Julian Vannerson (1827-c. 1875)

View images of Julian Vannerson's salt prints. 

Native American delegations came to Washington from 1857 to 1868. Many were photographed in the McClees Studio by Julian Vannerson and Samuel A. Cohner. In 1869, the portraits appeared in the first photographic exhibition at the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian also distributed copies of the prints to museums and cultural institutions around the world. The collection of Vannerson’s portraits in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology reveals that a variety of positive images were produced from the same glass plate negative over time. The positive images included salted paper prints, coated salted paper prints, and albumen prints (which would eventually supplant the salted paper print).