Untitled (Portrait of a Standing Man with a Steer)

Daguerreotypes are one of the earliest forms of photography and most commonly employed to make portraits in the studio, so this study of a bull in a field is highly unusual. It is even more striking with the addition of careful hand coloring. Montgomery Simons, a noted Philadelphia daguerreotypist and the author of several photography manuals, had worked in Charleston, South Carolina, starting in 1849, and in Richmond, Virginia for about five years beginning in 1851, and probably made this image in one of those locations. The red bull is clearly the intended subject of the photograph—the image is framed and centered around his girth, and may even once have had an overmat that covered the figure behind him—but now we notice the African American laborer, possibly enslaved, holding him steady.