Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Mautz (Carl) collection of cartes-de-visite and cabinet
photographs from the Western United States and Canada
photCL 581
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
The Huntington Library
Title: Carl Mautz collection of cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs from the Western
United States and Canada
Identifier/Call Number: photCL 581
Physical Description:
28.3 Linear Feet
(19 binders, 14 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 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.
Language of Material: Materials are in
English.
Open for use by qualified researchers and by appointment. Please contact Reader Services at
the Huntington Library for more information.
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.
[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.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchased for the Huntington from Carl Mautz by the Library Collectors' Council, January
2016.
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.
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.
Processed by Suzanne Oatey in November 2022.
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.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
African Americans -- Photographs
Canada -- History -- 19th century
Children -- Photographs
Dogs -- Photographs
Families -- Photographs
Fashion -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Photographers -- Canada -- 19th century
Photographers -- United States -- 19th century
Portrait photography -- United States -- Photographs
West (U.S.) -- History -- 19th century
West (U.S.) -- History -- 20th century
Women photographers -- United States -- History -- 19th
century
Cabinet photographs
Card
photographs (photographs)
Cartes-de-visite (card photographs)
Photographs
Portraits
Postmortem photographs
Tintypes (photographs)
Moody, Z. F. (Zenas Ferry), 1832-1917
Ronan, Peter, 1839-1893
Taber, I. W. (Isaiah West), 1830-1912
Watkins, Carleton E., 1829-1916