“Look pleasant, please”: Early Portrait Photography in New Bedford

“Look pleasant, please,” George F. Parlow (1826-1890) reportedly said to sitters when they faced the camera in his studio. “Look pleasant, please”: Early Portrait Photography in New Bedford highlights the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s collection of portrait photographs made between the time of photography’s invention in 1839 and the start of a new century in the 1900s. By then, snapshot photography was accessible to a broader audience and portrait studios were less in demand. This exhibition features different kinds of early photography, such as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, carte-de-visites, cabinet cards, gelatin silver prints, and albums, celebrates the studio photographers who moved the medium forward in New Bedford, and examines the unique cultural landscape that unfolded around them.

New Bedford changed dramatically between 1839 and 1900. The whaling industry rose and fell, communities shifted and changed, waves of immigration brought new ideas, challenges, and tensions, and technology transformed. These changes are reflected in photography. For people of all backgrounds, the photo studio was a space where different relationships played out and where photographers and sitters represented personal identities together. The exhibit explores what the studio was like, and who belonged there—as photographer or sitter.

The exhibition brings to life the photographic studio of the 1800s with painted backdrops, a large format camera, and advertisements. It highlights important photographers in the collection including brothers Charles Bierstadt (1819-1903) and Edward Bierstadt (1824-1907), itinerant practitioner Edward S. Dunshee (1823-1907), the area’s first woman photographer Hannah H. Worthing (1843-1920), Azorean photographer Manuel Goulart (1866-1946), and Black photographer James E. Reed (1864-1939). They captured the likenesses of well-known figures like Frederick Douglass, as well as many sitters whose names are no longer known. “Look pleasant, please” invites visitors to reflect on their own experiences with photography, portraiture, and how to “look pleasant” themselves.