BROOKLYN & THE “JUMPING SELFIE” (1886)
Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes.
The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
Do you know the history of YOUR house?
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In 1886, there was a LOT of jumping on Livingston Street.
That year, a man by the name of Wallace G. Levison, an amateur photographer who lived on the street with his family, was testing a new type of film along with its ability to capture subjects in the process of motion.
As the dawn of the 20th century approached, newer, more sensitive film emulsions were being developed that allowed pictures to be taken with faster and faster shutter speeds.
Levison was set on experimenting with them.
An avid photographer, he used the new technology both as a scientific tool and a recreational activity.
In addition to being an amateur photographer, Levison was a chemist, inventor, and lecturer who founded the Departments of Mineralogy and Astronomy at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in the latter half of the 19th century.
He may have also invented the concept of the “jumping selfie.”
ORGANIZING SHUTTERBUGS
Born at 1435 Pacific Street, Brooklyn (where – except for the 1880s-1900s – he would live for most of his life) in 1846, Levison attended Cooper Union, New York City’s prestigious free school for the sciences and arts, and graduated with a BS from Harvard in 1870.
He was a member of the New York Mineralogical Club, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Brooklyn Academy of Photography, devoting most of his early career to the development of arc lamps, patenting several designs that proved extremely profitable. Clearly, light was an abiding interest of Levison’s…
Levison became an extremely skilled and technically adept photographer, devoting considerable effort to attempting to capture on film such low-level light phenomena as outdoor displays of electric lights and fireworks.
Levison, along with his friend and fellow amateur photographers, George B. Brainerd, who began working with amateur photography in 1858 when he was 13 years old, and James Lefferts Cornell, M D., of No. 33 Monroe Place, Brooklyn Heights, had founded, in 1887 the lofty sounding Brooklyn Academy of Photography.
The Brooklyn Academy of Photography was founded with a mission to advance photography “in its scientific, historical, artistic and technical aspects.”
INVENTING THE “JUMPING SELFIE”
Before the Academy was founded, however, Levison snapped a number of pictures of people in motion, many of which he took in, amongst other locations, his backyard at No. 314 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, Washington Park (today, Fort Greene Park), and Coney Island. One of the subjects of his photographs was fellow Academy member, Dr. James L. Cornell.
The following four “jumping selfie” photographs were snapped behind Levison’s home, No. 314 Livingston Street (these are followed by “jumping selfie” shots taken elsewhere):
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Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
