Jacobson (Ken and Jenny) collection

Series I Loose photographs, 1788-1959,

Scope and Content Note

The series contains over 1,850 loose photographs. Works by more than 115 known photographers and studios, as well as almost 400 photographs by unknown photographers are present here. Named photographers range from well-known photographers and studios, to those who are little-known, and to amateur photographers, about whom little, if any, biographical information is available. Many of the photographers represented in this series are represented in subsequent series of the collection, especially Series II Card photographs, glass and cased images and Series III Albums.

Photographers and studios with twenty or more images present in this series include Alary & Geiser (with images also made by Jean-Baptiste Alary and Jean Geiser respectively) and Prod'hom et fils in Algeria; the Zangaki brothers, Hippolyte Arnoux, Antonio Beato, Émile Béchard, W. Hammerschmidt and G. Lékégian in Egypt; and Abdullah frères and Guillaume Berggren in Turkey. Sébah & Joillier (also Pascal Sébah and Jean (J.-P.) Sébah), one of the most prolific ninteenth-century studios in the Middle East, was also based initially in Constantinople, and later opened an establishment in Cairo. Félix Bonfils and Tancrède Dumas were both based in Beirut, Lebanon, but photographed throughout the Middle East. Other photographers who traveled to the Middle East include the English photographers Francis Bedford, who served as the photographer to the young Prince of Wales's tour of the east in 1862; and Frank Mason Good, who made four tours of the Middle East in the 1860s and 1870s, and had much of his work published by Frances Frith, whose work is also represented in the series.

Garrigues operated a studio in Tunis from the 1870s through the first decade of the twentieth century. The pictorialist photographers Lehnert & Landrock began operating in Tunis just as the Garrigues studio was winding down, and in fact may have taken over their premises. Lehnert & Landrock photographed throughout North Africa, producing a body of artistic views and images best described as "late romantic Orientalism."

Also found in this series are examples of scarce paper photographic prints made by photographers practicing in the 1850s. Albumen prints include Gustave de Beaucorps's portrait of a young Algerian odalisque reclining on a couch; Charles Marville's portrait of an Algerian man reclining with a hookah; and eight views of Egypt and Istanbul by Robertson & Beato. Rare salted paper prints included four views of Jerusalem by Auguste Salzmann (1854) and two of Egyptian subjects by Ernest Benecke (approximately 1852): a portrait of two Egyptian women and a group portrait of Sheikh Mokba posed with members of his tribe. Of particular note are two copies of Pierre Trémaux's Fille du Dar-four (calotype and lithograph after the calotype) from his Voyage au Soudan Oriental.

William Morris Grundy, Charles Nègres and amateur photographer Frank-François-Genès Chauvaissaigne are among the early photographers who made portraits of themselves in Orientalist costume. Such Orientalist studies were a common trope among English and French photographers working in Europe. Other early examples of this genre include Hill & Adamson's portrait of 'Lane' in Orientalist costume (1843-1847, printed 1910) and two images of a female model from Roger Fenton's Orientalist Suite (1858). Grundy's hand-colored stereoscopic orientalist studies in Series II are also from this period. From a slightly later date is Lewis Carroll's portrait of the child Ethel Hatch dressed in Turkish costume (1877). Among the photographs explicitly produced as artists' studies, a group of three photographs made by the circle of Rudolf Carl Huber, a group of Austrian painters working in Cairo between 1875 and 1876, stand out.

Chauvaissaigne and Carroll are among the known amateur photographers represented in the collection. Many of the images by both named and unidentified amateurs are tourist shots depicting sites most frequently visited, as well as images of the visitors themselves at the sites or "traveling" on camel back. Less typical are a group of 22 salted paper views of Egypt made around 1900 that seem to be an experimental process by an unidentified amateur photographer. These salted paper prints made at such a late date provide an excellent contrast to the group of twelve photographs of Cairo by A. Schranz, the first professional photographer of note based in Egypt, who established a studio in Cairo between 1849 and 1854. Interestingly, Schranz appears to have been the painter Antonio Schranz, who came from a family of German artists who settled in Malta (his brother Joseph was known as an Orientalist painter).

The photographic prints found in this series were produced in the mediums common to the period and include salted paper, albumen, calotype and gelatin silver prints. A handful of photochroms are also present. More unusual are three silk doilies from Egypt with color genre scenes printed on their centers. Daguerreotypes reproduced in other mediums, such as an engraving after a Horace Vernet's 1839 daguerreotype view of the harem of Mohammed Ali in Alexandria, which appeared in N. P. Lerebours, Excursions Daguerrienne are also present here. Similarly, Charles Nègre's photogravures after Louis Vigne's albumen prints taken during the du Duc de Luynes's exploration of the Dead Sea and published in Voyage d'exploration à la mer Morte, à Petra, et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain (1864/1874) are also included.

A small amount of ephemera is found at the end of the series. Photographer-related items include Maxime Du Camp's Catalogue des vues d'orient listing his photographs available in 1852, and a view of the photography van that Roger Fenton used during the Crimean War, which was clipped from an 1855 issue of the Illustrated London News. From a much later date comes an advertisement for a Pathé-Baby film projector from a 1923 issue of L'Illustration. Projected onto the screen in the illustration is an image of palms arching over a camel and rider. Related to the photographic documentation of the Suez Canal in 1869 is a small group of ephemera (invitations and articles) surrounding its opening.

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically by photographer or studio name.

Box 2

2008.R.3-3889 A. M.: Carthage, nouvelle cathédrale, 1880s

A. M.: Carthage, nouvelle Cathédrale

Container List