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Two Young Women - Tintype from W. C. Billington & Co. Cliff Photo Gallery

This tintype has multiple appeals to us. Two young women wearing men's top hats sit for a tintype before a naively painted backdrop of the 1896 to 1907 Cliff House in San Francisco. There was a photo studio next to Cliff House for many years.

 

We are especially interested in this generation of Cliff House as part of our research in the history of the camera obscura. There is a free standing camera obscura at the current cliff house but there was also one in the south west tower of the cliff house pictured here. I am posting a cabinet card of this cliff house with a detail showing the turret with the camera obscura lens.

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Uploaded on October 2, 2012