Mautz (Carl) collection of cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs from the Western United States and Canada, approximately 1860-1910

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Summary

Title:
Carl Mautz collection of cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs from the Western United States and Canada
Dates:
approximately 1860-1910
Abstract:
A collection of approximately 7,000 cartes-de-visite and cabinet photograph portraits representing thousands of commercial photographers operating in the American West, 1860-1910.
Extent:
28.3 Linear Feet (19 binders, 14 boxes)
Language:
Materials are in English.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item]. Carl Mautz collection of cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs from the Western United States and Canada, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Background

Scope and content:

A collection of approximately 7,000 cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs, almost entirely portraits of ordinary people in the American West, photographed between approximately 1860 and 1910. The photographs represent the work of thousands of commercial photographers operating in every state west of the Mississippi, plus Wisconsin, which the collector considered a western state given its frontier role in the migration of photographers from the East to West. The collection includes 23 states and territories, including Hawaii, and a few portraits from British Columbia and Western Canada. There are a relatively small number of photographs from Alaska (1) and Arizona (6), not due to scarcity, but because those parts of the collection were previously dispersed.

Portraits taken in California make up about half of the collection, representing established photographers in big cities like San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as lesser-known photographers in sparsely populated mountain towns. The people of the frontier and post-frontier West posing in the portraits are mostly unidentified, though some images do have handwritten names and dates. The majority of people pictured are white, with a relatively small number of portraits of African American, Chinese, Latino, and Indigenous persons. Sitters are of all ages, seen in individual poses or in family groups, in various styles of clothing, hair, jewelry, props, and furniture. Images include soldiers, wedding portraits, mothers with babies, children, frontiersmen, workers with tools, dogs, and occasional outdoor images of buildings or people.

This collection was amassed over 35 years and became the primary source material for Mautz's seminal reference work Biographies of Western Photographers (1997). The thousands of imprints, some elaborately illustrated, include the names of several female photographers, such as: Fannie Hoyt, Salt Lake City, Utah; Mrs. E. W. (Eliza) Withington, Ione City, California; and Mrs. C. Klostermann, Eureka, California.

Biographical / historical:

Carl Mautz was born in Portland, Oregon in 1943. He began collecting cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs from the early American West in 1974 while maintaining a law practice in mountain towns of Northern California. He became increasingly interested in the imprints found on the backs of these photographs, and the photographers about whom little to nothing was known. In 1975, based on his own and other collectors' research, he published a small guide called Checklist of Western Photographers, and continued hunting for unique imprints. In 1997, after 20 more years of collecting, selling, conferring, and researching, Mautz published a 600-page reference work titled Biographies of Western Photographers: A Reference Guide to Photographers Working in the 19th Century American West, considered a seminal work in the field of early Western photography. Mautz turned full-time to dealing in photographs after he retired from practicing law in 1993. He also began a small publishing company and has published 25 books pertaining to photography or local California history.

Acquisition information:
Purchased for the Huntington from Carl Mautz by the Library Collectors' Council, January 2016.
Processing information:

Processed by Suzanne Oatey in November 2022.

Arrangement:

Organized in two series: 1. Cartes-de-visite (photographs); 2. Cabinet photographs

The collector's arrangement has been retained; within each series, photographs are organized geographically by state, in alphabetical order.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Suzanne Oatey
Date Encoded:
This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2022-11-21 14:31:59 -0800 .

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for use by qualified researchers and by appointment. Please contact Reader Services at the Huntington Library for more information.

Terms of access:

The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item]. Carl Mautz collection of cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs from the Western United States and Canada, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Location of this collection:
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108, US
Contact:
(626) 405-2129
reference@huntington.org
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