Saint Louis Art Museum Courtesy of Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Shop Fund, Accession Number: 71:2004
Darkened doorways were a popular motif in Victorian art and often symbolized an uncertain future. Thomas Keith used the calotype process that required high-quality writing paper both for the negative and the printing of the photograph. Keith found the graininess of the image and the atmospheric effects of the paper well suited for picturesque subjects. Meanwhile his contemporaries had all but switched to glass negatives by the mid-1850s.
