Untitled (Portrait of a Standing Man)

Art Historical Context

Step into the intimate world of 19th-century photography with *Untitled (Portrait of a Man)*, a tintype created around 1880 by an maker. This small-scale portrait, measuring just 10 × 5.7 cm, captures a solitary figure in a poised, standing pose against a plain backdrop. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Photography Media department, it exemplifies the tintype process—a direct positive image made on a thin iron plate coated with collion and silver halides, then developed while still wet. Tintypes burst onto the scene in the 1850s, revolutionizing portraiture by making professional phot...