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from the group: Gelatin POP

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Notes on this view:

This occupational portrait, possibly depicting electric line workers, was made in the 1890s, a time when electricity was becoming more widely used.

Occupational portraiture has been a popular genre since the invention of photography. Also, as photography became less expensive in the late nineteenth century, the studio portrait became less formal as well as more accessible to the working class. Notice the men are dressed in work clothing, the man on the right has a special apparatus on each leg (spikes to help climb poles), each has a pair of wire cutters and a wire is strung between them. Also notice the image was clearly taken in a photographic studio.