Napoleon Sarony

For our class this week we were assigned a famous photographer from the 1800’s to research. I was assigned a man named Napoleon Sarony. Sarony is known for his portraiture of many famous individuals, including Mark Twain. Twain was the author of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and the sequel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.

Napoleon Sarony was born in Quebec in 1821 and moved to New York City in 1836. After working as an illustrator for some time at a company known as Currier and Ives, he decided to open his own lithography business with a man named, James Major. Lithography is a method in which to print images using stone or sometimes a metal plate. After exhausting his business in lithography Sarony decided to open his own photography studio in New York City. During his time as a photography studio owner, many distinguished people were interested in having portraits done of them. Sarony was wed twice and passed in 1891.

Sarony was the first to deal with copyright issues. Back in Sarony’s time copyright didn’t apply to photographs. An image was released of Edgar Allen Poe after his untimely death and Sarony had chosen to fight for the rights to the image that he had taken. Today, many photographers have been influenced by Napoleon Sarony due to this. Every photographer employs copyrights to their images. For this, we can thank Napoleon Sarony.