Margaretta Mitchell, Dance for Life: Isadora Duncan and Her California Dance Legacy at the Temple of Wings (Berkeley, Calif.: Elysian Editions, 1985). Copy 23 of 50. Rare Books: Theatre Collection (ThX) Oversize GV1785.D8 M57f

This limited edition portfolio includes an illustrated essay along with twelve photogravures of dancers inspired by and preserving the legacy of Isadora Duncan (1878-1927). Highlighted is the 1985 Oakland Museum exhibit “Dance For Life: The Bay Area Legacy of Isadora Duncan.” Mitchell’s negative were transferred to copper plates and printed by Jon Goodman in Massachusetts (see also https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2015/04/09/).

Over many years, Mitchell photographed “women and children dancing in the style of Isadora Duncan at Berkeley’s Temple of Wings. Duncan’s influence is apparent in the flowing costume, the classical open-air setting and the graceful, expressive gestures.

Dance teacher Sulgwynn Boynton Quitzow is the daughter of Duncan’s childhood friend, Florence Treadwell Boynton who shared Duncan’s vision of life lived in harmony with nature and who dedicated the Temple of Wings in 1914 to the ‘democracy and freedom of women.’”

See also: Dorothea Lange, To a cabin [by] Dorothea Lange [and] Margaretta K. Mitchell (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973). Marquand Library TR654 .L26 1973. Photography of children.

“Fred Boissonnas (1858-1946) was invited to Egypt in 1929 by King Fuad I to take photographs for the lavish publication L’Egypte (1932), and he returned to complete his Egyptian journey in 1933. During the later trip he embarked on a photographic expedition to Mount Sinai, following the route of the Israelites as recorded in the book of Exodus, and photographing the traditional biblical sites that he encountered on his journey. This work became the book project he never finished.”–Boissonnas in Egypt

Frédéric Boissonnas (1858-1946), Égypte; avec la collaboration de Gustave Jéquier, Pierre Jouguet, Henri Munier … [et autres]. Edition: 337 (Genève: Paul Trembley, 1932). “Sout la haut patronage et avec l’appui de sa Majesté Fouad 1er roi d’Egypte.” Marquand Library (SAX) Oversize DT47 .B64 1932e

Swiss photographer François-Frédéric Boissonnas (1858-1946) was 71 years old when he received the commission from the King of Egypt and Sudan, but he was up to the task having already produced two dozen books of photographs.

“L’Egypte, which was published in 1932, is a fascinating example of the art of nation-branding. Royal patronage gave Boissonnas free rein to go where he wanted (only Tutankhamun’s mummy remained out of bounds due to stipulations from Howard Carter’s editors) . . . The book featured essays on the glory days of the pharaohs, on the Greeks, Romans and Copts, and the medieval period when Islamic culture flourished. The Ottoman Empire got a brief mention (King Fuad’s ancestor was a renegade commander who seized power from the Sultan at the beginning of the 19th century) but the British protectorate was conspicuously absent. This was soft power at its most sophisticated.” –Fleur Macdonald, “The Swiss Photographer Who Rebranded Egypt,” The Economist (November 8, 2017).

The typography for this luxury publication was by the Paris firm of Ducros et Colas and the photogravures were printed in Paris by Leblanc and Trautmann (who were also Pablo Picasso’s printers). The entire edition was printed on a special handmade paper by Van Gelder of Amsterdam and each book bound in full parchment with gold ornaments and color by Jacques Wendling.

This is Boissonnas’s portrait of Fuad I (1868-1936) King of Egypt and Sudan, Sovereign of Nubia, Kordofan, and Darfur.

If you are in London over the winter holidays, you can visit the exhibition “Boissonnas in Egypt” at the Saint Catherine Foundation. We have already missed the November conference. To learn more, see: https://www.saintcatherinefoundation.org/boissonnas-in-egypt

See also his many other books, most in rotogravure (that is, printed with a screen, not continuous tone images).

Sir Alfred Edward Pease (1857-1939), Travel and Sport in Africa (London: Arthur L. Humphreys, 1902). Rare Books Off-Site Storage DT12 .P35 1902q

Princeton owns a beautiful three-volume set of Pease’s illustrated journals titled Travel and Adventure in Africa, with his personal photographs along with some by the French photographer Emile Frechon (1848-1921), the English aristocrat Sir Edmund Giles Loder, 2nd Baronet (1849-1920), and the environmentalist Edward North Buxton (1840-1924). Arthur Humphreys arranged to have several dozen printed in photogravure, providing a spectacular record of Somaliland in particular, along with other African locations. The group shown above is only a small selection. Surprisingly few document of killing of animals and focus instead on the people he and his wife met along the way.

“Pease was adventurous,” wrote his editor Peter Hathaway Capstick. “Between 1891 and 1912, he visited Asia Minor, Algeria, Tunisia and the Sahara, Somaliland, Abyssinia, Kenya, and Uganda, hunting wherever he could. He was Resident Magistrate of the Transvaal in Komatipoort, next to present-day Mozambique, from 1903 to 1905, and he worked in the Allied Remount service from 1914 to 1918. A keen explorer and hunter, Sir Alfred also sketched. He went on to write thirteen books embracing subjects as varied as wildlife, a dictionary on the North Riding dialect, and oases in Algeria!”—Editor’s note, The Book of the Lion (1911).

Pease’s epigram on the title page comes from the Latin:

Pone me pigris ubi nulla campis
Arbor a stiva recreatur aura,
Quod latus mundi nebulae, malusque
Jupiter urget.
Pone, sub curru minium propinqui
Solis in terra dominibus negata;
Dulce rideutem. Lalagen amabo,
Dulce loquentem.

Place me where never summer breeze
Unbinds the glebe, or warms the trees;
Whereever lowering clouds appear,
And angry Jove deforms th’ inclement year.
Place me beneath the burning ray,
Where rolls the rapid car of day;
Love and the nymph shall charm my toils,
The nymph who sweetly speaks, and
sweetly smiles.

Over 100 editions of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) are listed in the Princeton University Library catalogue. Many have special bindings and illustrations. One of the most unusual was published in September 1905 by Dodge Publishing Company with illustrations by the California photographer Adelaide Hanscom (later Leeson, 1876-1932).

In 1903, Hanscom gathered writers and artists to her San Francisco studio and like Julia Margaret Cameron, dressed and posed them in exotic scenes for her book’s illustrations. Joaquin Miller (the pen name of Cincinnatus Heine Miller, 1837-1913), George Sterling (1869-1926) and George Wharton James (1858-1923) are thanked individually. Charles Augustus Keeler (1871-1937) was not, nor were any of the female models.

Hanscom not only took the photographs but also drew the borders. This edition was first announced in the column “Books and Authors” in the New-York Tribune on August 26, 1905:

Omar Khayyam. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated into English verse by Edward FitzGerald; with illustrations by Adelaide Hanscom (New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1905). “… my gratitude to Joaquin Miller, George Sterling, George W. James, and others who have rendered valuable assistance in posing for these illustrations …” Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2003-1063N

 
Joaquin Miller

George Wharton James

George Sterling

 
See also
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Sonnets from the Portuguese with photographic illustrations by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson (New York: Dodge Pub. Co., [1916?]). Marquand Library (SAPH): PR4189 .A1 1916

Adelaide Hanscom Leeson (1876-1932), Adelaide Hanscom Leeson, Pictorialist Photographer, 1876-1932 (Carbondale, Ill.: University Museum, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1981).Marquand Library (SAPH) TR647 .L415 1981