A period newspaper account stated the model in this photograph was one Miss Emma McCormick, taken by Hamilton, Ohio portrait photographer Charles Doty with outstretched arms against a backdrop of stars most likely added during the engraving process by the New York Photogravure Company. Doty, according to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, which owns hundreds of his original photographs, went on to become the “official photographer of the United States government in Havana,” and his duties included documenting the modernization of Cuba under American governorship.

print notes recto: engraved below image on plate:

STARLIGHT

By Chas. E. Doty, Hamilton, O.