“Reminiscence. A shadow appears in the upper right corner of the photograph—at first taken to be a defect. Upon closer examination it can be seen to be a leaf that belongs to the floral pattern on the fabric of the backdrop―the leaf lifting upward. The figures posed, the necessity of their remaining absolutely still, the figures frozen on the print, for all time a reminiscence, a mother with her child at her side, and in her arms an infant, the infant sleeping, the unadorned gray of the woman’s dress with its high-standing collar. The woman stares into the lens of the camera the way she has been instructed; the child clings to her dress; the closed eyes give an odd countenance to the infant.
There, I hear Lucie say, as she hands the finished portrait to the woman―you are fixed, the sun has captured you. It’s extraordinary. Don’t you think it’s extraordinary? Your image has been fixed on this print by the power of light.”

From The Absent, Part 1, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1859