View of a Barn in New Hampshire

In this view in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Mount Tom, one of the eastern mountains north of Crawford Notch, is visible in the distance, its peak echoing the roof of the plain barn in the center of the image. The photographer Samuel Bemis had come for a holiday visit in the summer, no doubt eager to experiment with his newly purchased daguerreotype camera outfit. One of the earliest surviving outdoor scenes of North America, its foreboding sky actually results from unintentional solarization of the daguerreotype plate, which caused the photograph's highlights to begin to "reverse" into a negative image.