Women's Work
Unattributed
[Milliner and Daughter]
Springfield, Illinois
Quarter-plate ambrotype,
hand-colored, ca.1854
Prints & Photographs Division
LC-USZC4-6024
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Occupational portraits of women taken during the
early decades of photography are exceedingly rare. The millinery
business was one of the few respectable occupations available
to women who sought employment. Milliners could work in their
homes while they raised their families. They were paid by the
piece, which provided a very small income compared with factory
work. By the mid-1850s the daguerreotype had been largely replaced
by the ambrotype, a faster and less expensive photographic process
that used a glass plate rather than polished metal.
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