An African American with Dwarfism, Circa 1863

This picture preserves a moment few cameras ever caught — an African American With Dwarfism, Circa 1863. It was taken around 1863, and like the best archival images it needs almost no explanation — the frame tells its own story.

The 1860s was the first decade in which photography documented events on a large scale. Wet-plate cameras were hauled to battlefields and city streets, and portrait studios spread through towns on both sides of the Atlantic, making a photograph an ordinary family possession for the first time.

Most photography of the period chased celebrities and headlines, which makes surviving images of daily routine all the more precious. This is what the world actually looked like when nobody thought it was worth remembering.