Walk-In Camera Obscura

The camera obscura, sometimes naturally occurring, sometimes purpose-built, is an optical device that demonstrates how light can be used to create an image. Step inside a walk-in camera obscura and experience the basic principles of photography firsthand.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | STEM Lab (Mezzanine Level)

Hand-tinted Images

Before color photography, artists and photographers brought portraits to life by hand-tinting black-and-white images with delicate layers of watercolor, ink, or pastel. In this activity, guests will explore the same idea using colored pencils to add their own creative touches to black-and-white prints.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | Sun Classroom (Mezzanine Level)

Portraits of Empowerment

Photography today is instantaneous – with the click of a button on our phones, we have a digital image that appears like magic! It is a very different medium of creation than photographs from the 19th Century. As part of this activity, participants will reflect on the various reasons why people have their portrait taken, and create a portrait to take home with them.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | Sun Classroom (Mezzanine Level)

Collodion Craze: Wet Plate Photography in 1850's Cincinnati

In the 1850s, photography, and more specifically wet plate photography, was all the rage. An important stepping stone to modern photography, early practitioners of wet plate delt with hazardous chemicals on the daily, all in search of that perfect shot. Get hands-on time with a replica wet-plate camera (minus the hazardous chemicals), then compare it to early 20th-century innovations like the Kodak Brownie, which brought photography into everyday life.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | Sun Classroom (Mezzanine Level)

J.P. Ball’s Splendid, Mammoth Pictorial Tour of the United States: The World’s Only African American, Abolitionist Panorama (1855)

Presented by Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller

Discover the remarkable story of J.P. Ball’s enormous panorama (1855) of the slave trade, a powerful critique of the Fugitive Slave Law, painted by Black artists. Examining newspaper accounts and advertisements, as well as photographs, this presentation contextualizes Ball’s lost masterpiece and his place in abolitionist movement of the U.S. After the lecture, join Dr. Leininger-Miller in the exhibition, “Equal to Any in the City”: Ball and Thomas Photographs, 1840s–1870s for further discussion and up-close look at Ball’s work.

2 to 2:30 p.m. – Presentation and Q&A | Newsreel Theater
2:45 to 3:15 p.m. – Gallery Presence | “Equal to Any in the City:” Ball & Thomas Photographs 1840s–1870s