Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 - (Page 21)

Girod Street between Carondelet and St. Charles, between 1858 and 1861, a salted paper photoprint by Jay Dearborn Edwards. rendition of a specific place at a more-or-less single moment in time. And they represent, at least to this date, the earliest known photographic views on paper depicting the city of New Orleans. The photographs on display in A Closer Look, together with a city’s multifaceted commercial character. There were 237 attorneys, 53 notaries, 31 cotton brokers, and six dealers in slaves. Listings for commission merchants occupied four double-columned directory pages. Eight libraries had a combined 31,826 books on hand. Locksmiths and bellhangers numbered 20, harnessmakers seven, wheelwrights six, and somnambulists three. Those needing the services of a boilermaker could choose from among five listings. Single entries sufficed for real estate agents, artificial-leg makers, bung and plug manufacturers, mosquito-bar makers, and whitewashers. There were three listings for daguerreotypists and ambrotypists; “photographer” was not yet a category. Cotton and sugar were the primary commodities fueling activity along New Orleans’s levees and within the city’s offices, banks, exchanges, and other halls of commerce. The 1861 Gardner’s directory recapitulates the important role of the port in handling These images pique our interest for their rendition of a specific place at a more-or-less single moment in time. And they represent, at least to this date, the earliest known photographic views on paper depicting the city of New Orleans. handful of others currently archived at other institutions, seem to be the remnant of a more substantial group. A numbering system on the prints suggests an original compilation of at least 118 views, assuming sequencing without gaps. Little is known about why these images were made. Like other professional photographers, then and now, Edwards made pictures of those people, places, and things that others paid him to record. But he seems to have exercised at least some degree of artistic agency. His business was advertised as a “gallery” with an assortment of pictures to be viewed and purchased — suggesting that Edwards anticipated the desires of his clientele, perhaps even shaping those desires with images made of his own volition. The New Orleans of the late 1850s and early 1860s, the period of Edwards’s residency, was a thriving port city. The 1860 census placed the population at 168,375 people. A glance at Gardner’s New Orleans Directory of 1859 reveals the these cargoes. Between 1855 and 1858, the port of New Orleans regularly handled in excess of 50 percent of the national (that is to say, Southern) cotton crop. The 1859–60 cotton harvest, the City Hall and Police Station between 1858 and 1861, a salted paper photoprint by Jay Dearborn Edwards. Fall 2008/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 21

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities New Orleans Immortelle The Historic New Orleans Collection Highland-Fairfield: The Historic Heart of Shreveport The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Perils of the Mississippi River Louisiana Foodways Harvest of Life King Oliver: The Forgotten King of Jazz Louisiana Architecture Jazz Notes Louisiana State Museum Eye of the Storm Louisiana Association of Museums Soul Resin Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2008

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