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, the backdrop of stars behind the model were most likely added during the engraving process, although magnification reveals they may have been added by hand. 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,” with duties including the documentation of the modernization of Cuba under American governorship.

Charles Edward Doty: 1863-1921

Charles Doty was born in Middletown, Ohio, in 1863. A photographer and engraver, he had served in Cuba during the Spanish American War as a private and unofficial company photographer in a volunteer engineer regiment. He stayed on as an official photographer for the U. S. forces in Cuba and when the American military occupation ended, moved to the Philippines (acquired in the aftermath of the Spanish American War) where he joined the bureau of printing of the Office of Insular Affairs. In Manila, he worked as a photographer and engraver, and as an instructor in engraving. In 1920, Charles Doty resigned from his position because of illness and returned to the United States.—Massachusetts Historical Society