This post over at Hippolyte Bayard made me think about the photograph as an object again. I’m not necessarily drawn to the process that created the tintype in the photo above - one of the many tintypes I bought on Ebay so far. But the process, along with a subject having his portrait taken, along with some lucky chance that had one of the many tintype photographers produce a stand-out image - the combination of all of that resulted in a little object that I managed to buy for a very small amount of money (a few bucks). And that little object - just like pretty much all the other ones I own (I “curate” my own collection by selecting what I think are good portraits) - possesses something that its scan lacks (I scanned all my tintypes): It has a real presence.