John William Draper
The answer to the question “What does he look like?” was first answered in Egypt during the reign of Akhenaten. More naturalistic representations of the face became common. But it always remained up to the interpretation of the artist, right up the invention of photography. Progress was made and in 1839 the first photographic portraits were created. John William Draper was a man of many firsts. He was born in 1811 in England, to a Wesleyan father. He learned many new things, including science, history, philosophy, chemistry and photography while moving around with his family, until the death of his father in 1831. He then emigrated to the USA, hoping to become a teacher at a Methodist college.
He became first president of the American Chemical Society, a founder of the New York University Medical School; in photography he developed the Grotthuss–Draper law, one of the fundamental laws of photography. He is responsible for several inventions and wrote about some of Darwin's ideas. He created the first full frame photograph of the moon in 1840 and created this photograph around the same time. We see a woman wearing a demure bonnet. The answer to the question “Who does she look like?” is “Dorothy Catherine Draper”, John Draper’s sister. Yet another first: it is the first full portrait, a true likeness, of a woman's face. It is also may be the first photograph to be taken in the USA, taking a full 65 seconds of exposure. “This”, John would perhaps have said, “This is what my sister looks like”. One of the prints came to be in the possession of Sir John Herschel.
- Erik