Faux Snow: A Winter Exhibit of Manipulated Photographs from the American Museum of Photography

In northern climates, Winter can be a very trying season-- and just imagine the icy winds of January in the days before central heat and Florida vacations. Winter presented special technical problems for Victorian-era photographers; their chemicals did not always behave properly in freezing temperatures, and processes of the day were unable to capture snowflakes in mid-air. So what the photographers could not accomplish in nature, they simulated indoors, under their studio skylights. From shortly after the Civil War until the end of the 19th century, these winter tableaux were made in cities large and small-- for a public that never seemed to tire of donning cold weather garb for a portrait with faux snow.

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William Notman (Montreal, Canada)

Four Winter Sportsmen.

Albumen print, 4 x 5.5 inches, circa 1866.

Benjamin Falk (New York)

"Billie Barlow as 'Mercury"

Albumen cabinet card, 4 x 5.75 inches, 1884.

Napoleon Sarony (New York, 1821-1896)

Helene Menzeli, Dancer, during a "Snowstorm"

Albumen cabinet card, 4 x 5.5 inches, circa 1875

Atelier Adèle

(Adèle Perlmutter-Heilperin, active Vienna, Austria after 1862)

Franz Naval, Operatic Tenor, in a "Snowstorm"

Albumen Cabinet Card, 4 x 5.6 inches, circa 1898