreotype process was even more widespread in the United States than in France. Advertisements for the first portrait photography studio in New York can be found dating from the spring after the daguerreotype process was made public in 1839. The United States was still in a recession after the Panic of 1837, but to people wanting to make names for themselves, this new medium presented a remarkable opportunity. At the time, photographers, known as “daguerreotypists,” were of two types. One type toured the countryside in search of customers and subjects. The other, such as Babbitt, set up shop at a major tourist destination, photographed the visitors, and sold their work to them. Yet another was the entrepreneur who would set up lavish studios in major cities. At the time, almost all Americans from the middle class or above stood before the camera lens to have their portraits recorded on the daguerreotype’s silver plate. Portrait photography thus grew into a huge industry in the 1850s. The daguerreotype had peaked in Europe by the mid 1850s, with a gradual transition to a later invention, the wet collodion process using glass plate negatives. To Americans, however, the characteristic gleam of the daguerreotype mattered, and that process continued in widespread use into the 1860s. Many of the surviving images are family portraits.