This has been doing the rounds. You may have seen it (I'm copying from the AHA website). But it still impresses me. It's a guy called Robert Cornelius (1809-93) who took a daguerrotype photo of himself outside a shop in Philadelphia. This was in 1839. And now he lives forever, young, punkish, timeless.
I imagine, for a moment, writing something that evoked lived reality in the past with that kind of vividness....
Update: Not entirely unrelated but pushing the bounds of the discipline a bit, there's a slightly not-safe-for-work site called Bangable Dudes in History (some dames too), which should be all over this.
