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Is This Brigham Young?


Uncle Dale

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The picture may soon be offered for sale at an auction (along with other Mormon materal found with it) ...

bb.jpg

(notice the hint of a face mole just left of the mouth)...

?????

Uncle Dale

.

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The picture may soon be offered for sale at an auction (along with other Mormon materal found with it) ...

(notice the hint of a face mole just left of the mouth)...

?????

Uncle Dale

Looks like him. It's not in bad condition; hand-tinted, too.

Absent a positive identification from some source, the best method would be to compare it to a known (later) photograph of Brigham. Resize them so that the faces are the same size and then see if the facial proportions match--e.g. the distance between the eyes, the width of the nose, distance from eyes to mouth, etc.

Regards,

Pahoran

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Looks like him. It's not in bad condition; hand-tinted, too.

Absent a positive identification from some source, the best method would be to compare it to a known (later) photograph of Brigham. Resize them so that the faces are the same size and then see if the facial proportions match--e.g. the distance between the eyes, the width of the nose, distance from eyes to mouth, etc.

Regards,

Pahoran

The pic will be offered for sale at Swann Auction Gallery, NYC, in the near future. One observer

suggests that the man is Phinehas Young -- dunno about that. Will no doubt sell for a goodly sum.

I do not have that kind of money -- would be lucky just to pay the grocery bill this month.

But somebody will no doubt be the happy winner... I wish them all the best.

UD

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I'm working on a composite of UD's image with the one below (the orientation of the head in this image is closest to UD's image, at least among the images I have at hand).

250px-Brigham_Young.jpg

Question: in the picture above, the mole is on the right side of the face (from the viewer's perspective). Can someone clarify the actual location of the mole? That would help in compositing (knowing whether I need to horizontally flip the image, etc.).

Best.

CKS

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The eyes, nose, upper lip and moles are quite different.

bycompac7.jpg

I agree with your assessment of the upper lip. On the other hand, compositing the images reveals that the proportion/spatial distribution of the eyes, nose, and lips is very close. Perhaps that owes more to the uniformity of human facial geometry than anything else. But, it really is close.

UD's lips have an upward tilt. Not so in my image (in which they're downward). Evidence of the weight of worries?

Your far right image appears to be of a fairly-young BY. The lips in your far-left image mirror those in your far-right. The lips in UD's image are apparently problematic in terms of a positive identification.

Hmmm...

Best.

CKS

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I'm working on a composite of UD's image with the one below (the orientation of the head in this image is closest to UD's image, at least among the images I have at hand).

Question: in the picture above, the mole is on the right side of the face (from the viewer's perspective). Can someone clarify the actual location of the mole? That would help in compositing (knowing whether I need to horizontally flip the image, etc.).

Best.

CKS

It could be a simple photographic reversal; that happens with modern photographs as well. If it is, then note that the hair parting is reversed as well. It's worth a try. Note that the jaw on the questioned photo seems deeper than the one on the known one.

Regards,

Pahoran

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It could be a simple photographic reversal; that happens with modern photographs as well. If it is, then note that the hair parting is reversed as well. It's worth a try. Note that the jaw on the questioned photo seems deeper than the one on the known one.

Regards,

Pahoran

Flipping the known image horizontally, unfortunately, throws off the entire cant of the head. The facial features are out of alignment. On the other hand, the hairstyle is almost eerily identical after the reversal. Maybe it was just a popular style?

Goodness.

Best.

CKS

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How could this be him? He looks much younger? :P

That reminds me of a story.

Paddy and Michael were walking past a post office in Belfast when bomb exploded. A head rolled out of the door. Paddy said, "Michael! Isn't that your brother Sean?"

Michael replied, "Oh no. He's taller than that."

Regards,

Pahoran

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bycomp3nj3.jpg

Is it me, or does Brigham Young look hot in this picture?

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by.jpg

This proves nothing, obviously.

I just traced some key features of the unknown image and attempted to line them up with the known. I've flipped the tracing and rotated it just a bit for overlay on the known image. The horizontal flip makes the hairstyles match quite well. The line of the eyebrows in both images are interestingly similar after the horizontal flip as well (although I haven't highlighted that particularly well).

Significant differences:

UD's lips are much fuller.

UD's eyes are significantly taller.

?

CKS

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I'm wondering the time period for the picture. Did you give a date for this picture? This guy looks pretty young. The likeness is similar--the hairstyle being the same is not a good indicator though--it was probably a popular hairstyle for the time.

UD, I don't see the "hint of a mole" though(edited to say, never mind--I see what you are talking about if the picture is flipped). BY's mole is pretty raised and I would expect it to show more prominently in earlier pictures as well.

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Let's say this is a daguerreotype of Brigham at 30 years old. The person in the photo can't be much older. It would have been done around 1830.

from wikipedia (I'm not going in depth to scholarly sources so don't kill me :P).

"Swiss painter and printmaker Johann Baptist Isenring used a mixture of gum arabic and pigments to make the first coloured daguerreotype in 1840 or 1841."

Could this picture have been coloured possibly 10 years after it was made? I don't know much about the history of photography. The simple math of adding and subtracting years is about all that I can think of to identify if this is Brigham or not.

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by2.jpg

Another brief study with photograph of an older BY compared with the unknown image.

The shape of the faces (again, especially with regard to the eyes and mouths) just don't seem much of a match.

Best.

CKS

PS. I've tried very diligently to keep the facial proportions roughly equivalent (as much so as possible). Whether or not I've succeeded in that is a matter of opinion, I suppose.

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Let's say this is a daguerreotype of Brigham at 30 years old. The person in the photo can't be much older. It would have been done around 1830.

from wikipedia (I'm not going in depth to scholarly sources so don't kill me :P).

"Swiss painter and printmaker Johann Baptist Isenring used a mixture of gum arabic and pigments to make the first coloured daguerreotype in 1840 or 1841."

Could this picture have been coloured possibly 10 years after it was made? I don't know much about the history of photography. The simple math of adding and subtracting years is about all that I can think of to identify if this is Brigham or not.

Thanks Oats, that information helps. However, it sounds like it is not possible for this picture to be any earlier than 1839(given the history of photography), and since Brigham Young was born in 1801, there can be no photographic likenesses of him before he is 38 years old.

Though I think this looks like him, in my opinion, there is no way this 19th century man is 38 by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe that's why UD said the suggestion is that it could be Phineas Young.

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The pic will be offered for sale at Swann Auction Gallery, NYC, in the near future. One observer

suggests that the man is Phinehas Young -- dunno about that. Will no doubt sell for a goodly sum.

I just checked on Phinehas Young. If they are suggesting Phinehas Young, Brigham's brother, I'd say it's not him either. He's Brigham's older brother and in my opinion, the man in the photo is younger.

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No way is that Brigham Young! Unless he had a nose transplant! This guy's nose looks exactly like mine, and I can't think of any way that a nose can go from a turned up ski slope to a straight nose without cutting the end of it off.

there could be more to this post than meets the eye...what are you implying? . . . :P<_<

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