Guide to the Branson DeCou Archive
Processed by Visual Resource Collection staff
University of California, Santa Cruz
2002
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz 95064
speccoll@library.ucsc.edu
Contributing Institution:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Title: Branson DeCou Archive
Creator:
DeCou, Branson,
1892-1941
source:
DeCou, Elsie Vera Stanley,
1901-1997
Identifier/Call Number: MS.038
Physical Description:
112 Linear Feet
79 boxes, 25 drawers, 5 items
Date (inclusive): 1920-1941
Abstract: Glass lantern slides, negatives,
photographic albums, notebooks, travelogues, and miscellaneous artifacts that document
DeCou's travels in five continents and subsequent travel lecture tours ca.
1920-1941.
Physical Location: Stored in Special Collections and
Archives: Advance notice is required for access to the collection.
Language of Material:
English
Access
Collection is open for research
Publication Rights
Copyright for the items in this collection is owned by the creators and their heirs.
Reproduction or distribution of any work protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair
use requires permission from the copyright owner. It is the responsibility of the user to
determine whether a use is fair use, and to obtain any necessary permissions. For more
information see UCSC Special Collections and Archives policy on Reproduction and Use.
Preferred Citation
Branson DeCou Archive. MS 38. Special Collections and Archives, University Library,
University of California, Santa Cruz.
Acquisition Information
Gift of Elsie DeCou, August 1971
Alternative Form of Material Available
Images from this collection are available through UCSC Library Digital Collections.
Biography
Photographer and travelogue lecturer Branson DeCou journeyed the world for thirty years
before his death in 1941 at the relatively young age of 49. He was born October 20, 1892, in
Philadelphia, a city with a long history of photographic invention, from the pioneer
Langenheim brothers to the work of Thomas Eakins. The city also has a tradition of
collecting and publishing photographs--the Library Company of Philadelphia, American's
oldest cultural institution, had exceptional holdings of photographic works well before
1900--as well as active associations for professionals and amateurs such as the Philadelphia
Photographic Exchange Club and the Philadelphia Photographic Society.
DeCou's father was in the wholesale shoe business in Philadelphia, but the family relocated
to New Jersey where Branson attended Blair Academy in Blairstown. Upon graduation in 1910 he
entered the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken where he more fully developed his
interest in photography. After a year, however, he left to initiate what would become a
lifelong pursuit of touring the world.
The fabulous Panama Pacific International Exposition of San Francisco's 1915 World's Fair
attracted an enormous number of visitors, including Branson DeCou, who in a series of
photographs recorded the Fair's night effects so effectively that they were brought to the
attention of Underwood and Underwood, a leading American photographic concern, for
publication. The wide circulation of these images encouraged DeCou to begin his own work in
travelogue lecturing, allying his interests in travel and photography. He embarked in a
field that was widely popular at the time as a form of entertainment and education. Since
the mid-1800s, public and private lantern slide shows were put on by photographers in clubs,
schools, lodges, and museums on a variety of themes including world travel, religion,
temperance, comic subjects, or literary retellings. DeCou traversed America speaking to
local community organizations such as the Union League Club of Chicago, the New Jersey
Orange Women's Club, and also lecturing in academic and cultural institutions such as the
University of Hawaii and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
In each venue the travelogue was illustrated with an average of 150 hand-colored lantern
slides and the images synchronized to music. He called his shows "Dream Pictures" and
advertised them as a "fascinating new form of entertainment." His promotional brochures
exclaimed "with the aid of the dissolving shutter and double stereopticon exquisitely
colored slides are projected perfectly synchronized to the music of the masters reproduced
on the Victrola, the combination of the two inspiring emotions." DeCou was available for
single engagements on selected subjects such as "Jungle Bound Angkor" or he could be booked
for a complete series given in the form of a continuous trip "Around the Southern
Hemisphere: South Africa, South America, Australia, Tasmania, and the South Sea Islands."
DeCou was apparently highly successful, as these testimonials from several engagements
convey. "The slides were the most beautiful that we have ever had the opportunity to view.
As for the lecture, you had them so spellbound that they forgot to get uneasy and restless
even in the uncomfortable camp chairs. Your enunciation is clear and the little witty
personalities that you inserted were very kindly received. You have the gift of
side-stepping the stereotyped line of talk usual in travelogues," observed a reviewer for
the Newark Camera Club of New Jersey. "You surely have reason for a swelling of the chest
over that magnificent audience and its evidence of deep satisfaction with the evening,"
wrote Charles Atkins, Director of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Each of the
programs had its own title: "Alluring Bali: The Last Paradise," "Ever Captivating Paris,"
"The Garden of Allah: Algeria and Tunisia," and also its special music: Rachmaninoff's
Prelude in C Sharp Minor for "Nature's Supreme Spectacle: The Grand Canyon of the Colorado,"
the second movement of Haydn's Trio in G Major for the "Wonders of San Marco."
In March of 1932 DeCou made a second marriage to Elsie Vera Stanley, a fellow lecturer. For
the last nine years of his life they traveled extensively, and together they continued to
present what then were called "musical travelogues, illustrated with masterpieces of art and
photography." Often Elsie, in a booked two week long engagement, would lecture one evening
on a specific country and Branson would perform on the next. For reserved single admission
the price would be 75 cents, for a series ticket the cost was $2.00. Ever the constant
travelers, the DeCous appear to have established temporary residencies in several cities,
including Hollywood, California, where they held screenings for cultural notaries. "I must
tell you how delighted we all were with the lovely DeCou pictures and music. My guests
included Rex Ingram, Mr. and Mrs. William DeMille, etc.--all of who enjoyed them
tremendously," wrote Ruth St. Denis of Los Angeles.
Branson died of a heart attack on December 12, 1941, at the home of his mother, Mrs.
Charles Berwin of East Orange, New Jersey. He had come to New Jersey after completing a
lecture tour in the Eastern section of the country. Elsie continued to lecture for several
years using Branson's slides. She lived in California in Carmel, Laguna Beach, and
eventually San Marcos, where she died on the first day of January, 1997, at the age of 96.
In the decades after Branson's death she continued to travel, often observing the changes in
culture and landscape, and frequently commenting that the pollution of some world regions
made her heartsick. Some of her correspondence, for example, notes that in 1984, at the age
of 83, she had spent the winter in Europe, three months in Nairobi, and had also been to
Manila and Hong Kong.
The days of lecturing with lantern slides were long over, however. Commercial color slides
had been available since the 1940s, replacing the magical, hand-tinted and luminous lantern
slides as a more accurate and expedient way to provide instruction and entertainment to
viewers. Elsie, at the suggestion of fellow Carmel resident Ansel Adams, proposed that the
newly inaugurated campus of the University of California in nearby Santa Cruz be the
recipient of her late husband's photographic work. In 1971, UCSC's University Library
received Branson's artistic inheritance of 10,000 photographic images. The works covered
every part of the world: from Laplanders to South Pacific Islanders, from Japanese pagodas
to Egyptian pyramids. Through DeCou's vision we, who have inherited the images, can see life
before industrialization, the destruction of World War II, the effects of urbanization, and
the loss of local craft and cultural traditions.
Biography by Christine Bunting, Head of Special Collections and Archives.
Scope and Content
The Branson DeCou Archive consists of 8,000 hand-tinted 3-1/4" x 4" glass lantern slides
used in years of travel lecture tours covering all countries of the world, from circa
1920-1941. There are also accompanying negatives, 48 photographic albums, notebooks,
travelogues, slide storage boxes, and slide projectors.
Arrangement
The archive is divided into 6 series: Photographic Albums, Notebooks and Travelogues,
Lantern Slides, Photographic Prints, Negatives, and Realia. The majority of the materials
are arranged into geographic divisions, by country or area.
Funding
In 1999 the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation of New York, provided a grant to support to
preserve, digitize and catalog 1,475 lantern slides of Italy. Grants from the American Irish
Foundation and the Friends of the UCSC Library have enabled small portions of the collection
to be indexed and preserved.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Voyages and travels
Africa
Ireland -- Photographs
Lantern slides
Italy -- Photographs
Oceania -- Photographs
Australia -- Photographs
North America -- Photographs
South America -- Photographs
Asia -- Photographs
Europe -- Pictorial works
DeCou, Branson, 1892-1941
DeCou, Elsie Vera Stanley,
1901-1997
Photograph Albums
1920-1941
Scope and Contents
This series contains photoalbums of black and white photographs.
Arrangement
The material is arranged in original order, following loose geographic divisions.
Albums 1-8,46 Africa and Asia, Albums 8-32,47 Europe, Albums 29-34,36-42,44-45 North
America, Albums 35,41-43 South America, Albums 44-45 Australasia.
Box 1
Africa, California, Canada
Box 3
Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco
Box 4
Java, Singapore, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Mombassa (Kenya), Zanzibar, Tanganyika,
Republic of South Africa, Natal
Box 5
Zululand (Natal), Bechuanaland (Botswana), Rhodesia, South Africa, Uruguay,
Argentina, Brazil, West Indies, Martinique
Box 6
Hawaiian Islands, Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam,
Cambodia
Box 7
Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Bali, Java
Box 8
Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Italy, Japan, China,
Philippines, India, Austria, Central Europe
Box 9
Ireland, S. S. Normandie (ocean liner)
Box 11
England, Holland, Germany, Belgium, France
Box 12
Switzerland, Germany (Rhine), Belgium, Holland, England, Ireland
Box 13
France, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark
Box 14
France, Russia, Finland, Denmark, England
Box 17
Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, France
Box 19
Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, Monaco
Box 20
Italy, Austria, Germany, France
Box 23
France, Switzerland, Italy
Box 24
Madeira, Morocco, Portugal, France, England, Holland, Denmark,
Sweden
Box 25
Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria
Box 26
Madeira, Spain, Italy, Capri, Sicily, Israel, Egypt, Rhodes (Aegean Sea),
Turkey
Box 27
Syria, Israel, Egypt, Italy
Box 28
Spain, Morocco, Algiers, Carthage, Tunisia, Italy, Sicily,
Yugoslavia
Box 29
Turkey, Russia, Greece, Bermuda, Canada (Quebec), California, Arizona, New
Mexico
Box 30
Sweden, Russia, Denmark, France, West Indies, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands
(U.S.), Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba
Box 31
New Mexico, California, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Madeira, Portugal,
Spain, France, New England
Box 32
Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, New Mexico, Madeira, Portugal, Spain,
France, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Denmark
Box 34
Canada, Wyoming, California, Montana, Washington, Oregon
Box 37
California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming
Box 38
Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Utah, Oregon, California, New Mexico,
Arizona, Colorado
Box 39
Bahamas, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, California, Ohio,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Idaho
Box 41
California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Florida, West Indies, Curacao, Haiti,
Virgin Islands (U.S.), Antigua, Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico,
Box 42
Peru, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, California, Arizona, Mexico
Box 43
Panama, Colombia, Equador, Peru
Box 44
Hawaiian Islands, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Java
Notebooks and Travelogues
1920-1941
Scope and Contents
This series contains notebooks and travelogues covering North American, Asian, and
European countries, many of which include programs, pamphlets, and flyers. DeCou used
these notebooks in producing his slide shows and lectures.
Box 48
British Columbia and the Selkirks
1935
Box 48
Springtime Motoring in California. Our Romantic California and Our Pacific
Coast.
1938
Box 49
China and Korea
1924, 1934
Box 49
Our American Wonderland Series: Colorado
Box 49
Egypt: Living Pattern of the Nile
Box 50
Our American Wonderland Series: The Pacific Northwest and Glacier National
Park
1921
Box 51
Glorious Switzerland: The Spell of Lake Geneva
1936
Box 51
Venice and Northern Italy
Box 51
Yosemite, Sierra Nevadas, Mt. Ranier
Box 52
Bryce Canyon and Salt Lake
Box 52
New Mexico, Unusual Southwest and Grand Canyon
Box 52
Miscellaneous notes, travelogues
Box 52
Ireland of the Welcomes by D.L. Kelleher
Box 52
Ireland - Official Tourist Guide
Lantern Slides
1920-1941
Scope and Contents
This series contains 8,000 1/4"-4" hand-tinted glass slides.
Arrangement
The slides are first arranged by geographic divisions then alphabetically by
country.
Drawer 2
Asia/Near and Middle East
Box 54
Ireland prints, printed by Gypsy Ray
Box 55
Unprocessed black and white photographs
Box 21
Santa Barbara, California
Box 59
Guatemala, Central America, Switzerland, Belgium
Box 61
Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Norway
Box 62
British Isles, Scotland, Wales, England
Box 67
Tangier, Nassau, Bermuda, Bali, Indonesia
Box 69
Thailand, Cambodia, Korea, Japan
Box 71
Yugoslavia, Cuba, Russia, Jersualem, Turkey, miscellaneous
Box 72
Venezuela, Ecuador, Haiti, Chile
Box 78
Unsorted glass plate negatives
Box 79
Three small lantern slide carrying cases
Three large lantern slide carrying cases
Slide viewing projector in carrying case
Stereoscope camera in metal carrying case
