[Family Group with Telescope]

In the early days of photography, most portrait daguerreotypes—one-of-a-kind photographs made directly in the camera on silver-plated sheets of copper—were made in a studio, where lighting could be carefully controlled, metal posing stands could hold sitters still for the exposure, steps in the process could be conducted in an adjacent darkroom, and subjects could be lined up—often stiffly—alongside a swag of drapery, classical column, or piece of fancy furniture. In this unusual example, taken outdoors, everyone posed as if actors in a tableau, as a child sits in a man’s lap and peers through a telescope.