Charles Blyth found this handsome daguerreotype in a group of identified family photographs. He thinks he might be a colleague of his great uncle, but isn't really sure.  It's a beautiful daguerreotype in pristine condition so I couldn't resist this challenge. 

It's important to remember that daguerreotypes are reversed. Before comparing this gentleman to any family photographs it's necessary to flip the image to see his natural appearance.  Faces can look quite different when reversed.



Blyth doesn't think this man is his great uncle Henry Blyth born in 1831, but the evidence suggests it could be.  Here is the quartet of facts that I've considered.

1) This man appears to be in his twenties and the clothing clues (wide cravat, slicked back hair and long sideburns) suggest it was taken in the 1850s. This man is the right age to be Blyth.

2) The equipment on the table identifies this man as a surveyor.  As far as I can tell the device is a Wye level used for long distance surveying. I found a similar looking piece on Larry and Carol Meeker's website of Antiques of a Mechanical Nature.  Blyth was a surveyor in New York State before leaving home at 22 for Chile in South America.  He returned home with a beard and posed for a group portrait with his family in 1858 and a few years later for this card photograph. If the daguerreotype was Blyth then it was taken before his travels in 1853, a likely date for the image.



3) Even though Blyth's hairline is receding in this picture you can see the similarities between the unidentified portrait and this known image of Blyth.  Besides a similar hairline, they share a similar shape face.  It's not outside the realm of possibility to think that Blyth posed for the daguerreotype portrait before traveling to South America. This card photo shows that Blyth's aged a bit from his frontier experience, but it's quite likely both pictures depict the same man.

4) There is one other feature in the daguerreotype that suggests it could be Blyth--the cross.  According to Charles Blyth, members of the family often posed wearing a cross.

I think the evidence strongly suggests this unidentified picture is Henry Blyth--the tools identify his trade, his age is right, facial similiarities suggest a relationship and then there is the cross and the fact it was found with family artifacts.   I think it's Blyth, but I'm not sure I've convinced the owner.

Got an opinion? Sound off in the comment section!   Let's create a dialogue.

In the last month or so, I've met (via e-mail) a lot of people who collect specific types of pictures or who know a lot about a photographic detail. I even corresponded with someone who collects photographers' fingerprints on daguerreotypes. Now that's a identification database I'd like to have! 

Over the last couple of decades, many books on photo history have been published. I've collected quite a library on clothing, forensic analysis techniques used by the CIA, furniture, postcards and military costumes (to name a few).

You'd be surprised by what I've got on my shelves, but there are still a couple of titles I'd like to see published.

• Photographic backgrounds—I've only found one short article on backdrops, and it doesn't begin to cover the topic. If you own a picture with an interesting background, send it to me and see it featured here.
  

• Furniture in photos—I use furniture-history tomes when looking at the tables and chairs featured in photos, but as far as I know, no one has published anything on that topic. In addition to clothing and the photographer's imprint, furniture can place a picture in a time frame. Think wicker in the 1890s and fringed chairs in the 1860s.
  

Send me your photos with interesting backgrounds and furniture, and let's build a database of reader photos and create our own online reference tool for these two understudied bits of photo history.