Unidentified author
1882
Itinerant Photography

Newspaper clipping
Internet - Original source ill-defined
I'm indebted to Rebecca Stearns for bringing this to my attention (20 October 2017)
 
Anon., 1882, 9 June, "Itinerant Photography", Iola Registar
 
"The apparatus that these itinerants carry is a cheap lens, and a box, and a wheelbarrow in which a dark room of cloth can be hastily constructed, and in which the negatives are developed. Then the negatives are stowed in a box, and impressions taken on returning home. Of course the business is a pure speculation. It pays, though. I know a man who makes forty dollars a day wandering around the city this way. He employs an assistant who prints and mounts the pictures, and a third man delivers them and collects the money. The purchaser pays about twenty-five cents apiece for his photographs. Some of the pictures are not worth a cent. That occurs when the photographer faces the sun when he takes the impression, for then the shadows fall towards the observer. But the itinerant does not care for that; his object is gained, when it's a dwelling, if he gets the whole family on the piazza, or, when its a store, if he gets an impression of the sign and of shopkeeper standing in the doorway."
 
LL/78210