Gurney, Jeremiah

Jeremiah Gurney ( born Jeremiah Gurney ; October 17, 1812 - April 21, 1895 ) is the first American photographer .

Portrait of an American youth (mid-1850s). Paul Getty Museum

Initially, the owner of a jewelry store in Saratoga . In 1839, he met Samuel Morse and learned from him about the invention of the daguerreotype . He exchanged a daguerreotypic apparatus with a certain Englishman for hours and in 1840 , having moved to New York , opened the first American photographic workshop on Broadway . On the first day of work, one man made a daguerreotype (for five dollars) at Gurney, on the second - two, and then the affairs of the new studio went uphill. Unlike his first rival, Matthew Brady , who began working four years later and was more inclined toward photographs of politicians and the military, Gurney preferred to photograph simply successful people. By the 50s, he had achieved national and international fame, in 1851 he presented his work at the first World Exhibition in London, in 1853 he switched to more advanced paper printing technology. Gurney's younger partners were first Charles Fredericks , and then the son of Gurney Benjamin.

Among the celebrities whose photographs were taken by Gurney are Francis Bret Garth , Cornelius Vanderbilt , who visited the USA Henri Vyotan , Charles Dickens , Alexander Dumas father , Anton Rubinstein , Johann Strauss-son . Gurney was especially eager to photograph actresses and opera singers.