Editor’s Note: What We See Doth Lie

Some years ago I taught History of Photography at Iowa State University (Dr. Emily Godbey now teaches that course), and sometimes citizens would visit my office asking me to comment on an antique photo they found in their attic or barn and to speculate about its market value. One woman brought in a nineteenth-century studio portrait of a family group. She believed it was an unknown and unpublished photograph of Abraham Lincoln, his wife, and children. If this assessment proved true, the image would certainly count as a valuable and historically significant discovery. I told her that the man in the picture did not look much like Lincoln to me but more important was the fact that the photo appeared to be a gelatin-paper cabinet card, a process not in use until at least ten years