Fairfield Museum and History Center

Photograph Collections

Special Collections is home to several unique photograph collections. A subject collection of well over 1000 images contains photographs of Fairfield localities and institutions. Its two most popular areas are the house photographs filed by address under “Fairfield—Buildings” and the photographs of, oftentimes long defunct, businesses filed by name under “Fairfield—Business.” Researchers prize the collection for its ongoing documentation of changes in Fairfield. For example, it has been used to help restore homes and gardens to their original design, to document the construction of roads and structures, and to trace the location of wetlands and waterways over time.

The subject collection is complemented by the Charles J. Walsh Collection of Fairfield Houses and Scenes, which contains 265 photographs taken in the course of business of Charles Walsh’s real estate business.

The Fairfield Citizen-News Photograph Collection is a collection of black-and-white photographs from the archives of the Fairfield Citizen-News. They include some 600 photographs from all aspects of Fairfield public life and events covering the period from 1975 to approximately 1996.

The portrait collection spans 4.5 linear feet of portraits of Fairfield residents, starting in the 19th century and extending into present times. The collection contains photographic prints on paper as well as negatives and is organized by family name. It includes some photographic reproductions of portrait paintings and drawings, e.g. of Timothy Dwight and members of the Burr family.

The photo album collection includes approximately 30 family albums and scrapbooks from the 19th century on. It is organized by family and indexed by family name of identified persons. Photographs contained in the albums document a broad range of photographic processes including collodion and albumen prints, tintypes, cyanotypes, and gelatin prints.

The FMHC Special Collections contains three collections of glass slides: the Annie Burr Jennings Glass Slide Collection, the Mabel Osgood Wright Glass Slide Collection, and the Fairfield History Glass Slide Collection. The Fairfield History Glass Slide collection was compiled by FMHC staff based on format, technique, and style of the slides. The images in the collection range from portraits to maps and Fairfield structures and stand out for their realistic aesthetics. The Annie Burr Jennings Glass Slide Collection is a collection of color slides that documents Annie Jennings’ social activities and garden. The Mabel Osgood Wright Glass Slide Collection, part of MS 54, documents Mabel Osgood Wright’s accomplishments as a photographer.

FMHC’s collection of Daguerreotypes was compiled by FMHC staff based on the type of photographic material. It consists mostly of portraits and group photographs, including some Civil War photography. The collection contains daguerreotypes, characterized by their distinctive mirror surface that reveals the image only when lighted at the right angle, as well as ambrotypes and tintypes. Ambrotypes are collodion positives on a glass base; the resulting ghost-like image becomes fully visible only when viewed against a black background. Tintypes or ferrotypes, often casually called daguerreotypes, use collodion on a metal backing.

Another fashion in the history of photography is represented by FMHC’s collection of stereograph cards. Mounted on a special viewer, the stereoscope, these cards produce a 3-D viewing effect . They became a prime form of entertainment starting in the 1870s. FMHC’s collection includes exoticized scenes and landscapes of foreign countries, Native American tribes, and fictitious visual narratives—the precursor to today’s movies.

Did you know?
A little-known curiosity in the Special Collections is a commemorative set of cartes-de-visite portraits of the members of the 1865 Connecticut General Assembly. The photographs are albumen prints and each bears a stamp and the person’s name in handwriting on the back.

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