Category Archives: photographs

photographs

Mana-ka-Dana 1868

This photograph [a detail] is labeled: “The Attack on Mhunnah-Ka-Dhunnah,” although we are told common orthography for that place in the Agror Valley (Pakistan, not too far from Abbotabbad) is Mana-ka-Dana (probably not too far from here https://goo.gl/maps/28gZ8NvrJ6q).

 

Most researchers who ask about our photography album attributed to the British Army officer Alexander Dudgeon Gulland M.D. with 165 albumen silver prints ca. 1868, are looking for the section covering the rebellion in Jamaica.

Equally compelling is the next section (digitized here: http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/736664580) with photographs of Kashmir and, in particular, the 1868 camp of the Hazara Field Force under Major General Wylde O.B. at Oghi. In one print [see above] the photographer caught a cannon ball in mid-air, leaving a trail of smoke arching across the sky.

…An expedition thus became necessary, and as the country inhabited was mountainous and difficult, and it was possible that more tribes beyond the Indus would join the enemy, the invading force had of necessity to be a large one. A force under Major-General Wylde, O.B., was collected at Oghi, and the Mahdrdja of Kashmir was also called upon to furnish a contingent, which he did with readiness.

The force left Oghi, October 3rd, and occupied the Machai peak after an ineffectual resistance on the part of the enemy, and returned to British territory on the 22nd idem. The submission of all the tribes was secured, except the chief Syad of Pardri, and a petty chief named Shal Khdn of Tahkd, who fled. Some villages of the Pathans were destroyed, and fines levied on the offending Swatis. List of killed and wounded Europeans, 1 wounded ; Natives, 35 wounded, 9 killed. –“Historical Record of No 4 (Hazara) Mountain Battery Punjab Frontier Force” https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.278775

 

Attributed to Alexander Dudgeon Gulland, Photography album documenting the Morant bay Rebellion in Jamaica (1865), the Indian Northwest Frontier Hazara Campaign (1867-1870), views of Malta, Ireland, Guernsey, Spain, and elsewhere, no date [1860s-1880s]. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) (GAX) 2009-0016E

Who Printed “The North American Indian”?


Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) is celebrated for producing the twenty volume set of The North American Indian (1907-1930) “picturing and describing the Indians of the United States and Alaska.” Its 20 text volumes include 1,505 photogravures and the 20 portfolios hold 723 photogravures, a total of 2,228 copperplate aquatints from glass plate negatives and then, glass plate interpositives.

It is believed that 272 sets were produced, meaning that well-over 600,000 prints were hand-inked and pulled. Three issues were produced; one printed on Van Gelder paper, another on Japan vellum, and a third on Japanese tissue (although some existing sets have a mixture).

We know that Curtis had various studios in Washington and California over the years producing the glass plates and albumen silver prints but who was making and printing the copper plates?

The names of two firms are printed on the final photogravures, both in Boston and, as it turns out, both in the same building: John Andrew & Son on the plates for volumes 1–11 and Suffolk Engraving Company (also called Suffolk Engraving and Electrotyping Company) on the prints for volumes 12–20. As with any project that took over twenty-five years to accomplish, the details are more complex.

The firm of John Andrew and Son was established in 1869 but the founder, John Andrew (1815–1875) had long since died when Curtis traveled east to find an engraver. In the 1880s and 1890s, John’s son George T. Andrew (dates unknown) was only supervising projects and from then on his name disappears. In a 1915 sample book in the David A. Hanson Collection of the History of Photomechanical Reproduction John Andrew & Son are listed as a subsidiary of the Suffolk Engraving Company at 394 Atlantic Avenue in Boston’s North end.

For many years the Suffolk Engraving Company, managed by Samuel Edson Blanchard (1869-193?), had been growing and expanding, merging or outright taking over various other engraving firms until they were one of the largest operations on the east coast. By 1905 they boasted over 20,000 square feet of floor space and an annual payroll over $200,000, with offices in New York, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, and Hartford.

After several fires, the company moved to 394 Atlantic Avenue in 1909, where they “occupy the upper stories of the mammoth [building] and have had the whole top of the building entirely remodelled to suit the requirements of a modern photo-engraving establishment, including a passenger elevator.”

At that time, the photoengraver James S. Conant is listed as a branch of Suffolk Engraving, as was John Andrew & Son, both operating from the same building on Atlantic Avenue. A third firm may have done the same, as historian Mick Gidley found the stamp of the Gravure-Etching Company on some of the proofs for volume one and two (Western Americana Oversize 2017-0014Q .C982 1907q). Both John Andrew & Son and Gravure-Etching Company had been located at 125 Summer Street before merging with Suffolk Engraving, and so, it seems reasonable that some combination of their men handled the earliest of the Curtis photogravures.

Unlike J.J. Audubon’s Birds of America, which we know was printed by Robert Havell and his staff, there is still no man or men identified as the primary printer or even supervisor of the beautiful copperplate photogravures produced for Curtis.  At least not yet.


In 1909, the Suffolk Engraving Company moved to 394 Atlantic Avenue along the far east waterfront of Boston (Printing Arts 13, no. 6, August 1909).

See also: “Business Expansion,” Advertising and Selling 15, no. 3 (August 1905): 254-55.

Psaligraphy

George Schmidt, George Schmidt’s Psaligraphic Album (New York: Charles Becker, 47 East Houston St., 1863). 12 albumen silver prints of cut paper silhouettes. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

Psaligraphy is the art of cut paper silhouettes (in German: Scherenschnitte). Although it was a wide-spread practice, George Schmidt put himself forward as a leading practitioner by publishing his own Method of Teaching the Art of Psaligraphy five years after this album of samples was published.

“A popular recreation of the middle and late nineteenth century was psaligraphy, or the art of cutting pictures in black paper. Prang’s chromo, January 1868, includes a description of the set that Prang published and sold. It came in an elegant box containing full instructions and specimens for the study of this … art. A pair of scissors accompanies each box. Price per box $5.00”–Katharine McClinton, The Chromolithographs of Louis Prang, (New York, 1973), p. 40.

The opening leaf shows George Schmidt himself resting on a tableau vivant in silhouette, gracefully cutting a small animal figure. His publisher, Charles Becker, is listed at 47 East Houston Street [see at the far left], just down the street from where the famous Puck building would be built approximately 15 years later. Since this publisher is not listed in contemporary business directories, it is likely the album was published from their home or apartment.

The introduction reads: George Schmidt, the celebrated and ONLY Psaligrapher, has exhibited his peculiar art before H.M. the Queen Victoria, also the Emperor of France, the Governor General of the Island of Cuba, and other most prominent persons and artists, and has brought to perfection the highly difficult science of creating the most natural and expressive Pictures and Scenes, even of Incredible smallness, by a simple pair of scissors and a piece of black paper.

Induced by a great many of his friends and admirers of his art, he offers in this Album the photographs of some of the best pictures, he has cut out with a common pair of scissors. For Originals, cut with scissors, apply to the Publisher, 47 East Houston Street, N.Y.

 

 

If you are in Washington D.C. in the coming months, try to see Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now on view at the National Portrait Gallery through March 10, 2019 http://npg.si.edu/exhibition/black-out-silhouettes-then-and-now

Stanhopes


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two Stanhopes, also called Bijoux Photomicroscopiques. Rene Dagron (1819-1900) patented these devices, using a variation of the process developed by John Benjamin Dancer (1812-1887) to affix images to a miniature magnifying convex lens. Dagron enhanced the novelty by hiding them inside pieces of jewelry, tiny monoculars, or other souvenirs.

Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) described the Stanhope in a piece titled “On the Photomicroscope,” The Photographic Journal, January 15, 1864:

Under the name of bijoux photomicroscopiques, M. Dagron, of Paris, sent to the Exhibition of 1861 a series of these beautiful little optical instruments, which consisted of a plano-convex lens of such a thickness that its anterior focus coincided with the plane side of the lens. By placing the eye behind the convex side, these photographs, invisible almost to the eye, were seen so distinctly and so highly magnified that they excited general admiration. M. Dagron had presented some of them to the Queen, who admired them greatly; and as he was the only exhibitor, he naturally expected that the ingenuity with which he had produced a new article of manufacture would have received a higher reward than ‘Honorable Mention.’ . . . In 1860 M. Dagron had taken out a patent in France for this combination of an elongated or cylinder lens with a photograph, under the name of Bijoux Photomicroscopiques. He placed the lens in brooches and other female ornaments; and the combination became so popular, and the sale so great, that fifteen opticians in Paris invaded the patent, and succeeded in reducing it.

The first newly acquired piece is a jeweled cross with lens at the center. When you look deep inside, you see a microscopic Lord’s Prayer.

 

The second Stanhope now in the Graphic Arts Collection is a tiny monocular, no more than two centimeters long, with a small ring so it can be attached to a watch chain or necklace.

If you look inside, you can see a tiny reproduction of the 1882 lithograph From the Cradle to the Grave. Scenes and Incidents in the Life of Gen. James A. Garfield, produced as a remembrance of the recently murdered President Garfield.

Stanhope with the miniature From the Cradle to the Grave. Scenes and Incidents in the Life of Gen. James A. Garfield (New York: J.W. Sheehy & Co.; printed by Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, 1882). Miniature photograph of a lithograph with James A. Garfield (1831-1881) at the center, surrounded by his family and fifteen vignettes with scenes from Garfield’s life. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.

Below is a reproduction of the original lithograph, a little easier to see.

Undergraduate Life at the Hampton Institute

During his years as an undergraduate at the Hampton Institute, Willis J. Hubert (1919-2007) kept a scrapbook, filling it with programs, report cards, newspaper articles, and many informal photographs of his classmates. This enormous volume bound in carved wood boards, 30 x 46 x 7 cm, provides an intimate look at undergraduate life at this primarily black school from 1936 to 1940.

According to his obituary, published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from May 15 to May 17, 2007, Hubert went on to have a distinguished military career in which he achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Not  long after he graduated from the Hampton Institute, he entered the U.S. Air Force and trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field, where Hubert was one of the original Tuskegee Airmen. He went on to be the first African American to earn an M.A. and Ph.D. (New York University) while on active duty, as well as the first to complete the Harvard Business School (Military Co-op) Statistics Training Program.

There are a number of programs from plays and musicals in the scrapbook, including a program for an appearance by the opera singer Marian Anderson.

Hubert studied agriculture at Hampton, so his horticultural club prizes and programs are also included, as well as by-laws of the college Poultry Producers Association.

Also included are a few items from other historically black colleges, which Hubert visited, including Fisk, Howard, and Tennessee State.

The Murder of Ted Smith in 1908

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a set of photographic postcards documenting the “Burning of the Negro Smith.” Two are captioned in white ink. None of them were ever addressed or mailed. The postcards came in a plain envelope marked with the caption in pencil: “Greenville, TX, 28 July 1908”.


The dealer’s note is quoted here in full:

“Ted Smith, aged 18 years old, was accused of raping a young white woman in Clinton, Texas. He was arrested and brought to jail in nearby Greenville. A mob took him from his cell at eight the next morning. Rather than the usual hanging, they covered him under a pile of wood, doused him with kerosene, and burned him alive in the center of town, in front of a large crowd. The postcards depict the horrible scene, with the crowd gathered around the fire. One shows the wood pile, apparently just before the fire started. The last two in the series show Smith’s charred remains after the wood had burned away.

Texas History site notes: From the early 1920s through the late 1960s, Greenville was known for displaying a large sign emblazoned ‘The Blackest Land, the Whitest People,’ across its main street, and the town has a history of racial tension and violence. One of the most notorious events in Greenville’s history occurred on July 28, 1908. Acting on allegations of rape from a white girl, a crowd of over 2,000 people seized a young African-American man named Ted Smith and burned him in the town square.

Despite national outrage, city and county officials refused to prosecute the case and even issued statements in support of the action. Although no issues of the Morning Herald pertaining to Smith’s lynching seem to have survived, the paper reveals a widespread acceptance of such violence in a 1908 article on another case. The article, which deals with the murder of a sheriff in a neighboring county, concludes with the suggestion, ‘The negro escaped but posses of citizens are searching for him. Feeling runs high and a lynching may follow the negro’s capture.’

The lynching of Ted Smith was covered extensively in the Greenville Messenger and the Herald’s rival, the Greenville Evening Banner. These papers provide important sources documenting the culture and history of Greenville and Hunt County. https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/GVMHD/ An extended account can be found in the Waxahachie Daily Light, Wednesday, July 29, 1908″

La tour de trois cents mètres

Detail of photogravure after Louis-Emile Durandelle (1839-1917), printed by Société des imprimeries Lemercier and published by Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) in La tour de trois cents mètres (1900).

 

 

Throughout the construction of the Eiffel Tower, from January 1887 to March 1889, many photographers documented the Tower’s progress as it rose over Paris. By the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1889, the photographs were almost as popular as the site itself.

The most complete record was produced by the firm Delmaet and Durandelle, led by Louis-Emile Durandelle (1839-1917) and Clémence Jacob Delmaet (died 1890), the wife of his former partner who he later married.

As one of the leading architectural photographs of the 19th century, Durandelle established his reputation documenting the construction of Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra from 1862 to 1875. Durandelle and Delmaet also photographed the reconstruction of the Hôtel-Dieu (1868) and the abbey of Mont-Saint Michel (1874-78), and the construction of the Bibliothèque Nationale (1870), Sacré-Cœur (1877-90), the theater at Monte Carlo (1880) and the Eiffel Tower (1887-89).

In 1889, Delmaet and Durandelle published an elaborate album of 58 albumen silver prints of the construction of the Eiffel Tower and then, one year later he retired, selling the firm to his assistant.

Louis-Émile Durandelle (1839-1917), Travaux de construction de la Tour ([Paris: s.n., 1887-1889]. 58 albumen silver prints from collodion glass negatives. Previously owned by Adolphe Salles, the son-in-law of Gustave Eiffel. Ex 2017-0004E

 


In his biography of Gustave Eiffel, David Harvie writes,

“There had been considerable use made of photography during the tower’s construction, and apart from rather formal engineering records, there are many sequences showing the advancing construction taken from precisely fixed camera positions. The great French architectural photographer Louis-Emile Durandelle, who with his partner Hyacinthe-César Delmaet had photographed the construction of Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera and the basilica of Sacré-coeur in Montmartre, also undertook a long series of painstaking, large-format photographs of the building of the Eiffel Tower.

These photographs were masterpieces of the difficult nineteenth-century wet collodion process, and certainly did not constitute popular or commercial exploitation. … Durandelle’s photographs reignited the claims for the tower’s beauty in a way that natural human observation somehow didn’t, and helped ensure that the controversy over the tower’s presence and its aesthetic qualities would be brought to an end”— Eiffel: The Genius Who Reinvented Himself (2006)

When the Tower was complete and the well-earned celebrations ended, Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) partnered with the Lemercier printers to publish a complete record of the design, engineering, and construction of the project from beginning to end. The two limited-edition volumes were prepared at the author’s expense and distributed free of charge to libraries, universities, and scientific societies. To augment his own documents, Eiffel arranged to have 11 of the Delmaet and Durandelle photographs (and 2 small details) transferred to copper plates and printed in photogravure for the monumental conclusion of these books.


Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), La tour de trois cents mètres (Paris: Société des imprimeries Lemercier, 1900). “Il a été tiré de cet ouvrage 500 exemplaires sur papier vélin, numérotés”–Verso of half-title page. Ex oversize Item 7599347q and oversize item 7599727e.

This was one of the last great projects for Imprimeries Lemercier & Cie, which had been one of the largest of the French publishing houses, known not only for their spectacular lithographs but also for their photogravures (sometimes released under the imprint Héliog. & Imp. Lemercier).

Unfortunately, after the death of their founder, Rose Joseph Lemercier and the rise of photomechanical printing at the end of the 19th-century, the shop was forced into bankruptcy. There is no record of a single individual responsible for the printing of the copper plates.

Albumen silver prints [above and below] from collodion glass plate negative by Louis-Émile Durandelle (1839-1917), published in Travaux de construction de la Tour (1889).

 

Thanks to Eric White, Curator of Rare Books, who acquired these volumes and is allowing them to be used in the upcoming exhibition “Turning Light into Darkness,” documenting our photogravures.

 

The Constitution in Photogravure

Nestore Leoni (1862-1947), The Declaration of Independence, and Constitution of the United States. Facsimile in Photogravure of the Thirteen Illuminated Parchments, Containing the Text of the Great Documents, and Reproducing in Chronological Order the Portraits of the Presidents, Statesmen, Admirals and Generals, with Illustrations of the Most Important Events and Episodes of American History from its Discovery Up to the Present Time (Roma: N. Leoni, 1910). Provenance: Author’s presentation inscription to H. Blakiston Wilkins, dated 1921. Wilkins was executive secretary to the American Academy in Rome 1919-1921 and also the honorary curator of musical instruments at the Library of Congress. Rare Books Oversize 2006-0207F

 

In 1902, critic Charles Caffin (1854-1918) reviewed Nestore Leoni’s illuminations of The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States recently completed in Rome and on exhibit in New York City. He noted that manuscript illumination had a resurgence during the Renaissance and then continued:

“It was the examination of these latest examples that fired Leoni with the longing to revive the art. Encouraged by Baron Podesta, the curator of the manuscripts in the National Library at Florence, and by the Abate Anziani, of the Laurenziani Library in the, same city, he began his studies, which extended over ten years. His first work was the illumination on parchment of the six strophes of the ‘Canzone di Cina da Pistoia,’ for presentation to Queen Margherita by a group of Florentine ladies”

“…Then [Leoni] commenced the illumination of the Constitution of the United States of America, a work which occupied him ten years. It has been recognized by the highest authorities as combining with extraordinary success the rich color and perfect craftsmanship of the old work with the spirit of modern art.”–Everybody’s Magazine 7, no 1 (July 1902).

Soon after the thirteen illuminations returned to Rome, they were photographed and reproduced in photogravure. The artist self-published a portfolio in limited edition, distributed in conjunction with the New York bookseller George D. Sproul.


Also illuminated by Leoni:
Luigi Luzzatti (1841-1927) and Nestore Leoni, Sulla costituzione degli Stati Uniti a proposito delle miniature di Nestore Leoni (Roma: Direzione della Nuova antologia, 1901).

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Nestore Leoni, Shakespeare’s Sonnets ([New York]: Geo. D. Sproul, 1901).

John Milton (1608-1674) and Nestore Leoni, Comus ([S.l.]: G.D. Sproul, 1902)

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Nestore Leoni, The Holy Grail ([New York?]: George D. Sproul, 1902).

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) and Nestore Leoni, Li Trionfi de messer Francesco Petrarcha poeta laureato (Roma: Tipi dell’Unione cooperativa editrice, 1904).

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Nestore Leoni, Sonnets from the Portuguese (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909).

Dante Alighieri and Nestore Leoni, La vita nuova : nel sesto centenario della morte di Dante Alighieri (Bergamo: Istituto italiano d’arti grafiche, 1921).

 

 


PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture

The three-day PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture conference has begun, with 300 curators, collectors, educators, and enthusiasts disregarding the Thursday snow and gathering in Rochester, NY.

R.I.T. designed the conference to focus on the presentation of original scholarship on the broad subject of photography’s history and future. As the conference program reveals, “presentations include applications, education, connoisseurship, conservation and preservation, and accessibility. Conference presentations in panel format offer scholarly research, exploration, analysis, interpretation and assessment about dimensions of photography’s past and future as viewed through multiple disciplinary lenses. We anticipate attendance by a wide range of academic disciplines and by practitioners from an equally broad range of professions: educators, practitioners, administrators and managers from both the for-profit and the not-for-profit sectors.”

The program notes, “Photography is simultaneously understood as “making” and “taking”: from the four-year-old’s worldview images of knees and the vacationer’s tedious snapshots of very, very distant vistas, to the event-defining, stop-action of news shots and the wordless narrative of the propagandist or polemicist. Photography documents, it inspires, acts as a memory and prompts memories. Photography stops motion and captures the action, instructs and demonstrates, entertains, reveals and conceals what is otherwise (un)noticed or (un)seen, directs attention and evokes a broad range of emotions. And there has never been more of it than there is today.”

 

PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture is sponsored and organized by RIT Press, the Institute’s scholarly book publishing enterprise, and The Wallace Center at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Following the presentation of scholarship, the conference concludes with a photography-focused Antiquarian Show and Sale on Sunday. https://www.rit.edu/twc/photohistoryconference/

Porphyro in Akron


Many of you know Andrew Cahan as an expert in photographic literature but did you know he was also an artist? The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired Hart Crane”s Porphyro In Akron (1980) with three photogravures by Cahan. He was kind enough to tell the story behind this project:

“As a preamble to the genesis of the book, I was living in Brooklyn Heights, having moved there to work as Mary Ellen Mark’s darkroom printer. When my tenure there was over, I started taking some classes at the Center for Book Arts in lower Manhattan.

Around 1978-79, I decided it was time to go back to graduate school so I could have access to the equipment needed to teach myself the photogravure process. I made a few calls to faculty friends at OSU and scored an assistantship in the photo department (prior, I had my BA from there in photo and a year as a resident student with Minor White) so they knew me fairly well and said ‘come back.’

When I landed in Columbus, Bob Tauber had just been hired to start the Logan Elm Press. Somehow we met and I became the first student to work with him. It took me almost a year to make a viable photogravure plate. I had some books which I consulted and doggedly kept at it. The first project was [a] broadside, TO GOUDY w/ LUV. I think I printed 65 or so.

Once that was done and I proved to Bob that I could make a good plate and set the type, etc, he gave me the signal to start Porphryo In Akron. The connections to this poem are as follows…

Hart Crane lived here as a young man, for a short time. I grew up in Akron [and] moved to Brooklyn Heights, as did he in an apartment overlooking the bridge. Walker Evans used three images in The Bridge, so I would too.

The photos are from three locales. The opening image [right] is of the B.F. Goodrich plant in Akron from a nearby hill. The second image [below] was from my apartment window in Brooklyn Heights, looking towards Hart Crane’s apartment. And the final image [top] was made in a club in Columbus on the night of my 31st birthday. I used a 4×5 view camera and a Leica.”

Hart Crane (1899-1932), Porphyro In Akron (Columbus, Ohio: Logan Elm Press, 1980). Three photogravures by Andrew Cahan. One of 100 copies. Graphic Arts Collection Q-000233. Colophon: “Hart Crane wrote this poem in 1920 while he was working in Akron, Ohio. An early draft was included in a letter to his friend Gorham Munson and is now in the Special Collections of The Ohio State University Libraries. Its first appearance in print was in The Complete Poems & Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane, Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, 1966.”

I
Greeting the dawn,
A shift of rubber workers presses down
South Main.
With the stubbornness of muddy water
It dwindles at each cross-line
Until you feel the weight of many cars
North-bound, and East and West,
Absorbing and conveying weariness, —
Rumbling over the hills.
Akron, ” high place ” —
A bunch of smoke-ridden hills
Among rolling Ohio hills.
The dark-skinned Greeks grin at each other
in the streets and alleys.
The Greek grins and fights with the Swede, —
And the Fjords and the Aegean are remembered.
The plough, the sword,
The trowel, — and the monkey wrench!
O City, your axles need not the oil of song.
I will whisper words to myself
And put them in my pockets.
I will go and pitch quoits with old men
In the dust of a road.