Reading St. Nicholas (Self-Portrait with Anne Cady), October 13, 1887

The technical advances of the 1880s, including the invention of the dry-plate negative, allowed amateur photographers to record the events of daily life like never before. Henry Cady worked with a small tripod-mounted camera to record his family in and around their home in suburban New Jersey and in Rhode Island. Intrigued by the nature of photographic seeing itself, Cady explored a variety of approaches and effects; he experimented with unorthodox viewpoints, a telephoto lens, and unusual subjects. Unconcerned with issues of "fine art," amateurs like Cady laid the groundwork for a modern understanding of the potentials of photography's optical-mechanical nature.