Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
To celebrate the 2010 History Week theme of ‘Faces in the street’, I have decided to look at some of the methods used to record peoples’ faces — from celebrities to lesser known identities — before the era of Facebook and Flickr.
The Museum’s collection yields a variety of ways of recording faces. We have a very nice and diverse collection of busts like the porcelain bust of the romantic poet Lord Byron (1788–1828), part of a series of poets made in the 1880s.
Busts have been used to depict the famous and wealthy for more than 3000 years. During antiquity they featured the gods and rulers of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Mesopotamia.
You can see Lord Byron’s Bust, the silhouettes and the Carte de Visites on display in the Museum’s main foyer (opposite the shop) until late November 2010.
Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Silhouettes were created before the invention of photography. Also known as shadow portraits, they were a cheap method of recording a likeness. Sittings took no more than five minutes and endless exact copies could easily be made from the original. Silhouettes were named after Etienne de Silhouette (1709–67), a French finance minister who made paper cuts as a hobby. In fact, there are silhouette artists still working today – apparently there is one nearby in Chinatown!
This panel of silhouettes cut from black paper show Mr John Bowen, his wife and daughter about 1800.
Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Photography became accessible in the 1800s. One form was the Carte de Visite. Trading these small photographs mounted on card became enormously popular in the 1860s. The trend took off in France after advances in the developing process enabled small albumen photographs to be printed quickly and cheaply.
This card collection shows Laura Stubbs from age 4 to 12. The hand coloured or sepia stained photographs were done by three different Melbourne studios between 1861 and 1869.
There has been a gradual process of democratisation of the images of people. The twin technologies of photography and social media have seen an explosion of who has been recorded and who has had access to these records.
