These Portrait Daguerreotypes (and a single Tintype Photograph, stuck in the cover of one of the oval Portraits,) of some of our Rendell, Wells, and Clark Ancestors, date from the mid-Nineteenth Century. Among those here depicted are Abraham Rendell, Edward Selkirk Wells, Mary Anne Rendell, and Moses Clark. They were identified by Notes written in pencil by my Great Grandmother, Carrie Clark Wells, eighty years ago or so. Some were left unnamed, but they still manage to exert a feeling of Kinship. Some were produced in New York City and some were made on the Isle of Guernsey. I’ve been photographing and scanning them for a Book that I’m in the process of writing and compiling, a kind of Family History in the form of a Mémoire, with which my Mother (whom I’m visiting in Florida) has been kind enough to lend some Assistance by way of remembering, relating, and retelling. The so-called Polaroid Photographs produced by the original Land Cameras seem to be the true Descendants of the Daguerreotypes, in that they are likewise produced without Negatives, constitute singular Originals, and are consequently more haunting in evoking the Presence of the Sitter.
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