<div class="description">
Many of the best early photographers were artists who put their training in figural arrangement, light and shadow, and composition to good use in the new medium. Dolard, a portrait painter, may have offered photographs to prospective clients of lesser means. In this image, possibly made as an advertisement for his studio, he identifies himself as a painter, surrounded by the tools of the trade. The coat and the hookah suggest an interest in orientalism, a fashion that occupied many mid-19th-century artists. A remarkable technical achievement, this whole-plate image required Dolard to remain motionless for well over a minute, at least 30 times longer than the exposure for the smaller plates in the case below.</div>
<div class="fn value">
Camille Dolard</div>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://clevelandart.org/art/1997.56">https://clevelandart.org/art/1997.56</a>