Yalda Moaiery, Photojournalist, known for war, protest, natural disaster, and conflict photographs

Portraiture was a main driver for early adoption of cameras. Then, as today, people enjoyed possessing pictures of their friends, loved-ones, and ancestors. Portrait painting was only available to aristocrats and the very wealthy. In the 18th-century, several inexpensive alternatives were developed, such as the silhouette, a representation of an individual’s outline, typically hand-cut by an artisan out of black paper. The daguerreotype offered an economical way to create a realistic portrait. It was very slow and required locking the subject’s head in place with a head brace for several minutes, while the subject tightly gripped their chair, so as not to move their fingers. Nonetheless, numerous daguerreotype studios arose and became commonplace as technologies improved, and many portraitists switched to this new technology.