Blixa wrote:The provenance of this picture is very strange. Some guy has a job looking through books and writing summaries. Looks through a books of old photos, sees one he thinks looks like Smith. That's it. He notices it comes from New York and was acquired in 1845. Can't read the descriptive text, its in Portugeuse.
That's it.
Some guy thinks he coincidentally stumbled upon an a photo of Joseph Smith.
It doesn't much resemble any of the pictures done in his lifetime if you ask me. That and the "miraculous" provenance, make me skeptical.
That makes me skeptical, as well, Blixa.
Asbestosman, You're a distant relative of Joseph Smith? That's interesting!
beastie wrote:So you think it's a hoax, or that it just isn't Joseph Smith?
Someone on MAD made a good point, which is that Joseph Smith was usually portrayed with a receding hairline, which this fellow did not have.
Who knows? It sounds like it will be hard to trace the provenance and it also sounds like the person who "discovered" it does not have the background or means to do this. If I recall correctly, he's trying to interest others (the church?) in doing this, but so far has not been able to get support.
I didn't read the thread at MAD, I'm going from an exchange with the guy on runtu's blog. Is there not a link at MAD to the blog of the guy who found the thing?
Edited to add:
here's a link to the guy's blog where he lays out his case:
On the face of it, the daguerrotype is not as unusual as the "discoverer" (and possibly the author(s) of the book in which the reproduction was found) think. The fact that it was colorized and placed in a "portable" frame is not unusual (I can't determine if it is a cart de visite or a cabinet photo, for example, but both could have similar treatments).
As you can see from the exchange in his blog, this "anarchist" is not schooled in these matters and resentful of comments from scholars and academics. Never a good sign. And not particularly the sign of anarchy he may suppose...
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
He is supposed to be getting some scanned color copies to post soon. It will be interesting to see them.
If you ask me, it was fortuitous that he found this one. Even though the chance it is actually Joseph Smith Jr. is nil, at least it helps people be more skeptical of the Scannel daguerrotype which is being pushed so heavily by it's promoters.
Alter Idem wrote:I see you found the link to his website.
He is supposed to be getting some scanned color copies to post soon. It will be interesting to see them.
If you ask me, it was fortuitous that he found this one. Even though the chance it is actually Joseph Smith Jr. is nil, at least it helps people be more skeptical of the Scannel daguerrotype which is being pushed so heavily by it's promoters.
I don't see what people see in that "pretender to the throne;" I think it looks even less like Smith than this one.
It's not impossible that someone could stumble on something cold, what I don't appreciate is this fellow's supposedly anarachistic "take it to the people cuz the authorities are protecting their stuck-up reputations" BS he's flustering with. Calling your bishop and his first counselor is not a very promising way to establish an artifact's provenance. Contacting someone, either in the church or not, with some expertise in antique photograpy and its history, is.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
They was available before only in Dialogue or Sunstone.
Will we read something about the wives of the first seven prophet on LDS.org in the near future?
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco - To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
I have no idea whether the picture this guy found is really of Joseph Smith or not, but I will say that it certainly looks like a good match for the death mask. The nose, the size and shape of the lips, the positioning and size of the cheek bones, and the shape and size of the chin, and the arching of the eye sockets, all look like a good match.
And the guy is right, the man in that daguerrotype certainly looks like he thinks he's an important dude. It may or may not be the real Joseph Smith, but I bet whoever it is could probably pass for Joseph Smith, giving the resemblance to the death mask. For someone like this wannabe anarchist dude, bent on LDS hero worship, I think it's a no-brainer to pursue this and try to establish a provenance for this image that can be traced back, or not, to Nauvoo.
If this were in fact a picture of Joseph Smith I'd think the LDS church would be all over it. I'd think they'd be all over it anyhow, trying to confirm or deny that it is in fact Joseph Smith. It's not a bad picture at all, and certainly would do more good than harm to the church.
For that matter, the guy who owns this daguerrotype right now would be pretty smart to try to confirm or deny that it's Joseph Smith. If he could establish that it was Joseph Smith, he could make a mint selling reproductions of it to the eager LDS hero-worshiping masses through Deseret Book or whatever.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
Alter Idem wrote:I see you found the link to his website.
He is supposed to be getting some scanned color copies to post soon. It will be interesting to see them.
If you ask me, it was fortuitous that he found this one. Even though the chance it is actually Joseph Smith Jr. is nil, at least it helps people be more skeptical of the Scannel daguerrotype which is being pushed so heavily by it's promoters.
I don't see what people see in that "pretender to the throne;" I think it looks even less like Smith than this one.
It's not impossible that someone could stumble on something cold, what I don't appreciate is this fellow's supposedly anarachistic "take it to the people cuz the authorities are protecting their stuck-up reputations" BS he's flustering with. Calling your bishop and his first counselor is not a very promising way to establish an artifact's provenance. Contacting someone, either in the church or not, with some expertise in antique photograpy and its history, is.
I've been back and forth with others on the Scannel Daguerrotype. I've mentioned that I think the young man is a Smith--he certainly has familiar Smith features. But to me, it's clear his face is different from the death mask and I trust my eyes enough to say he's too young to be Joseph(the window of time for Joseph to have had his picture taken is between 34 to 38 years old and the guy in the photo looks early 20's). The provenance is that it was donated by the Scannel family to the RLDS church in 1969. They thought it was Joseph Smith--but it's clear that the RLDS archivers disagreed. It wasn't until someone rediscovered it in the 1990's that they wanted to push it as the first picture of Joseph.
The Daguerrotype has a date of 1854 on the back and says Illinois. The promoters think the one they have is a copy of an earlier one--so that would mean there were two copies and one is still missing. A bit far-fetched since we're supposed to believe that no one knew he had his picture taken and yet there were two by 1854 in existence.
As for Anarchist, I agree and the jury is still out on his story. If someone is able to confirm that the daguerrotype is in a book as he claims (poster STN9 of MADB is checking on it) and if the museum independently corroborates that the original dag. is in their exhibit and we can find out more of the provenance from the person who actually owns it--then we'll have an interesting mystery to delve into. But I'm not sure how anyone could "prove" it's Joseph.
Sethbag wrote:I have no idea whether the picture this guy found is really of Joseph Smith or not, but I will say that it certainly looks like a good match for the death mask. The nose, the size and shape of the lips, the positioning and size of the cheek bones, and the shape and size of the chin, and the arching of the eye sockets, all look like a good match.
And the guy is right, the man in that daguerrotype certainly looks like he thinks he's an important dude. It may or may not be the real Joseph Smith, but I bet whoever it is could probably pass for Joseph Smith, giving the resemblance to the death mask. For someone like this wannabe anarchist dude, bent on LDS hero worship, I think it's a no-brainer to pursue this and try to establish a provenance for this image that can be traced back, or not, to Nauvoo.
If this were in fact a picture of Joseph Smith I'd think the LDS church would be all over it. I'd think they'd be all over it anyhow, trying to confirm or deny that it is in fact Joseph Smith. It's not a bad picture at all, and certainly would do more good than harm to the church.
For that matter, the guy who owns this daguerrotype right now would be pretty smart to try to confirm or deny that it's Joseph Smith. If he could establish that it was Joseph Smith, he could make a mint selling reproductions of it to the eager LDS hero-worshiping masses through Deseret Book or whatever.
I agree, the face seems to match the death mask very well. The man in the photo is certainly handsome and stands out from the average "joe" of his time(pun intended:). As I said to my daughter when I first saw it--it was almost too good a likeness. I thought it could be an internet hoax at first--but if it's proven to be in this book and the original is for real, in a museum, then it's no hoax.
I'm not sure the church wants any more Hofmann scandals and they are probably smart not to get too involved. Let others do the digging. Even if this really is Joseph Smith Jr., I just am not sure how there would be any way to prove it. All we know so far is that it came out of New York in 1845 and that's not much to go on considering that in his day, there were over 200,000 people in New York city. We'd have to have some other kind of evidence come to light to support the possibility of it being him and there's little chance of that.
So, I doubt we'll see it for sale in Deseret book any time soon:)
