Partners With the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840-1940

A snapshot of the lives of the state’s celebrated and little-known photographers

Partners with the Sun recounts the history of the men and women who captured a century of South Carolina images, from photography’s introduction in the state through 1940. Beginning with William H. Ellet, a South Carolina College professor who was the first in the state to experiment with the new technology, Harvey S. Teal records carefully researched biographical information about six hundred professional photographers who worked throughout South Carolina. He showcases their work with more than three hundred examples of daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite, cabinets, stereographs, panoramas, and other types of photographs. While the images provide a one-hundred-year pictorial panorama of South Carolina, the biographical entries rescue from obscurity the men and women who made a business of recording the state’s landscapes, streetscapes, architecture, people, social life, and economic endeavors.

Dividing the century into historical periods, Teal groups the photographers by the towns in which they operated studios. Additionally, he profiles amateur photographers who participated in significant projects, such as those who produced the more than three thousand photographs taken of the Penn School on St. Helena Island in Beaufort County. In response to the increasing interest in female photographers, African American photographers, photography as a business, and the production of picture postcards, stereographs, and panoramas, Teal devotes a chapter to each of these topics. He highlights local and national events of the century and chronicles advances in photographic technology, to place the photographers in their historical contexts.

Harvey S. Teal, a lifelong resident of South Carolina, holds a master’s degree from the University of South Carolina. A retired educator, school administrator, and former supervisor of instructional technology for the South Carolina Department of Education, he currently devotes his time to historical research. An expert on South Carolina philately, he is an author of South Carolina Postal History and Illustrated Catalog of Postmarks and South Carolina Postoffices and Postmasters, 1860-1865. Teal lives in Columbia, South Carolina.