President Lincoln - 1862
Copyright Albert Kaplan 1983
(click on image for the
full daguerreotype plate)
Posted on 02/13/2007 3:32:34 PM PST by PJ-Comix
President Lincoln - 1862 |
Copyright Albert Kaplan 1983 (click on image for the full daguerreotype plate) |
In 1977 Albert Kaplan purchased the daguerreotype receipted as "Portrait of a Young Man" from an art gallery in New York. "When I first saw it I thought that there were similarities between the handsome, aristocratic, and tastefully groomed young man of the daguerreotype, and my mental image of President Lincoln."
Over the years Kaplan researched and assembled materials which cast light on the physical man, Lincoln. Kaplan believed that the best qualified people to analyze the image, and the assembled materials, to consider whether the daguerreotype is of Abraham Lincoln, would be plastic and reconstructive surgeons who work with the human face. In 1987 Kaplan, then living in Paris, sought out Dr. Claude N. Frechette, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at the American Hospital in Paris, whose report "A New Lincoln Image" is here included. A second report, "Artifact Description of Kaplan Daguerreotype", is by Grant B. Romer, Conservator of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film in Rochester, New York.
The only other known, and hitherto earliest, daguerreotype of Lincoln, Meserve #1, in the possession of the Library of Congress, was a gift of Robert Todd Lincoln to Frederick Hill Meserve. Meserve reported that "Lincoln believed it was made in Washington in 1848".
In 1965, the New York Academy of Sciences published "Abraham Lincoln's Philosophy Of Common Sense - An Analytical Biography of a Great Mind", by Edward J. Kempf, M.D., a neurologist and psychiatrist whose interest in Lincoln began when he first saw the Volk life mask, from which he inferred that Lincoln must have suffered a serious cranial injury in childhood. After investigating further, Dr. Kempf found Lincoln's own account of having been kicked in the forehead by a horse at age 10 years and "thought dead for awhile." The nature of the cerebral damage, and how it might have influenced the development of Lincoln's personality and mind became a question of absorbing interest to the author. The resulting analytical biography was the product of the author's 12 subsequent years of research.
Because the trauma-induced deformations of Lincoln's face, distinctly described by Dr. Kempf, are seen unmistakably in the Kaplan daguerreotype, providing in themselves compelling evidence in support of the daguerreotype's authenticity, we reprint the Kempf analysis (from the title page to the end of Chapter I of Volume I).
An earlier Kempf study of Lincoln's cranial injury appeared in the April 1952 American Medical Association (AMA) Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, Volume 67, Number 4, entitled, "Abraham Lincoln's Organic and Emotional Neurosis".
Just for argument's sake, is it possible the the right picture of Lincoln has his head tilted downward more than the person in the left picture?
Notice how much of the ear is above the LC line on the right, and the lobe above the LN line, vs. on the left.
Also, see how much of the underside of the nose is visible above the LN line on the left vs. the right?
If Lincoln on the right were tilting his head lower, could that not explain the apparently stronger chin?
-PJ
Dude, dude....ever hear the expression "Can't see the forest for the trees?"
I remember that auction. I did not believe it was him then, and I do not believe it now.
For argument's sake, examining those two photos....NO.
I see the top list of presidents on your profile, so apparently there is no moving you on the issue. Thats alright though. I have my thoughts on the man, as do you; however, mine are not near as favorable.
but then his eyes and hairline wouldn't match up.
The young Lincoln is described as 6 foot 4 and about 210-215 pounds, enormously strong, and an exceptional athlete.
About the same size and weight as Art Monk in his playing days.
It's not him; the chins look different.
I shudder to ask for your list of Presidents...would it at all resemble my 'bottom' list by any chance?
bttt
No, that's not true. I posed this question to a plastic surgeon, who told me that with age, one's facial skin fatty deposits usually retract (if that's the right word), making the nose appear to have grown larger. The nose itself does not increase in size, it just seems that way.
I hope that I explained that correctly.
This is a great thread.
You're not allowing for the growth of the upper jaw in relation to the lower one and apparent loss or change in tooth alignment.
I say that because the alignment of the mole on the left cheek in relation to the eye above indicates about enough degree variance in horizontal and vertical relationships to make the ear in the young Dag appear lower than it is in the latter.
In the Dag of the older Abe, the mole alignment is almost directly underneath the iris of the eye. In the younger Abe, the mole has about a ten degree tilt to the right which would result in making the ear appear lower along your alignment markings.
Yeah, and migrate to the stomach (men) or the a** (women)....
Your jaw keeps growing after 30!!!???
Does the Nobel Committee know about this new learning, Sir Bedemere?
See #195.
I don't do drugs.
I agree.
The photo at post #24 does look like him, though.
Good Catch. The owner has been trying to hawk that picture off on some rube for years. I guess he got tired of American Ebay. At one time there was another photo posted on Ebay, with a megabuck buy in now price, allegedly of Young Lincoln and Mary Todd. If any credible institution or Lincoln scholar believed this photo is real, they would have purchased it by now.
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