New Booth Pic?

[HistoryFan]

Again, just theorizing ... we're talking about John Wilkes Booth, the passionate, spirited and dramatic young man thwarted in his attempts to join the Confederate Army by a promise he made to his mother. While a "normal" Confederate operative might prefer to be totally incognito, perhaps he wanted to see how he looked in his hat.

I like the way the man is gazing resolutely at some distant focus, rather than looking into the camera, as though he had some noble purpose. His pose (that distant gaze) reminds me of Edwin Forrest's classic pose as Metamora, the popular 19th century play in which Forrest portrayed an Indian chief who turned to violence only by force.

In addition, how many 1860s photos have you seen of a man posing in a fox skin hat inside a photo studio? Yet we know, through contemporary accounts, that John Wilkes Booth did so (although that photo has never been found). He engaged in the burgeoning technology of photography far more than most citizens of the era.

As I mentioned earlier on this thread, when I asked Donald Serfass about the proximity of the Baily photography studio to the barber shop, he responded, "The barber shop and the photo studio were located LESS than one block apart on the same side of the main street."