Unidentified man with fake snow

A carte-de-visite portrait of an unidentified man posed with deposits of fake snow on his hat and shoulders.

Photographed by 'Le Chevalier Lafosse' of Manchester and Higher Broughton [a suburb of Salford].

Born in or about 1840, Augustus Frederick Alfred Lafosse appears on the 1871 census living at 4 Rock Mount, Broughton, with his wife Mary, his 62-year-old mother, also Mary, his four daughters, aged between two and nine, and his son Charles, aged six. Also present on the night of the census were two domestic servants. Although the census claims he was born in Norwich, according to his naturalisation papers, filed only a few months later, he was in fact Belgian. Other censuses give his place of birth as Brussels. He was already working as a photographer in 1861 and he was still a photographer in 1911. He died in 1927, aged 87, and was buried on 3 May at St Luke's, Cheetham Hill.