Crayon Enlargement Portraits – Lost Faces – Gathering African American History

Crayon Enlargement Portraits were popular between the late 1890s and early 1900s. They provided an affordable way to capture and display large-format portraits, offering an alternative to the more expensive painted portraits of the time. The process involved taking a negative made by a local photographer and sending it to a specialist who used a solar enlarger to expose the image onto specially processed salted photographic paper. Because the enlargement process often emphasized imperfections on the negative plate, an artist would enhance the black-and-white print with pencil and crayon media, sometimes adding color.

The unidentified African American portraits featured on this website have been donated to local museums or found in antique shops. They are presented here in the hope of eventually identifying the individuals and preserving their stories.