Studying Studio
Lets look at the words on the back of CDVs with photographer’s imprints. You probably never paid much attention to the various terms they used to describe their business, they mostly seem very common terms. But when photography was young, there was not yet a consensus on what to call the workers or the workplace.
Today we refer to the workers as photographers, but in the days of the daguerreotype they were daguerreians, daguerreotypists, operators and artists. Later there were some who called themselves photographists.
The place of business is today mostly referred to as photographic studio, but that term was relatively late to arrive on the scene. Daguerrians were artists, so they had galleries to display their work. Itinerants took ‘rooms’ to do their work, when they weren’t operating out of a tent or wagon. Later they might have a ‘Photographic Art Palace’ or even a ‘Premium Sunbeam Gallery’ — but most settled for ‘Photographic Gallery’.