Row Row Row Your Boat - Tintype

Four young women in a rowboat, taking a break from their beach to get a photo taken by the boardwalk photographer.

Image circa 1870-1890s
Measures about 2.5" X 3.5"

**Please refer to photos for condition. Images might have surface scratching, bends and uneven edges due to age. Sold as is.**

Tintype portraits were at first usually made in a formal photographic studio, but later they were most commonly made by photographers working in booths or the open air art fairs and carnivals, as well as by itinerant sidewalk photographers. Because the lacquered iron support (there is no actual tin used) was resilient and did not need drying, a tintype could be developed and fixed and handed to the customer only a few minutes after the picture had been taken.

The tintype photograph saw more uses and captured a wider variety of settings and subjects than any other photographic type of the period.

It began losing artistic and commercial ground to higher quality albumen prints on paper in the mid-1860s, yet survived for well over another 40 years, living mostly as a carnival novelty.