Daily AncestorPhotographer
A photographer made photographs for a living, most often portraits taken in a studio.
A photographer makes photographs with a camera, and the title is used most for people who do it as a business or serious pursuit. Photographers specialized in portraits, weddings, landscapes, news and other fields.
In older census entries the word usually means a portrait photographer who kept a studio. For the earliest years of photography, look also for daguerreotypist, a maker of the first photographs on silvered plates.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1870 to 1940 census
Chas. Ott, 34, Photographer
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Photographer." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/photographer. Last checked 2026-10-10.