Photographing George Washington

For most of the nineteenth century, George Washington was the visual icon of the nation, its metaphorical father figure and shaper of national character. Almost as soon as Americans started making daguerreotypes, they made daguerreotypes of George Washington. Though he died a full forty years before photography’s invention, the nation’s first president appeared in daguerreotypes of busts, painted portraits, and prints, ironically making daguerreotypes of Washington’s image some of the earliest presidential photographs. Washington was the ideal representative for daguerreotype portraiture, a kind of aesthetic touchstone for carrying the presidential image forward into the photographic age.