[Boy in Uniform]

Art Historical Context

In the mid-19th century, photographer Jean-Baptiste Fré captured the poignant innocence of youth in *[Boy in Uniform]* (ca. 1855), a rare paper negative now housed in the Metropolitan Museum Art's Photographs Department. Measuring 24.5 x 17.9 cm, this intimate portrait exemplifies the calotype process, pioneered by William Henry Fox Talbot the 1840s. Unlike the one-of-a-kind daguerreotypes paper negatives allowed photographers like Frénet to produce positive prints from a single exposure, revolutionizing image reproduction and accessibility during photography's explosive early years in France....