Lilliputian Souvenir
1862–63
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 7.7 x 4.5 cm (3 1/16 x 1 3/4 in.) each Mount: 8.8 x 5.2 cm (3 7/16 x 2 1/16 in.) each Mount (2nd): 51.7 x 41.7 cm (20 3/8 x 16 7/16 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.280
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the intimate world of 19th-century photography with *Lilliputian Sou*, a pair of diminutive albumen silver prints by Mathew B. Brady 1862–63. Brady, the pioneering American photographer famed for his Civil War documentation, here captures tender portraits of a man and woman—likely a wedding couple—on tiny glass negatives, measuring just 7.7 x 4.5 cm each. Mounted together, these "Lilliputian" evoke the whimsical smallness of Gulliver's Travels, highlighting the era's fascination with miniature keepsakes. The albumen silver process, using egg whites to bind light-sensitive silver sal...
About the Artist
Mathew B. Brady · 1823–1896
Mathew B. Brady (c. 1823–1896) was an American photographer who became the most famous photographer of the Civil War era and one of the founding figures of American photographic history. Born in Warren County, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, he learned the daguerreotype process from Samuel F.B. Morse and William Page and opened his first portrait studio in New York City in 1844. Brady quick...