It's Arbor Day

Plant—or hug—a tree!

This charming 1893 photograph was taken by an unidentified artist. At that time, cameras were accessible to almost anyone.

Under the slogan "Cameras for the Millions," in 1881 the E.& H. T. Anthony firm began marketing 5-x-8-inch and 4-x-5-inch camera equipment and George Eastman's commercial dry plates to the modern amateur photographer.

Soon many other simple portable cameras flooded the market, making the formerly complicated process of photography a pastime for thousands of Americans. According to an 1883 article in the New York Times, it was now common to see "nicely dressed young fellows loaded down with cameras and tripods at the trains and steam-boats" on their way to the country to photograph "a bit of romantic landscape, river, or mountainside."

With shutter speeds of about 1/20th a second, amateurs delighted in making "instantaneous" pictures of family and friends. The Kodak—Eastman's first successful film camera, introduced in 1888—gave everyone the means to document his or her life as well as pursue an artistic hobby.

Source: Merry A. Foresta. American Photographs: The First Century (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996).

Pictured: Unidentified artist, active 19th century, Beatrice Thom on Tree, Haddonfield, New Jersey, 1893, silver print on paper mounted on paperboard, 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.