a c1864 wet-plate stereo camera made by John Stock of NYC.
Toronto. Short answer: to our spring fair, being held May 25th, 2025. Long answer: far more complicated. Cameras from dry plates on can be easily be found, especially at our events.
Earlier daguerreotype and wet-plate cameras are much harder to find (lenses from that earliest era can be found more easily as people seemed to ‘keep’ the brass lenses and toss the beat up wooden cameras).
I suspect that relatively few original daguerreotype cameras were made, and fewer still survived as photographers and others of the time did not see them as collectible. Wet plate cameras are something else. Most were trashed. The very process demanded exposure on glass plates still dripping emulsion and sensitizing solution. This gooey mix turned the plate holding end of the wooden cameras black and caused wood rot to set in.
The photograph (at top left) is from Eaton Lothrop, Jr‘s 1973 book “A Century of Cameras“. The cameras displayed in the book reside in the GEH collection in Rochester NY. Eaton spoke to us in June, 1999 on collecting, “My 37 Years of Collecting”.
My first encounter with a wet plate camera was in Quebec. The camera was in such poor shape I passed it up not realizing that the condition confirmed it to be an authentic wet plate camera.
NB: The post title is a riff on Pete Seeger’s 1955 folk song, “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?” since sung by a multitude of singers and groups.
