Graphic Arts

In the previous post, we described the first section of a nineteenth-century photography album compiled by a British Army officer, attributed to be the Army surgeon Alexander Dudgeon Gulland, MD Edinburgh University. The second section of the album includes photographs of the Indian Northwest Frontier Hazara Campaign (1867-1870) and others taken in Malta, Ireland, Guernsey, Spain, and elsewhere.

After the Jamaica photography, the album moves on to India and includes 32 photographs of Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier, in particular 8 fine photographs of Kashmir by the British photographer Samuel Bourne (1834-1912). The Bournes are numbers 792, 805, 815 (prize-winning photograph Srinagaar a Bridge on the Margual Canal above), 782, 776, 261, 818, and one titled Glimpse through the Forest.

There are also group portraits of the Sixth Royal Regiment, all annotated with names, including one with Gulland as a blurred figure at the edge of the frame, perhaps suggesting he was the photographer and moved into the frame at the last minute? A two-part panorama of the camp of the Hazara Field Force includes notes on all the batteries and contingents of Sikh, Gurkha, and Punjabi troops as well as men from the Maharaja of Cashmere and the Nawab of Ulm. The British recognized that collaborating with native troops was an essential part of sustaining the campaigns they had to fight to keep India.

There are also two striking and unusual images: one is of Hill Men in chainmail armour; and the other of what is noted as The Attack on Mhunnah-Ka-Dhunnah showing a cannon ball arching through the air and landing on a hillside. The other areas included in the album are mainly ports and bases used by the British Army and Navy. Most of these photographs are by commercial studios, which indicates that Gulland, like many nineteenth-century tourists, bought photographs of the places he visited.

One of 5 views of Malta is by Giorgio Sommer (1832-1914) and taken around 1860-1865. Among the 20 of Ireland are 12 large blind-stamped views and 3 others by William Lawrence. One of the 19 views of Guernsey is a mammoth print of the Harbour and Castle Cornet, most unusual for the time, and the views of Gibraltar and Spain are from Francis Frith’s Series.

This album is still being processed but will soon be available for research in the reading room of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library. Special thanks go to Katherine Spears who did the majority of the research on this unique album.

On October 11, 1865, several hundred native Jamaicans marched into the town of Morant Bay, the capital of the predominately sugar-growing parish of St. Thomas, to demonstrate against injustices. Several members of the crowd, on both sides, were killed. In the days that followed, the British Army was called in and over 500 people were murdered along with hundreds wounded.

We recently acquired an album with 165 rare albumen photographs: 59 of the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (1865), 32 photographs of the Indian Northwest Frontier Hazara Campaign (1867-1870), and 64 others depicting Malta, Ireland, Guernsey, and elsewhere. The prints are primarily by unidentified amateur photographers, although there are 8 by Samuel Bourne, 5 by G. Sommer, 3 by William Lawrence, several by Francis Frith.

This post will describe the 59 photographs relating to the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion and future posts will deal with the other sections. The album’s careful compilation includes detailed notes of the people, places, and dates relevant to each photograph. It may be the work of a surgeon in the British Army, Alexander Dudgeon Gulland, MD Edinburgh University, who appears in the album. Appointed Staff Assistant Surgeon in 1854, he served with the 6th Foot which was in Jamaica in 1865 and is listed as having been in China from 1860-62 and Hazara in the Northwest Frontier in 1868 (See: Hart’s Army Lists and Returns Relating to Medical Officers (Army) 1854). The Jamaica section of this album begins with photographs of the Morant Bay military base including a view from the Surgeon’s Quarters and general views of the area to set the scene.

The 1865 rebellion started when a black man was put on trial for trespassing on abandoned plantation land and imprisoned. Slaves were emancipated in Jamaica in 1838 but the freed black population remained an underclass with little fertile land to cultivate. Paul Bogle, a Baptist Deacon, led 200 or more Jamaicans (men and women) to protest at Morant Bay courthouse where panicked militiamen fired on them. In the ensuing rioting the protestors seized Morant Bay.

Governor Eyre declared martial law and the brutal suppression led to over 500 deaths. HMS Duncan, sent from Nova Scotia with troops to suppress the rebellion, is noted in the background of one view. Other images show important locations for the rebels, including the cotton tree where they gathered before heading to the courthouse (above) and a roadside grave of 80 rebels (below).

Portraits of key figures from the rebellion tell more of the story. Among them are a page of portraits of “The Victims of the Jamaica Rebellion of 1865”, a portrait of George William Gordon who is now considered a Jamaican national hero, portraits of unidentified Jamaican natives, and of British Army officers. Listed among the victims are not only those who were murdered but also those in the colonial government who were later tried for murder and acquitted.

Eyre’s treatment of Gordon, the son of a white planter and a mulatto slave and known critic of the government, came to symbolize the brutality of his response. Gordon was arrested in Kingston (where martial law had not been declared), and taken to Morant Bay (where it had been). He was imprisoned, tried by court martial, and sentenced to death by hanging.

It is probable that these portraits were gathered after the rebellion and some may have been taken by the only commercial studio we can identify in Jamaica at the time, run by Adolphe Duperly (1801-1865) and taken over by his son, Armond.

Two small photographs of Jamaican Maroons, including one of Maroons in camouflage with Colonel Fyfe, reflect an interesting social dynamic in the rebellion. Originally runaway slaves who set up communities that engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British, the Maroons eventually cooperated with the British authorities after they started to deport them and confiscate their land in 1796. Used to suppress slave revolts until 1838, they were also used to suppress the 1865 rebellion.

Coming less than a decade after the Indian Mutiny (1857), the rebellion renewed fear in England about native uprisings and many felt that it vindicated Thomas Carlyle’s argument that reform was dangerous as colonized peoples were unreasoning and unappreciative of any benefits conferred upon them. The rebellion ended planter rule in Jamaica, which became a Crown Colony.

For more information, see “The Town of Morant Bay, Morant Bay, Jamaica,” Harper’s Weekly, December 23, 1865.

“Morant Bay, Jamaica, the Scene of the Negro Insurrection,” The Illustrated London News, November 25, 1865.

Gad Heuman, The Killing Time, The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (London: Macmillan, 1994) Firestone F1866.H48 1994b

Arvel B. Erickson, “Empire or Anarchy: The Jamaica Rebellion of 1865,” The Journal of Negro History, 44, no. 2 (April 1959): 99-122.

Henry Bleby, The Reign of Terror: a Narrative of Facts concerning Ex-Governor Eyre, George William Gordon, and the Jamaica Atrocities (London: s.n., 1868). Firestone HF 1569.E53

The caption on the back of this photograph states:

The New York Public Library steps are much used now. Books in the centre and at the right [is] the tent where purchasers of War Savings Stamps gained a look at a new Brow[n]ing gun.

Graphic Arts photography collection GA 2009 -in process

The German aviator Manfred von Richthofen (1892-1918), also known as the Red Baron, was the commander of a World War I squadron dubbed The Flying Circus. Together, they shot down eighty-nine British airplanes from 1916 to 1917, when Richthofen was finally wounded. This 1917 photograph shows Richthofen receiving a medal from Paul von Hindenburg, while Erich Ludendorff watches. His red Fokler Dr.I triplane is seen in the background.

The following is a portion of Richthofen’s book Der Rote Kampfflieger, from the English language version translated by J. Ellis Barker and published in 1918 under the name The Red Battle Flyer.

I Am Shot Down. (Middle of March, 1917)
I was flying with the squadron and noticed an opponent who also was flying in a squadron. It happened above the German artillery position in the neighborhood of Lens. I had to fly quite a distance to get there. It tickles one’s nerves to fly towards the enemy, especially when one can see him from a long distance and when several minutes must elapse before one can start fighting… We Germans had five machines. Our opponents were three times as numerous. The English flew about like midges. It is not easy to disperse a swarm of machines which fly together in good order. It is impossible for a single machine to do it. It is extremely difficult for several aeroplanes, particularly if the difference in number is as great as it was in this case. However, one feels such a superiority over the enemy that one does not doubt of success for a moment.
I watched whether one of the fellows would hurriedly take leave of his colleagues. There! One of them is stupid enough to depart alone. I can reach him and I say to myself, “That man is lost.” Shouting aloud, I am after him. I have come up to him or at least am getting very near him. He starts shooting prematurely, which shows that he is nervous. So I say to myself, “Go on shooting. You won’t hit me.” He shot with a kind of ammunition which ignites. So I could see his shots passing me. I felt as if I were sitting in front of a gigantic watering pot. The sensation was not pleasant… But suddenly I heard a tremendous bang, when I had scarcely fired ten cartridges. Presently again something hit my machine. It became clear to me that I had been hit or rather my machine… I went right down.
Instinctively I switched off the engine and indeed it was high time to do this. When a pilot’s benzine tank has been perforated, and when the infernal liquid is squirting around his legs, the danger of fire is very great. In front is an explosion engine of more than 150 h. p. which is red hot. If a single drop of benzine should fall on it the whole machine would be in flames. I left in the air a thin white cloud. I knew its meaning from my enemies. Its appearance is the first sign of a coming explosion. I was at an altitude of nine thousand feet and had to travel a long distance to get down.

This photograph was gift from Dr. Paul Van Dyke (1859-1933) class of 1881 and professor of Modern European History. He also donated a album of photographs taken by Lt. Edward C. Olds, class of 1909, during World War I. Manuscripts collection MSS CI199 (no.803).

Notable Women [London, no. 1, 1890-no. 4, 1891]. Graphic Arts GAX 2009-0236Q

Although publications such as Men of Mark (posted below) celebrate only men, women had their own share of bio-journals in the late 1800s. Notable Women is one example. Each issue includes 3 original mounted carbon prints by commercial photographers Alexander Bassano (1829-1913), Elliot & Fry, Winslow and Grove, and others. Princeton holds four issues, which include flowery biographies for the sitters Alexandra, Princess of Wales; Lady Dorothy Nevill; Mrs. Arthur Stannard (John Strange Winter); Lady Brooke; Mrs. Louise Jopling-Rowe; Mrs. Campbell Praed; Lady Hallé (Norman Neruda); Miss Ellen Terry; Mrs. Lynn Linton; Lady Algernon Borthwick; Lady Monckton; and Miss Jessie Bond.

Less grand in their format but with better information are: Notable Women Authors of the Day; Biographical Sketches, by Helen C. Black, 1893, Firestone Library (F) 3565.183
Notable Women in History; the Lives of Women Who in All Ages, All Lands and in All Womenly Occupations Have Won Fame …, by Willis J. Abbot, 1913 Firestone: CT3203 .A2

Thompson Cooper (1837-1904), Men of Mark, a Gallery of Contemporary Portraits of Men Distinguished in the Senate, the Church, in Science, Literature and Art, the Army, Navy, Law, Medicine, etc. [Woodburytyped] from Life by Lock and Whitfield (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1876-1883). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX), Oversize 2003-0077Q vol.1-7

The credit for this seven-volume set of photographic portraits is often given to Thompson Cooper, a journalist for the London Times who wrote the brief biographical entries. However, the title page lists Samuel Robert Lock (1822-1881) and George Carpe Whitfield (born 1833), the names of the photographers first and gives only a lesser mention to Cooper. Even today, scholarly respect for images is almost always less than that for words.

From 1876 to 1883, Lock and Whitfield produced a volume of 36 oval woodburytype portraits each year. Each original print had to be individually printed, trimmed, and tipped onto the page, so that for a run of 200 copies at least 7,200 prints had to be produced. Lock died in 1881, leaving Whitfield to complete the project alone.

Lock and Whitfield formed a partnership in 1856, operating out of a studio at 18 Regent Street in London. Lock specialized in painted miniatures and Whitfield in albumen photographs. Their advertisement read: “carte de visite and every description of photograph, colored or uncolored, on paper, ivory or porcelain.”

Graphic Arts holds a complete, immaculate set of Men of Mark, which came with an additional group of loose albumen prints inside the first volume. In particular, three composite sheets each hold sixteen circular miniature portraits (one shown here).

When President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was assassinated, his body was carried by train and by carriage through 180 cities before reaching Springfield, Illinois, where it was buried. The route passed through New Jersey and Princeton students are reported to have stood in silence as it passed. The train stopped briefly in New Brunswick and Newark, before the body was transferred to a ferry, which carried it from Jersey City to New York City.

Once in NYC, the casket remained at City Hall Park all day and through the next morning, when it was loaded into a glass-sided hearse pulled by sixteen horses and taken to the Hudson River Railway Depot at 10th Avenue and 30th Street. This albumen photograph taken on April 25 shows the procession moving up Broadway, just south of Astor Place. The Church of the Messiah (Unitarian) is seen at the center of the frame.

The platform of the hearse was fourteen feet long, eight feet wide, and five feet from the ground, so the crowds could see the coffin through the glass. The New York Times’ Henry J. Raymond wrote that “the hearse, drawn by six [sic] gray horses, heavily draped in black, took its place in the procession, headed by General [John A.] Dix and other officers, escorted by the Seventh Regiment, and the whole cortege moved, through densely crowded streets and amidst the most impressive display of public and private grief, to the City Hall.” (Henry Raymond, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, John Shaw Pierson Civil War Collection W96.587.75.3)

In 1860, the celebrated American photographer Mathew Brady (1822-1896) opened his fourth and last New York studio at 785 Broadway, near Tenth Street. He named it the National Portrait Gallery and it was here in 1862 that Brady exhibited photographs of the Battle of Antietam. Brady advertised the exhibition as “The Dead of Antietam,” and it was the first time the bodies of contemporary dead soldiers were seen by the general public. An extended biography of Brady can be found at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwbrady.html

Many of Brady’s commercial prints can be found in this photography album in the graphic arts collection. It holds a collection of studio portraits, primarily during the American Civil War, along with a visiting card for Charles Lamson, which might be a clue to the original owner. Several CDVs bear the imprint “Brady’s National Photographic Portrait Galleries” or “published by E. & H.T. Anthony from photographic negative in Brady’s National Portrait Gallery.”

There are individual portraits of Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet members: Hannibal Hamlin, Vice President; William Seward, Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, U.S. Treasury Secretary; Edwin M. Stanton, Attorney General (1860-1861), Secretary of War; Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General; and Edward Bates, Attorney General (1861-1864).

Also included are portraits of Union generals Ulysses S. Grant; Ambrose Burnside; Nathaniel P. Banks; Winfield Scott; Joseph Hooker; Edwin Vose Sumner; Benjamin Franklin Butler; and Daniel E. Sickles. Some of the other individuals identified includes portraits of Jefferson Davis, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry Ward Beecher, and Richard Cobden.

In particular, three photographs are by Chas. Paxson, N.Y. and J.E. McClees, Philadelphia with the verso caption: “The nett proceeds from the sale of these photographs will be devoted to the education of Colored people in the department of the Gulf, now under the command of Maj. Gen. Banks.” One photograph bear captions: “Rebecca, A slave girl from New Orleans”; one is titled: “Charley, A slave boy from New Orleans.”

The photographers represented in the album include Mathew Brady; Chas. Paxson, NY; J.E. McClees, Philadelphia; Charles Fredericks; Hargrave & Gubelman, NY; LeRoy’s Gem Gallery, Newburgh, NY; W. Notman, Montreal; D. Appleton & Co., NY; Geo. G. Rockwood & Co., NY; Golder & Robinson’s Ferrotype Rooms; H.S. Myer, Yonkers, NY; Brasier & Co., Brooklyn; Johnston Brothers, NY; Faris, 751 Broadway; W. Kurtz; Sarony, NY; New Orleans Photographic Gallery, A.A. Turner, photo.; Tourtin, Paris; Norman May, Malvern; Scidmore, Gloversville, NY; Martin Jacolette, South Kensington.

In the summer of 1890, Samuel Clemens (second from the right), his wife Livy, and their three daughters rented a cottage called The Balsam at Onteora Park. Twain’s good friend and literary editor of Harper’s Magazine Laurence Hutton (fifth from the left) and his wife were also in residence.

Onteora Park was the first of several private communities built in the Catskills during the 1880s as a summer residence for artists, writers, and select wealthy families. Candace Wheeler (center chair) and her brother, Frank Thurber, bought the land and founded the colony, which quickly developed into a lively seasonal community. Clemens famously did not finish a single story that summer, although he did have his portrait painted by Carroll Beckwith (far left). There was an orchestra to play during meals and at the dances in the evenings. There were theatrical productions in which everyone took a role, as well as pantomimes, charades, and stories told by firelight.

That summer frequent dinner parties moved between the Clemens and Hutton cottages, such as the one that brought these men and women together. Several prints of this photograph were made and the individual sitters signed each of the mounts. For whatever reason, the print at Princeton (donated by Hutton) is missing one signature, which is present in other published examples.

Those who did sign include painter James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917); W.F. Clarke; Mary Elizabeth Dodge (1830-1905); Lillie Hamilton French (1854-1939); Laurence Hutton (1843-1904); Brander Matthews (1852-1929); Richard Heber Newton (1840-1914); Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain, 1835-1910); Onteora’s founder Candace Wheeler (1827-1923); Dora Wheeler (1849-1916).

Francis Frith collaborated with a lecturer and scholar of antiquities at the British Museum, Reginald Poole, and with Poole’s mother, Sophia, to produce this mammoth album of photographs. It is interesting that at the same time, Sophia’s brother Edward W. Lane (1801-1876), a scholar of Oriental linguistics, was working with Reginald on an illustrated edition of the Arabian Nights (The Thousand and One Nights, a new translation from the Arabic, with copious notes by Edward William Lane; illustrated … by William Harvey; edited by his nephew Edward Stanley Poole, 1859. Rare Books (Ex) 2263.2869).

The Poole’s had spent over seven years living and working in Egypt, and were fluent not only with the languages of the region but the history and culture. Frith on the other hand made only three trips to the area—1856-57, 1858, and 1859—passing through some cities only once. His objective was to capture photographic images that could be reproduced in many formats and sold as widely as possible. In this, he certainly succeeded.

In the beginning, Frith contracted with Thomas Agnew and Son to sell individual prints made from 16 x 20 inch negatives and with James S. Virtue to publish groups of photographs in a series of albums. Negretti and Zambra handled the stereoscopic views sold both individually and in sets. In addition, Frith formed his own company, F. Frith & Co. to sell his own work and the photographs of others, specializing in scenic travel views, which were of great interest to the British public. Frith built the largest photographic archive in Great Britain and then, in the 1880s, handed the business over to his sons and moved to a villa along the French Riviera to write his memoirs.

To see more of Princeton’s holdings of Frith albums and photographs, continue below.

In the first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855), a wood engraving after a daguerreotype portrait of the author was published as a frontispiece, although the author’s name was left off the title page. Whitman (1819-1892) was one of the first writers to understand the importance of the new medium of photography for the promotion of his work and his own celebrity. This appreciation continued throughout his life and made Whitman one of the first authors to be known as much for his image as for his words.

The Library of Congress holds over 100 individual portrait photographs of Whitman, the earliest from 1848. Princeton University has its own smaller collection, with some as loose prints and others bound into volumes of his poetry. These are a few.

Selection from Song of Myself

I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

Not words of routine this song of mine,
But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;
This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-office boy?
The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?
The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but the pluck of the captain and engineers?
In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way?
The saints and sages in history—but you yourself?
Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and other poems (London: Henry S. King, 1875). volume 1, 12 albumen silver prints. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2007-0055F. Purchased with David H. McAlpin Fund of the Art Museum, Friends of the Library Fund, and the Elmer Adler Memorial Fund. 1974.

“The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere,” 1874. Albumen silver print. Idylls of the King and Other Poems

“Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat,” 1874. Albumen silver print. Idylls of the King and Other Poems

In the summer of 1874, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was living next door to Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) at Farringford, Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight. Tennyson had taken “Morte D’Arthur” published in 1842 and expanded it into “Idylls of the King” in 1859. He asked Cameron to make illustrations for a new publication of these poems and she produced over 200 prints from wet-plate collodion-on-glass negatives. Unfortunately, the publisher chose only two to be reformatted as wood-engravings and even those did not reproduce well in the final book.

At Tennyson’s encouragement, Cameron went on to produce a book of her own with albumen silver prints interspersed with texts by Tennyson lithographed from Cameron’s hand-writing. The first volume appeared in January 1875 and the second in May, selling for six guineas. The frontispiece for each volume was a portrait of Tennyson dressed as “The Dirty Monk,” dated 1869.

Cameron wrote, “My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real and ideal sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to Poetry and beauty.”

William Elliot Marshall, Lieutenant Colonel of Her Majesty’s Bengal Staff Corps, was an amateur ethnographer. He was introduced to the Todas people, who lived on the Nilgiri Hills in southern India, while on a furlough to Ooty. Although he did not speak their language, Marshall decided to study the small tribe in order to uncover physiognomic proof of their “primitive nature.”

His final report was published in two similar editions, one titled A Phrenologist amongst the Todas and the other Travels amongst the Todas or the Study of a Primitive Tribe in South India. Both are illustrated with 14 carbon prints from glass negatives. At least two of these plates are from the Simla photography firm Bourne & Shepherd (founded by British photographers Samuel Bourne 1834-1912 and Charles Shepherd) and printed by the Autotype Fine Art Company.

Bourne and Shepherd sold their business in 1870 and Bourne returned to England (although their stock of glass negatives remained in circulation for many years). The images of the Todas are clearly made from life and so, must have been taken a number of years before Marshall’s book was finally published in 1873.

For more information, see Kavita Philip, Civilizing Natures : Race, Resources, and Modernity in Colonial South India (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, c2004). Firestone Library Q127.I4 P48 2004

James Leon Williams (1852-1932), The Home and Haunts of Shakespeare (New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1892) Graphic Arts (GAX) oversize 2009- in process

American born dentist Dr. James Leon Williams (1852-1932) moved to London in 1887. He spent summers in Stratford-on-Avon making photographs and printing the negatives as photogravures. In 1890, his first project matched these gravures with the poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” written by Thomas Gray (1716-1771). Boston publisher Joseph Knight brought it out in a small edition.

Two years later, Williams followed this with a massive folio entitled The Home and Haunts of Shakespeare published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York. Reproductions of 15 watercolors by 15 different American artists are completely overshadowed by Williams’ 45 pictorialist gravures. The New York Times published a review before the book was even finished, crediting Williams with reviving America’s interest in Shakespeare.

Robert Benchley?, no date. Graphic Arts American Photography, GC131

Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) moved to New York City in 1918 at study sculpture. Her work caught the attention of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), who commissioned a chess set and introduced her to his circle of friends. Abbott moved to Paris in 1921, Berlin in 1923, and back to Paris in 1925, where she convinced Man Ray (1890-1976) to give her a job as his assistant. Man Ray specifically wanted someone who knew nothing of photography and Abbott fit the description. Over the next four years, she learned enough to have an exhibition of her own and return to New York as a professional.

Bar 228, no date. Graphic Arts American Photography, GC131

Back in NYC, Abbott emulated her favorite Paris photographer Eugene Atget by documenting the “Changing New York” under the support of the Federal Art Project. A book of the same title was published in 1939. Although the NYC images shown here were not part of the official published series, they were taken around the same time.

Magnetic Field (current-bearing wire and steel filings), ca. 1959-60. Graphic Arts American Photography, GC131

Magnetic Field (key and iron filings), ca. 1959-60. Graphic Arts American Photography, GC131

Abbott became interested in the connection between art and science and worked from 1944-45 as photography editor for Science Illustrated. “There is an essential unity,” she wrote, “between photography, science’s child, and science, the parent.” In 1958, Abbott joined the MIT-initiated Physical Science Study Committee of Education Service’s Inc. based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She made images to demonstrate the laws and processes of physics. An exhibition of these photographs for PSSC were toured by the Smithsonian Institution in 1960 and published in three books from 1964 to 1969: Magnets, Motion, and The Attractive Universe (Gravity).

See also: Museum of the City of New York “Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York” (1998). http://www.mcny.org/collections/abbott/abbott.htm">http://www.mcny.org/collections/abbott/abbott.htm

New York Public Library, http://digitalgallery.nypl.org, with nearly 600 images by Abbott.

Born in Rochester N.Y., Elmer Adler (1884-1962) reluctantly joined the family clothing business as advertising manager and designer. In his spare time, he collected books and taught himself the importance of great typography, paper, and binding. In 1920, the Rochester Memorial Art Gallery opened an exhibition entitled “The History of the Art of Printing,” curated by Adler primarily from his own collection (catalogue available full-text on google).

Less than two years later, Adler packed up his books and moved to New York City where he organized a printing company of his own, The Pynson Printers. As a long-time member of The Stowaways, a private club for men involved in graphic arts, he was already acquainted to many of the leading printers and publishers in New York. His friend Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1891-1968), son-in-law and heir to the publisher of The New York Times, invited Adler to move the business into the spacious new Times Annex at 229 West 43rd street. Adler’s rooms consisted of a printing shop with three presses, a library, an exhibition gallery (opened to the public in 1938), and offices elegant enough to hold afternoons teas for his colleagues. He was proud to say “in the eighteen years of its existence Pynson Printers charged more than any other shop in the country and never made a profit.”

These photographs of Adler’s rooms at 43rd Street were taken by Ralph Steiner (1899-1986). The year Adler moved to NYC, Steiner had graduated from Dartmouth and was finishing an extra year studying at the Clarence White School of Photography. Steiner got a job making photogravure plates at the Manhattan Photogravure Company, until he had enough commissions to work as a freelance advertising photographer.

It is no wonder Adler chose Steiner. Considered one of the best modern art photographers of the period, Steiner actively exhibited his work in the modern galleries and museums, including the infamous 1927 “Machine Age” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Along with Louis Lozowick, Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, and other Precisionist, Steiner celebrated the technology of the modern world and brought fine art status to the art of the camera. Adler thought so much of Steiner’s work that he gave the artist an exhibition in the Pynson gallery in 1930.

Steiner began moving into film in the late 1920s, first with the avant-garde short H2O edited by Aaron Copeland (available through the media lab or online at http://video.aol.com/video-detail/ralph-steiner-h2o-1929/1808778335). This was followed by Redes/The Waves with Paul Strand; Pie in the Sky with Elia Kazan; and The Plow that Broke the Plains with Strand and Pare Lorentz. Two years later, Steiner and Willard Van Dyke founded American Documentary Films and collaborated on The City, shown to acclaim at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

In 1940, Adler and Steiner both left New York; Adler for Princeton University and Steiner for Hollywood.

Timothy Cole (1852-1931), Abraham Lincoln, 1928. Wood engraving. Graphic Arts division GC030.

Timothy Cole (not to be confused with the painter Thomas Cole) was a “new school” reproductive wood engraver who made a career of reproducing famous works of art for Scribner’s Monthly. His technique, developed in the 1870s, involved painting a wood block with light-sensitive chemistry, then placing a photographic negative on the block, and developing out the image in a few minutes of sunlight. This allowed him to carve the block without redrawing the image and to create an ink print that had all the subtly of the continuous tone photograph. The technique is sometimes called “photoxylography.”

“Now the engraving is nothing, absolutely nothing,” wrote Cole. “It is the reproduction of the original alone that concerns me … [The engraver] must not speak his own words, nor do his own works, nor think his own thoughts, but must be the organ through which the mind of the artist speaks.”

“Old school” engravers deplored the “new school” kids. William James Linton wrote many articles against reproduction without interpretation, including “Art in Engraving on Wood,” Atlantic Monthly June 1879, criticizing Timothy Cole in particular. As often happens, the younger generation won out and most wood cutting from then on was done with the assistance of photography.

Timothy Cole (1852-1931) after a painting by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), John D. Rockefeller, Sr., 1921. Wood engraving. Graphic Arts division GC030.

Man Ray (1890-1976), Résurrection des mannequins (Paris: Jean Petithory, 1966). 15 gelatin silver photographs. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2008- in process

In 1938, the writer André Breton (1896-1966) and poet Paul Éluard (1895-1952) organized the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris. Each of fifteen artists were given a dressmaker’s mannequin as their canvas and encouraged to transform the figure in any way they desired. The artists included Salvador Dalí, Óscar Dominguez, Marcel Duchamp, Leo Malet, André Masson, Joan Miró, Wolfgang Paalen, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Jean, Max Ernst, Espinoza, Maurice Henry, Sonia Mosse, and Man Ray.

Man Ray organized the lighting and photographed the show. Twenty-eight years later, he printed and published a limited edition of these photographs, along with a descriptive text, under the title Résurrection des mannequins. Man Ray designed the binding and pursuaded the great surrealist printer Guy Lévis Mano to design and print the pages.

Princeton’s copy is inscribed by Man Ray to his friend William Copley (1919-1996). In 1947, Copley opened a Los Angeles gallery dedicated to the Surrealists and to Man Ray’s work in particular. When nothing sold, he closed the gallery, purchasing much of the art for his own private collection. In 1979, Copley sold this collection for $6.7 million, at the time the highest auction sale of a single owner’s collection in the United States.

Joseph John Elliott (1835-1903) and Clarence Edmund Fry (1840-1897) founded the celebrated photography studio of Elliott & Fry in 1863. Their business succeeded by offering noted actors, scientists, politicians, and writers a free photographic portrait, which could then be reproduced on hundreds of cartes-de-visite for sale to the Victorian public. By 1886, they had outgrown their studio at 55 Baker Street, Portman Square, and opened a second branch in South Kensington.

Elliott & Fry received a commission in 1870 to provide photographs for a deluxe London guidebook. Twelve portraits of contemporary actresses and actors were chosen to augment a series of steel engravings. Hundreds of original photographs had to be hand-trimmed and pasted onto pages with lithographed borders to illustrate these volumes. A lively descriptive text provides details on contemporary hotels, parks, clubs, theaters, markets, railway routes, and houses of trade.

Henry Herbert, London (Illustrated). A Complete Guide to the Places of Amusement. 8th edition (London: Herbert, 1879). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2008- in process

The prints and photographs in this album represent some of the earliest images made of Philadelphia. A similar album was given to the Library Company by McAllister’s son, John A. McAllister, in 1886.

John McAllister Sr. (1753-1830) immigrated to America in 1775 and moved to Philadelphia in 1781 where he opened a shop that grew into an optical business specializing in eyeglasses. John McAllister Jr. joined the business in 1807 and listed his occupation as optician. In addition to spectacles, they sold microscopes, spyglasses, magic lanterns, camera lucidas and obscuras, lenses, and other photography equipment. The shop was frequented by the earliest practitioners in photography who became John Jr.’s friends and colleagues.

McAllister was also a noted antiquarian and collector of Philadelphia history. His diary indicates that he hired Frederick Debourg Richards (1822-1903) to photograph the homes of his father and himself, along with other Philadelphia landmarks. Throughout his life, Richards pursued a career as a landscape painter while making his living primarily through photography. He settled in Philadelphia in 1848, opening a daguerreotype studio across from Independence Hall. In the 1850s, like many photographers, Richards made a transition from images on copper plates to paper, forming a partnership with John Betts. Several of the paper prints in this album hold the blind stamp from the studio of Richards and Betts. Other photographs in the album can be attributed to another prominent Philadelphia paper photographer James McClees.

Eight of the restrikes included in this album are from The City of Philadelphia by William Birch (1779-1851), published in 1800. Birch made the engravings “as a memorial of [Philadelphia’s] progress for the first century.” The deluxe edition included hand-colored plates and sold for the enormous sum of $35. Today, this volume is extremely rare and even the loose plates highly collectable. Eight restrikes from his second book, The Country Seats of the United States of North America, published 1809, are also included in this McAllister album.

For a complete list of the salted paper photographs, continue below.

Man Ray painted his first letter “Y” in 1923 as an homage to his friend Yves Tanguy. Even earlier, he contemplated creating an alphabet of Rayographs (photograms) but gave up the idea as too lengthy.

He eventually realized his project in 1947 in two entirely different versions. Alphabet was published by the Copley Galleries, Beverly Hills in 1948 and Analphabet was presented to a California collector around the same time. This second series of letters was published by Timothy Baum for Nadada Edition in 1974.

In 1970, at the age of 80, Man Ray completed a French edition, entitled Alphabets pour Adultes, seen here. The artist wrote, “A letter always suggests a word, and a word always suggests a book. There are words that are for every day use and there are words reserved for the more special occasions, for poetry … To make a new alphabet of the discarded props of a conversation can lead only to fresh discoveries in language.”

The Great East River Bridge, known today simply as the Brooklyn Bridge, opened to the public May 24, 1883. Designed by John Augustus Roebling (1806-1869) and Wilhelm Hildenbrand, the bridge took 13 years to build at a cost of 15 million dollars.

When John Roebling died unexpectedly in 1869 of a foot injury, his wife and sons continued the project. His first son Washington Roebling was also injured and confined to bed. Charles Roebling not only worked onsite but also invented an 80 ton wire rope machine, which made the project a success.

This photograph shows Charles Roebling and Hildenbrand consulting on the bridge. The drawing on the wall is by Hildenbrand. Graphic Arts division, GAX American Photography

The Scottish environmental scientist Dr. Robert Angus Smith (1817-1884) studied air and water pollution, coining the term “acid rain” in 1852. After working at the chemical laboratory at the Royal Manchester Institution, Smith was named the first Alkali Inspectorate by the Alkali Act of 1863. He went on to publish numerous texts on the control of urban pollution, most notably Air and Rain. The Beginnings of a Chemical Climatology (London: Longmans, Green, and co., 1872). Recap 85083.863

In 1876, an Act of Parliament was passed to attempt to control London’s water pollution. Smith was appointed the inspector to uphold the new laws. His methods for determining the number of microbes in water led to significant development in environmental science and law.

Seven mounted woodburytypes of Smith’s experiments were used to illustrate the 1884 second edition of Smith’s report to the government board. The prints were made by Vincent Robert Alfred Brooks (1814-1885) a lithographer who purchased the patent for Woodbury’s photo-relief process in 1879 and specialize in this method of book illustration through the turn-of-the-century.

GA 2008-01237

Although it may be difficult to tell from a thumbnail, this is a mammoth plate (23 x 17 inch) collodion on glass positive photograph of Grover Cleveland’s 1885 inauguration as the twenty-second president of the United States. The spectacular image represents the end of one era and the beginning of another for American photography.

Mammoth glass plates had been used with great success since the 1860s when Carleton Watkins and other members of the government expeditions carried them through the West. Commercial photographers in the East, such as Mathew Brady, also used mammoth plates to make celebrity portraits on a grand scale.

However, for most photographers, glass plates were heavy, difficult to handle, and easily broken. Even with the development of an emulsion-coating machine in 1879, there was a demand for better, cheaper materials to support the light-sensitive chemistry. In 1885, George Eastman introduced his Eastman American Film and in 1888, offered a camera that held a pre-coated roll of his flexible film. Now anyone who could afford to buy the camera could make photographs.

It is not surprising to find this seminal photograph at Princeton. When he retired from office, Cleveland chose Princeton, New Jersey, for his home and served for a time as a trustee of Princeton University. When he died in 1907, he was buried in the Princeton cemetery of the Nassau Presbyterian Church.

Cleveland’s papers are available in the Grover Cleveland collection, 1860-1907 (Manuscripts Collection MSS C0237). In addition, the books from his personal library are now part of Princeton’s rare books collections, including his copy of the 1885 Message from the President of the United States to the two Houses of Congress at the commencement of the first session of the forty-ninth Congress (Rare Books (Ex) CL 1090.24.9).

For more information on Cleveland’s connections with Princeton, see http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/cleveland_grover.html

In 1877, physician and public health specialist Emilio R. Coni (1859-1907) published an article entitled “Historia de una Afeccion Anestesica. Contracturante, Amputante y Dactiliana,” in the professional journal he edited Revista Medico-Quirurgica. A 16 page off-print was released at the same time by the Buenos Aires press of Pablo E. Coni, with a photographic frontispiece showing a man with macular leprosy.

Coni expanded the piece and the following year, published Contribucion al Estudio de la Lepra Anestesica. Coni fought all his life for the reform of the health practices of Latin-American families, and was eventually named president of the Medical Association of Argentina.

His memoirs were released after his death: Memorias de un médico higienista: contribucion a la historia de la higiene pública y social Argentina (1867-1917) (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos A. Flaiban, 1918). Recap, RA459.xC6

It is hard to overestimate the importance of The Yosemite Book in the history of the United States. Only 250 copies of this lavish quarto volume were published, with 24 albumen photographs by Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916) and 4 by William Harris. Watkins made the photographs on an 1866 trip to Yosemite with the Geological Survey of California and Harris made his on a trip the following year.

Watkins’ spectacular photographs record the beauty of Yosemite, not the geography or topography required of other survey artists, and his images found an immediate audience. Watkins used 8 x 10 inch glass-plate negatives, which had to be developed in California and then, carried back across the country to the photographer’s studio in Washington D.C. to be printed.

According to photography historian Peter Paulquist, “The task of printing 250 copies of each of the 28 negatives, a total of 7,000 individual prints, was accomplished by Watkins and his staff in the winter of 1867-68. Assuming that Watkins received at least $6 per book, and that all the books were sold, he would have netted $1,500 for [one year’s] work.”

For more information, see Martha A. Sandweiss, Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Marquand Library (SAPH) TR23.6 .S25 2002.

The Scottish photographer Thomas Annan (1829-1887) is best known for his images of the Glasgow slums, published as Photographs of Streets, Closes, &c. Taken 1868-71, 1872 (Graphic Arts dividion (GAX) 2007-0023E). Not long after this commission, the city of Glasgow hired Annan again to photograph the 25 mile water system between Loch Katrine and Glasgow. This was the first successful aqueduct project in Scotland, designed to provide Glasgow with cheap, clean water.

Annan finished the first set of photographs in 1876 and a portfolio was published in 1877. He returned to take a second photograph of the commission members in 1880 and a third portrait of the group in 1886.

In the late 1880s, Glasgow had outgrown the original water works and needed a second reservoir. To raise the money for this project they again called Annan, who made additional photographs and a second expanded edition of the Water Works album was published in 1889. This is the rare volume of 33 albumen photographs that Princeton’s graphic arts division recently acquired.

A successful grocer, Francis Firth took a chance in 1850 when he formed a partnership and opened The Frith and Hayward Photography Studio in Liverpool. In 1856, Frith made an extended trip to Egypt, traveling up the Nile from Cairo to Abu Simbel. He carried with him four cameras and all the equipment necessary to take and develop wet collodion glass-plate negatives. He often complained about the chemicals boiling-over inside the tent he used as a darkroom.

Frith made other trips to the Middle East in 1857 and 1859, then printed and published 1,000s of albumen photographs in a series of deluxe books and albums. The public went crazy for these images and Frith made a small fortune. Although he retired soon after this, his publishing company in Reigate, Surrey, continued to operate until 1970.

Mirror to Our World / Un espejo de nuestra mundo (Chiapas, México: San Cristóbal de Las Casas, 2007). Copy no. 5 of 100. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2008- in process

Recently acquired for the Graphic Arts division is this limited-edition portfolio celebrating the achievements of the Maya photographers in and around San Cristóbal de Las Casas in the Chiapas Highlands. The portfolio was produced under the auspices of the Chiapas Photography Project, which assists and promotes the artistic work of the region’s indigenous peoples. For information, see http://www.chiapasphoto.org/

The Project has developed two distinct programs: the Archivo Fotográfico Indígena / Indigenous Photography Archive (AFI) and Lok’tamayach, Fotógrafos Mayas de Chiapas / Mayan Photographers from Chiapas. The Archive holds over 75,000 photographs by more than 200 photographers from 10 different ethnic groups.

Un espejo de nuestro mundo comes in a cloth slipcase made by Paxku’ Pavlu from Nabenchauk, Zinacantán. The design is taken from a pirik mochebal of the 1970s/80s, which was a type of shawl used by women in Tzotzil-speaking Zinacantán, a community in the Chiapas Highlands. The shawl was worn for everyday activities and has traditionally been characterized by a basket-weave pattern dating from pre-Columbian times. http://www.chiapasphoto.org/shop.html

The Graphic Arts division holds a scrapbook of early paper photography compiled by the British optician and amateur photographer, Richard Willats. After several years of work by many staff members, the entire scrapbook has been digitized and is available for public view at http://diglib.princeton.edu/
xquery?xq=getCollection&xsl=collection
&_pid=gc131willats

In the early 1840s, T. & R. Willats was one of the leading scientific instrument makers in London, specializing in barometers, thermometers, and telescopes. It was also one of only two companies supplying photographic chemistry and equipment to the amateur practitioners of the day. Opticians (and brothers?) Thomas and Richard Willats had shops at 98 Cheapside (1840s-50), 28 Ironmonger Lane (1851-56), and 2 Church Lane, Homerton (1857-60).

Sir John Herschel; Horne, Thornewaite, &Wood; John Johnston; Negretti & Zambra; Nicholson; T. S. Redman; J. Sherrington; G. Wharton Simpson; Thomas Sutton; William Harding Warner; Richard Willats; and Walter Bentley Woodbury.

These photographs include portraits, architectural scenes, and events of the day, such as the collapsed Fleet Street Sewer and of the destroyed Underground Railway Works. Geographic locations in these images include London, Paris, Holland, and Japan. One print, by an unidentified photographer, is captioned “The first photograph taken from a negative on glass.”

Many of these men were leading practitioners of early paper photography. Robert Bingham was the author of his own manuals including Photogenic Manipulation. Part I: Containing the Theory and Plain Instructions in the Art of Photography, or the Production of Pictures through the Agency of Light…. 4th ed. (London: George Knight and Sons, [1847]) and The Collodion Process: being a supplement to Part I of Photogenic Manipulation (London: G. Knight and Sons, [1852]).

Sir John Herschel was a scientist, chemist, and astronomer. Herschel discovered the chemistry for a fixing agent or “hypo”, and then in 1839, invented a photographic process using sensitized paper. Herschel coined the use of the terms “photography,” “positive,” and “negative.”

Joseph Cundall was a leading book binder and publisher, known for his handsome illustrated children’s books. He also experimented with early paper photography.

Opticians Henry Negretti and Joseph Warren Zambra formed a scientific instrument company, Negretti & Zambra, in 1850. They also printed and published photographs using various early processes.

In 1954, Princeton received a gift from the painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). This donation included issues of 291, a monthly magazine published out of The Little Galleries of the Photo Succession, run by her husband Alfred Stieglitz. Today, the graphic arts division holds issues no. 2-7/8 (although no.1, 9-12 are currently missing, things have a way of turning up).

291 was edited by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Marius de Zayas (1880-1961), Paul Haviland (1880-1950), Agnes Ernst Meyer (1887-1970), and to a lesser extent Francis Picabia (1879-1953), and Katherine N. Rhoades (1885-1986). Many of the prints include hand-coloring and issue no. 7/8 has a photogravure by Stieglitz.

291 no.3 May 1915. Page design by Marius De Zayas, poems by Katherine N. Rhoades and Agnes Ernst Meyer.


291 no.3 May 1915. Le Coq Gaulois drawn by Edward Steichen. “A Bunch of Keys” by J.B. Kerfoot.

Galerie contemporaine, littéraire, artistique was published weekly in its first series from 1876 to 1880, and in a less regular second series from 1881 to 1884 (not in the Princeton library). The general public were persuaded to subscribe, and did in large numbers, by the captivating woodburytype portraits contained in each issue. These portraits were of contemporary celebrities from literature, music, science, politics, or the arts; each photographed by some of the great photographers of the day. Shown here are portraits of Jules Verne (1828-1905) and Émile Zola (1840-1902) made by Étienne Carjat (1828-1906); and George Sand (1804-1876) made by Nadar (pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon 1820-1910).

The woodburytype (called photoglyptie in France) is not considered a true photograph because the image is not created from light-sensitive material. Instead we call it a photomechanical print. To make a woodburytype, a tough gelatin relief is created from a glass negative, which is then pressed into a sheet of soft lead creating a mold of the image—thick and thin as the image is dark and light. The mold is filled with a pigmented gelatin (usually purplish-brown) and covered with a piece of paper. When run through a printing press the gelatin is transferred onto the paper making an extremely detailed image but one that will not fade because no light-sensitive chemistry was involved. Such permanent prints were especially useful for commercial periodicals, such as Galerie contemporaine.

To explore the properties of woodburytypes and many other photographic processes, try the digital sample book created by Ryan Boatright and James Reilly at the Image Permanence Institute: http://www.digitalsamplebook.com
/home.htm

Cuthbert Bede (pseudonym of Edward Bradley, 1827-1889), Photographic Pleasures: Popularly Portrayed with Pen and Pencil (London: J. C. Hotten, 1859). 24 lithographed cartoons and humorous stories about the new art of photography. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2006-3219N

By the early 1920s, the Société Pathé Frères had built the largest film equipment and production company in the world. To increase their 1922 Christmas sales, they released the first projector meant for home use: the Pathé Baby. Kodak quickly released its own brand of home equipment and film, which found greater popularity and by 1935 Pathé was forced into bankruptcy.

The 9.5 mm Pathé Baby films come in small cassettes holding approximately 30 feet of film that plays for around 60 seconds. What makes it unique is that it has sprocket holes down the center rather than on the sides. The film also has an ingenious little notch cut into each title frame that triggers the projector to stop for a few seconds, even though the operator continues to crank the film, allowing viewers time to read the text.

Princeton's collection of optical devices, and optical prints and photographs, is basically a pre-cinema collection. However, thanks to the help of Professor Rubén Gallo, we recently acquired a 1920s Pathé Baby projector along with approximately 1,000 Pathé films, including natural history, animation, biography, current events, and multi-reel comedies and dramas.

Here is a sample (black&white, no sound):

There is a group of enthusiasts based in the United Kingdom who still use 9.5 mm film. Their website is www.Pathescope.freeserve.co.uk/Pathe95.htm

James Fergusson (1808-1886), Tree and Serpent Worship, or, Illustrations of Mythology and Art in India in the First and Fourth Centuries after Christ (London: India Museum … , 1868). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-0934Q

Tree and Serpent Worship was compiled by the self-taught historian James Fergusson (1808-1886), who made his fortune at a young age in Calcutta and then devoted the rest of his life to his passion for Indian architecture. Fergusson befriended a number of the British officers who spent their time in India practicing the new art of wet-plate photography, such as Major Robert Gill (1804-1879) whose albumen prints were used to illustrate Fergusson’s 1864 edition of The Rock-Cut Temples of India (Graphic Arts Collection (GAX), 2007-2590N).

Another of Fergusson’s associates was James S. Waterhouse (1842-1922), who never used a camera before arriving in Calcutta. He became so accomplished that he was ultimately named surveyor-general to the monumental Survey of India. Under the sponsorship of the Indian government, Waterhouse spent eleven years—from 1864 to 1875—documenting the ethnic diversity of the people of India; work later replicated by Edward Curtis and others who joined the international mania for mammoth ethnographic studies.

During that same period, Waterhouse provided Fergusson with a group of images depicting the ancient Buddhist monuments in Sanchi, a small village in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The frontispiece of Tree and Serpent Worship shows Waterhouse’s image of the Northern gateway to the Great Stupa at Sanchi. This is the oldest of the religious stupas, or mounds, constructed in the third century BCE to hold the remains of the Buddha.

Along with 20 photographs by Waterhouse are 36 by W. H. Griggs (1832-1911), depicting Amravati sculptural fragments from the collection we now know as the Victoria & Albert Museum.

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing (London: Printed by R. and J.E. Taylor, 1839) Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize TR144 .T34 1839q

In January of 1838, news reached William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) in London that Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) had announced his direct positive process to the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Talbot rush to present and publish his own findings and on January 31, Talbot read a brief paper before the Royal Society in London. Several weeks later, he spoke again at length about the process that he called photogenic drawing.

Unfortunately, the Society declined to publish his research on photography in their Transactions and it was not until the following year that the paper found its way into print (shown here). This brochure constitutes the first separate publication on photography.

Inside the copy held at Princeton University is a letter from Sir Edward Brewster (Principal of St Andrew’s University and Chancellor of Edinburgh) who was an amateur photographer and writes about the calotype process.

It was not until 1841 that Talbot finally introduced the calotype process. Talbot again spoke to the Royal Society and the document pictured here is the publication of this “memoir” or talk presented on the creation of photography.

Princeton University holds many seminal publications on the history of photography from around the world. Also pictured here is the 1851 paper published by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard (1802-1872), introducing his variation on the calotype entitled Traité de photographie sur papier.

Wilson’s Photographic Magazine (New York: E.L. Wilson, 1889-1914). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0005M

In 1957, Princeton received a wonderful donation of photography books from David H. McAlpin, class of 1920. These included many reference books and serials from the Camera Club of New York’s library (sold in 1955); in particular a set of Wilson’s Photographic Magazine.

When Dr. Edward L. Wilson (1838-1903) began the publication The Philadelphia Photographer in 1864, it was the only photographic magazine in the United States. In 1885, the magazine’s name was changed to Wilson’s Photographic Magazine and its central offices removed to New York City. As Wilson’s Photographic, the magazine was published semimonthly from 1889 to 1892. Issues published on the first Saturday of the month included an original albumen print and those published on the third Saturday held a photogravure, photo-engraving, or photolithograph. Beginning January 1893, the magazine became a monthly and each issue included at least one original print.

The following is a brief section of Wilson’s obituary printed in The American Amateur Photographer:

“[Wilson’s] first service was to secure a modification of the copyright law of 1831 so as to include photographs. In 1865 he organized and led the opposition of the fraternity to the so- called Bromide Patent. This fight continued over several years and eventually resulted in the upsetting of the patent, by which decision photographers were freed from a grievous tax. The stamp law was modified in 1866 and completely removed in 1868. In this year Mr. Wilson was foremost among those who organized the National Photographic Association, of which the present Photographer’s Association of America is the successor. In 1873 the National Association held at Buffalo, N. Y. what was probably the most successful photographic gathering ever held in America. A special number of The Philadelphia Photographer, comprising some 224 pages, reported this convention in detail, being published within two weeks after the close of the Convention—a remarkable journalistic feat at that time.”

While most publishers content themselves with one form of illustration in any individual book, a few select titles include a variety of illustrative techniques. This account of surgical pratices during the American Civil War includes etchings, wood engravings, lithographs, chromolithographs, albumen photographs, heliotypes, and woodburytypes. In short, almost every reproductive process available at the time can be found somewhere within these six bound volumes. Here are a few samples.

Ed Ruscha (born 1937), Dutch Details (Deventer, The Netherlands: Stichting Octopus / Sonsbeek 71, 1971). 23 pp. with 116 photomechanical illustrations. Edition of 3,000. Marquand Library SPHX TR654.R872 1971q

Edward Ruscha’s books of sequential photomechanical images began in 1963 with Twentysix Gasoline Stations, (GAX 2006-2396N) published in an edition of 400 numbered copies under the imprint “A National Excelsior Publication,” funded by Ruscha himself. The 26 pages offer black and white images of gas stations along Route 66, which Ruscha had taken in 1962. The format had great appeal to him and he went on to produce several dozen other sequential image books over the next few decades. For many historians, Ruscha’s Gasoline Stations represents the beginning of the American artists’ books movement.

1971 was a busy year for Ruscha. He completed five paintings, along with books, films, prints, and drawings, and received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Three books were completed this year: A Few Palm Trees, Records, and Dutch Details. The third was a commission by Sonsbeek ‘71, an international arts exhibition at the Groninger Museum, for which Ruscha was to create a work on site that would then be exhibited. As the plane was approaching The Netherlands, the pilot announced that the weather was bad and he would have more details soon. Ruscha thought, “Dutch details,” and that was the beginning of the project.

Unlike other book projects, Dutch Details is horizontal in format. The images are of bridges and the buildings taken with a hand-held camera. Although the Octopus Foundation published a large edition, the majority of the print run was mistakenly destroyed in a warehouse, and the remaining copies are now highly sought after by Ruscha collectors.

Ruscha said “I don’t want people to go look at these photographs after they are enlarged and they see them on the wall in museums, maybe under the auspice of a museum and consider them to be like a painting … The book, in the end, will be a closer representation of the project.”

This Cambridge photograph album is dated 1867 and contains 205 gem tintypes, many with hand coloring. The word “Cambridge” on the title page does not refer to the photographs inside but was simply the album brand sold by Remick and Rice, the major producers of gem tintype albums. The album measures 3 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches; with each photo opening measuring 7/8 of an inch high by 5/8 of an inch wide, or about the size of a quarter. This size tintype would fit nicely into a locket, tiepin, or broach.

The tintype was patented in 1854 but not widely produced until a few years later. The format known as a gem or bon ton was usually made using a multi-lens camera with repeating back and was extremely popular in the United States during the 1860s. They were quick to make, inexpensive to buy (10 cents per dozen), and durable.

For more information, read: Janice Schimmelman, The Tintype in America, 1856-1880 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007). TR375 .S35 2007.
For gem tintypes, see Marcel Safier’s page: http://members.ozemail.com.au/
~msafier/photos/tintypes.html

“Like Briton’s island lies our steak,
A sea of gravy bounds it;
Shalots, confus’dly scattered, make
The rockwork that surrounds it.
Your isle’s best emblem these behold,
Remember ancient story:
Be, like your grandsires, first and bold,
And live and die with glory.”

I am posting this Saturday at 5:00 p.m., in honor of the weekly meeting of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks. From 1735 to 1869, the 24 members of this London dining club, along with their 24 guests, met to eat a beefsteak dinner, drink plenty of wine and sing. Needless-to-say, it was for men only.

Their visual identity was the gridiron and as the location of their dinners changed over 134 years, the original gridiron of the society moved along with them. In each venue, it was ceremonially hung in the centre of the ceiling, over the presidents chair. An albumen photograph of the gridiron is seen above, tipped into Arnold’s book as its frontispiece.

Some of the best known members of the Sublime Society include David Garrick, William Hogarth, The Prince of Wales (soon to be King George IV), and Samuel Johnson. More about the group can be found at: http://sublimesocietyofbeefsteaks.org/SublimeSociety.org
/TheSublimeSociety.html and in John Timbs (1801-1875), Clubs and Club Life in London. With anecdotes of its famous coffee houses, hostelries, and taverns, from the seventeenth century to the present time (London: Chatto and Windus [1872]). Firestone Library (F) 1465.906.11

The Chain gang included J.A. Chain, a partner in the Denver Chain and Hardy Bookstore; his wife, painter Helen Henderson Chain (1848-1892); and their son Fred. The credit on the title page of this album implies that it was J.A. who created the albumen photographs, but there is good reason to believe the album itself was assembled and embellished by Helen.

Of the 19th-century western artists, Helen Chain was Colorado’s most prominent female painter. She settled in Denver in 1871 but traveled to Europe and to New York to study; in particular, spending one season working in the studio of George Innes. She illustrated several books, including John Lewis Dyer, The Snow-Shoe Itinerant. An Autobiography of the Rev. John L. Dyer. . . (Cincinnati, Published for the author by Cranston & Stowe, 1890). Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA) Rollins 0800.

This was a family of travelers, with Helen sketching and painting wherever they went. She was the first women to paint the Mount of the Holy Cross on site in 1877 and five years later, the first to exhibit New Mexico pueblo scenes at the National Academy of Design. The Chains joined photographer William Henry Jackson on a tour of Mexico in 1883 and he might have been their tutor in photography.

The 1888 trip to Europe, documented in this album, began in Dresden and proceeded through Nuremberg, Venice, Rome, and Switzerland. Classic views of well-known landmarks are mixed with very personal scenes, most notably one of Helen in bed with her feet protruding from an enormous comforter. These photographs are each trimmed and mounted with copious notes and decorative painted elements to create a unique, personal journal.

Completed in only five years, St. Sophia or Hagia Sophia is today a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. What began as a basilica, then a mosque, underwent a full restoration between 1847 and 1849, by the Swiss-Italian architects Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati. In particular, the minarets were altered to make them equal in height, as seen in this photograph taken by Félix Bonfils taken in the 1870s.

Bonfils opened his first photography studio in Beirut in 1867, working together with his wife and son. They made numerous trips through Europe, the Middle East, and later the Far East. The photographs were sold individually and in luxurious bound albums published out of a second studio in Alès, France.

The introduction to this 1878 album states that the “collection of photographs of the Orient’s principal sites—initiated, executed and completed by Monsieur F. Bonfils with unequaled perseverance—should be regarded as one of the most considerable achievements—picturesque, artistic and scientific—of our epoch.”

For more information on the Bonfils business, see Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, “The Genius of Félix Bonfils,” Archaeology 54, no. 3 (May/June 2001).

During the nineteenth century, when photography was still a new art form, book publishers would cut and paste individual, original photographs into their books as illustrations. It was an expensive, time-consuming process and so, you might think it was only very limited-edition publications that were illustrated in this way. This is not the case. One reason we know this is is by looking at the Princeton University Library, where there are hundreds of examples of books—novels, textbooks, government documents—that include original, now historic, photographs.

We are now adding a special subject heading to books with original photographs in them to make them searchable in the main online catalogue. If you would like to try this search, go to http://catalog.princeton.edu and type: Photographs, Original—Illustrations in books into the search box. If you find books with photographs that has not yet been noted, please sent me the information and we will add the heading.

If you would like to browse a list of the titles we have been able to locate so far, continue with this posting below:

Thanks to the support of the Friends of the Princeton University Library, the Graphic Arts collection is fortunate to have acquired Athens, a rare nineteenth-century portfolio of albumen photographs focused on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. This scarce work by the American diplomat, journalist and photographer, William Stillman, is the product of a tragic, but artistically rich period in his life.

Following early careers as a painter associated with the Hudson River School and as founding editor of the art journal the Crayon, Stillman took up photography in 1859. Continuing as a journalist and travel writer abroad, Stillman put his skills as a photographer to use while serving as consul in Rome and Crete in the mid-1860s.

Stillman moved to Athens in 1868, where his young son died and his wife committed suicide. In response, Stillman devoted his life to his photography, executing this fine series of views of the Acropolis. A selection of 25 views from this series (with one small frontispiece image) was published in 1870 by the London firm, F. S. Ellis, printed in the carbon process by the Autotype Company. The title, as published, was The Acropolis of Athens: Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photographs.

This portfolio pre-dates the publication of Acropolis and represents Stillman’s earliest work in attempting to capture both the history and the beauty of Greek architecture. As opposed to the 1870 publication, which was printed by the Autotype Company, these images are printed by Stillman himself using wet-collodion-on-glass negatives developed onsite and then, contacted printed to albumen-coated paper. The photographs themselves are at once documents of a civilization past and sublime elegies in light and shadow. They begin with distant views showing the imposing nature of the Acropolis within its city surroundings, and move closer with dramatic and picturesque studies of individual structures and sculptural details. The photographs include several figures, one of whom is thought to be Stillman himself.