Hello, this is Carl Raymond, host of the Gilded Gentleman History podcast where every two weeks we journey into worlds light and dark in America's

Gilded Age, France's Belle-Puc, and England's late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Today's celebrities are nothing, one could say, without seemingly endless images of them

posted on all aspects of digital media, as well as in print and on film.

What we see is, well, how we often think of them.

Those images create a public perception, whether intentional or not, and solidify the images

we carry of them in our minds.

It makes us feel like we know them, whether of course we do or not.

But none of this is really very new. In fact, as a result of a convergence of technology,

art, and the creative vision of one particular photographer, the art of celebrity photography

can be said to have had its origins in America's Gilded Age. Photography as an art was developing quickly post-Civil War, and with transportation networks

and printing capabilities also evolving with tremendous speed, any public figures carefully

staged and posed image could be seen across the country, and by many who could never or would never see them in person.

One fascinating and endlessly curious artist, the photographer Napoleon Seroni found himself

at a unique crossroads in the cultural development of America. He had a vision, he had the technology,

and he had the talent to create a whole new way of looking at America's most well-known personalities and making it a business.

His famous studio located in Manhattan's Union Square was an essential destination for luminaries

such as Oscar Wilde, Sarah Berenhardt, and Mark Twain,

among so many others. By looking at Saroni's widely distributed photographs of them today,

we feel we somehow know them, or at least we know what they and Napoleon Sironi wanted us

to know of them.

We know their names, of course, but the name of this photographic artist, entrepreneur,

...