By Buck Zaidel and Ronald S. Coddington
Philadelphia, the second-largest urban center (behind New York City) in the United States in 1860, was a major hub of photography. Daguerreian pioneers include Robert Cornelius, Frederick DeBourg Richards, Marcus Aurelius Root, Samuel Broadbent, and the artist featured in this installment— W.L. Germon.
Washington Lafayette Germon (1823-1877) advertised his services as an engraver as early as 1844. Two years later, he partnered in a daguerreian saloon with James Earle McLees (1821-1887), who had apprenticed alongside one of the city’s earliest photographers, Montgomery Pike Simons (1816-1877). He and McClees continued in business until about 1855, when Germon struck out on his own. This same year, he assisted in the creation of a series of photographic plates forming a 32-inch long image of the city’s National Guards. In 1856, he created a photographic copy of artist Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of Washington, and gifted it to the city. An early adopter of ambrotypes and albumen prints, his blind stamp or backmark can be found on many Civil War era cartes de visite. An avid fisherman, Germon traveled extensively in pursuit of his hobby. He shuttered his gallery in 1872 due to chronic bronchitis, and wintered in Florida in hopes the warmer climate would benefit him. He died in 1877 at about age 56.
The backdrop
Germon captured this self-assured, well-accoutered enlisted man at the studio on 702 Chestnut Street. He operated here until 1864, when he moved a few blocks northwest to “Germon’s Temple of Art” on 914 Arch Street. The backdrop features a sea of tents, perhaps inspired by the military camps popping up around greater Philadelphia during the war. The painting is a layered composition of tents, with a sharply defined example in the foreground with a musket impossibly leaning against a canvas flap, a middle ground of tightly-packed tents in neat rows, and a background of what may be another campsite. In the distance are low-lying mountains. The view offers an illusion of depth and an appropriate environment for a soldier in camp. The tent in the front is unusually narrow, which may reflect the artist’s unfamiliarity with such tents or perhaps an attempt to picture it at an angle on the slope of a hill. Overall, the artist created a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface.
Buck Zaidel is a Senior Editor and Ronald S. Coddington is Editor and Publisher of MI.
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