From the birth of photography, practitioners played with the medium. They exploited the ability to make two things present on a single image. These vintage tintypes show that those who always look so serious in old pictures really did have a sense of humor.

ca. 1900, [trick tintype portrait of Cornelius C. Kenney holding his own decapitated head], Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute

unknown

unknown