Miss Hortense Danner and Governess on a visit to Neff Cottage, Gambier, Ohio. Christmas Day, 1863. Half-plate tintype. Kenyon College Archives.

This 1863 image of two visitors to Neff Cottage is a rare, yet characteristic, example of an outdoor tintype. According to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Photo History Collection, the most common outdoor subjects in tintype photographs “are people standing in front of their homes and photographs of people proudly standing with, or sitting on, their horse.” While the photographer is unidentified, this image could be attributed to Peter Neff, who helped invent tintype photography at Kenyon College in 1856.

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This project developed from research in Kenyon College’s archives. Examining the history of the college’s campus and surrounding historic homes in the village of Gambier, I worked to creatively illustrate Kenyon as the site of historically important innovations in photography. For this project I engaged the actual home of Peter Neff and created a faux-archival image that presents a queer pair of imaginary local residents who would have formed Neff’s social circle during the Civil War. Drawing on a study of the clothing and posture of this era as documented in tintype photographs, this image seeks to evoke the specificities of 1860s portraiture.