LUCY SANTE: So, these are tintypes. And tintypes were the first really populist medium.

NARRATOR: They were much less expensive than daguerreotypes, and the technique was easier to master. As a result, tintypes became incredibly popular.

SANTE: The tintype is really where you see a kind of unbridled social behaviour.

NARRATOR: At the center of this case, look for the largest photograph: a group of men and women posed so that the men’s heads appear on top of one another. Here’s writer Lucy Sante:

SANTE: I guess the photographer must have arranged this. The men are in strict order and the women are kind of flamboyantly all over the place.

So, these young people are probably somewhere like Lake George, in some lakeside hotel, and they’ve gone out in the town. And after you’ve had your ice cream, what do you do? You get yourself photographed, which was a thing that lasted well into the twentieth century: being photographed as a form of entertainment.

ROSENHEIM: And that’s actually really interesting because people after the Civil War, which was filled with death for so many, they needed a sense of relief. And a sense of playfulness enters into the visual form of the era. And I think we can see that in this picture.

NARRATOR: To the right, you’ll see another type of comic photograph. These look like men poking their heads through various painted backgrounds. Actually, though, the “backdrops” were scratched directly into the photographic plates.

SANTE: And of course, you go to tourist places now and there isn’t a tintype studio, but you still find like a panel that you can stick your head through that your friends or family can take a picture of you, you know, with a cow’s body or something like that.