Category Archives: Photographs and Photo Albums

“In War, Resolution; In Defeat, Defiance; In Victory, Magnanimity; and in Peace, Good Will.” Honor to All this Anniversary of D-Day

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In honor of today’s day in history, we thought we’d show some of the most interesting World War II items to come across our shelves in the recent past. And to remind ourselves of these words by Winston Churchill… “In Victory, Magnanimity; and in Peace, Good Will.” – as it is sound advice for all seasons, not merely during wartime. Click on the images for more information.

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This pictorial review of the time the 2nd Marine Division spent in Occupied Japan, with their “missions of surveillance, disposition of materiel, and repatriation …” [Smith, Securing the Surrender] is dated from one image “Preparing for the Corps’ 170th Birthday” [USMC founded November 10, 1775]. See it here.

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A beautifully preserved piece of WWII nursing history – the Cadet Nurse Corps program was passed by Congress unanimously and became effective in July of 1943. The Corps was supervised by the United States Public Health Service to (hopefully) train 124,000 young women as nurses during World War II. The war ended before the first Cadets graduated and only a few entered the military. However, in its lifetime (1943-48) it was the largest training program in the history of nursing in the United States. See it here.

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This invaluable source for local history (local being the central coast of California) at the end of World War II… a collection of 30 issues of the Cooke Clarion – detailing happenings at the military training base and disciplinary barracks from 1945-1946. The copies have the usual camp activities, but also includes such informative pieces as “Camp Cooke History … Here’s Chapter 2” [Vol V – Number 3, March 29, 1946]. See it here.

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This World War II Class Book was printed in 1944 and comes from Ryan Field, in Hemet, California – the 5th A.A.F.F.T.D. Illustrated with both drawings and photographs, it is an interesting piece of printed WWII history from California. Plus it isn’t found on OCLC! See it here.

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This interesting WWII archive is from Lt Wesley Dawe, from San Francisco, who served in the Army Air Corps during WWII, ultimately flying the B-17-G. Dawe collected a number of items documenting his early aeronautical career, primarily from the pilot training days of his second enlistment [his first stint was 1938 – 1941, mustering out ~ 6 months before Pearl Harbor; he re-upped in 1943]. See it here.

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“There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.” -Robert Frank

This week at Tavistock Books, we’d like to highlight one of our favorite genres currently in our inventory… photographs and photograph albums! We have had several amazing items on our shelves over the years, as we find these personal and first hand accounts of history absolutely fascinating. What makes a photograph, scrapbook or photo album worth collecting, you may ask? Stay tuned for the 411 on the Tavistock team’s thoughts!

This cache of nine large photographs dates back to the lumbering community of the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s. Check it out here.

This cache of nine large photographs date back to the lumbering community of the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s. Check it out here.

Q: So, antiquarian photo/scrapbook albums… first things first! What makes you decide whether or not to invest in one for inventory?

Vic: What I primarily look for is a story being told.  That said, most albums are unidentified faces, with few places.  If an album is not captioned by the compiler, it makes it difficult to supply context to a potential buyer.  

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Q: Is subject matter, provenance or condition the first thing checked by the Tavistock team, followed, I’m sure, quite quickly by the others?

Vic: All of those are important, though, imo, condition of the album itself not as important as condition of the images.  That said, subject matter of primary importance, with provenance coming in immediately behind.  Regarding this latter attribute, I’d consider purchasing an album with no captions if it came from a known & documented provenance, especially if said provenance was someone of import, such as, say, a Rochester neighbor of Charles Dickens.

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Q: What are the benefits of buying a photograph album, or other piece or personalized ephemera from an antiquarian seller, rather than off eBay or another such site?

Vic: We’ll, I probably buy more from general eBay sellers rather than established antiquarian professionals, for the former category will often go for the quick sale, rather than take the time necessary to properly research the material at hand.  An example recently was the acquisition on an archive of family letters & manuscripts from an individual involved in the Texas Convention of 1845 [and subsequent aspects of Texas history].  Let’s just say I anticipate a generous profit margin in this acquisition once fully researched & catalogued.

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This family travel photo album dates back to the turn of the century... the 20th century, that is, and focuses on California, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, Alabama and Texas. Check it out here.

This family travel photo album dates back to the turn of the century… the 20th century, that is, and focuses on California, New Mexico, Arizona, Kansas, Alabama and Texas. Check it out here.

Q: In looking at the descriptions of these albums on the Tavistock Books website, it is clear a TON of research has gone into describing these albums! Without giving away any secrets of the trade, can you give us a basic overview of how you go about researching a person who put the scrapbook together? It must take a lot of precious time!

Vic: Therein does lie the rub…  much time is involved, and that time needs to be a generous block without interruption.  And, of course, one needs the availability of appropriate reference sources.  I do subscribe to ancestry.comnewspapers.com & JSTOR [though SFPL].  Google, of course, has been a vast help in this arena as well.  It’s amazing what information can be noodled out when searching the web.

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Q: In your opinion, what is the most interesting item you have of this nature on the Tavistock shelves at this time, and what about in the past? Feel free to also tell us about something you might not have sold but perhaps have seen at antiquarian book fairs, etc.!

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A happy Samm, knee deep in the R15 acquisitions!

Vic: I’ll defer to Samm on this one, for she recently went through R-15, where all our uncatalogued albums had been stored, “pending cataloguing”.  

Samm: I spent days going thru this shelf of archives – some catalogued, some not.  It was really difficult to sort through it all. But one item I thought was really cool was a photo archive of the New York Railroad and Interurban railways.  Its HUGE! As we state in the description “A massive photo album brimming with over 1100 images of street cars, trolleys, motor cars, locomotives, service trains, interurban railway lines, and railroads across New York from the 1890s up to WWII. With neatly handwritten captions, photographer’s notes often on verso, and even some typed text.”  The old photos of New York alone are incredible. Definitely worth looking at, linked here.

As for things we sold in the past, hard to answer we sell stuff regularly, hard to pick out one that struck a cord.  But this New York album, I know I will miss when gone!

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Check out Samm’s recommendation – the fabulous New York rail album here!

And that’s that! Also, don’t miss out on the upcoming ABAA Virtual Book Fair from June 4th to the 7th – where yours truly will be exhibiting! We’ll unveil some newly catalogued archival material… and maybe even a photo album or two. Join the count down and find out more information here

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New Acquisitions for Your Viewing Pleasure

The recent fairs have given us a fair amount (pun intended) of new inventory! As we haven’t posted one in a while we thought it might be nice to give you an in-depth look at some of our latest and greatest… though there are many more ready to go home with their new owners! Check out our website’s categories for more info on these and other awesome titles.

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We would be remiss in sending our hometown book fairs love without beginning this blog with one of our favorite local finds! DeWitt’s Guide to San Francisco was published in 1900, and is illustrated by nearly 20 engravings! The city guidebook lists tourist sights, hotels, restaurants, banks, businesses, churches, clubs, schools, etc. Love San Francisco? Perhaps you should see what has changed in the last 118 years! See it here.

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This cabinet card photograph depicts three young girls, most likely of the Utes tribe, where they resided in the southern end of Colorado. The photograph itself is circa 1890s, when the town of Rouse, Colorado (now a ghost town) was home to, what was in 1888, the largest coal mine in the state. View this amazing piece of 19th century photographical history here.

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This 1890 edition of The Care of the Sick has a beautiful gilt illustrated binding – and is a solid Very Good copy of this handbook for Nurses, detailing care for the ill both at home and in the hospital. You love nursing material as much as we do? Check it out here!

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We also have a pretty spectacular collection of children’s series books – Nancy Drews, Tom Swifts… Hardy Boys? All can be found on our website and on our shelves! Some series books are not quite so well known as these, however… like this copy of The Bobcat of Jump Mountain. Part of the Boys’ Big Game Series, this title was published in 1920 and our copy still has its original dust jacket! Did we mention it is signed and inscribed by the author, the year of publication? See it here.

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Now this may look like nothing special, but in fact these two volumes make up a first US edition of Oliver Twist… and we would be remiss Dickens specialists indeed if we did not include one of his titles in this list! Now certainly Oliver Twist needs no description to provide its storyline or enforce its importance… so let’s just say that this rare set is not often offered in the trade. See it here.

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Kind of a strange leap from our classic main man, but here offered as well is a 1941 1st edition of rogue author Henry Miller’s The World of Sex. Bibliographers Shifreen & Jackson have speculated that the 3 states of the first [ours given priority] runs of this work may each have had a run of 250 copies. This first state binding is increasinly uncommon, especially in its original jacket – as ours is! Expand your horizons here.

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And while we’re on the subject, here is another fun find from the fairs! We almost feel like the mid 20th century Gilbert Vitalator requires no explanation except for their own marketing! With this vibrator attached to your fingers… “…you’re ready for the thrill of your life. Press your fingers against your body on the spot you wish to massage, and flip the switch. Things happen quickly here, but they can be explained slowly. The Vitalator sets up a vibration which travels to your finger tips and flows through them to your body. But it is not merely a vibration. If you had a pencil in your fingers, set to paper, it would be tracing tiny ovals with lightning rapidity. This rotary movement – this “Swedish massage” action – in the secret of Vitalators superior benefits.” Woohoo! Can be used by men and women, apparently. See this funny body massager here

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This poem, Dickens in Camp was written by Bret Harte shortly after Dickens’ death in the 1870s. Published in a fine press edition in 1923 by John Henry Nash in a run of only 250 copies… and it is signed by the famous publisher! Check out this wonderful tribute to our main man here.

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This Red Cross WWII campaign promotion poster advertises Toys for Kiddies – an initiative where patients in military hospitals designed and created handmade toys for children in homes and orphanages at Christmastime. With the materials provided by the Red Cross, apparently the men spent months making and competing to produce the most creative children’s toy of the season. See this 1940s broadside here.

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Last but not least, we offer as a tribute to the wonderful OZ themed California fair just a couple weeks ago this beautiful 1st edition, 1st printing of Frank L. Baum’s The Woggle – Bug Book, inscribed by the author to one Ruth Bailey Ingersoll in 1905 – the year of its publication. Said by bibliographer Bienvenue to be “remarkably difficult for collectors to find, particularly in good condition. … the large book is one of the most delicate and ephemeral of all Baum’s publications”, we are lucky enough to offer a very pleasing Very Good copy of this unusual early Baum title here at Tavistock Books! Check it out here.

enjoy

We hope you’ve enjoyed this brief list of some fun new items on our shelves! Stay tuned throughout the rest of book fair season to see more of them.

 

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Archival Cataloguing for Booksellers, Part II

By Kate Mitas

Getting to Know Your Archive

Now that you know your archive is about, say, Alaskan beauty pageant contestants or Italian motor scooters (to use two of Lorne Bair’s examples from the last blog in this series), it’s time to write up a snazzy description and send the archive out into the world, right?

Well, no.

As with anything else, first impressions can carry a lot of weight, but they exist to be refined, deepened, and, in some cases, overturned completely by later information. This is especially important to keep in mind when you’re dealing with archives: unlike books, whose (expected) contents are often already known by your customer and documented in bibliographical references, archives, in a sense, don’t really exist until they’re catalogued. Cataloguing an archive defines, as well as describes, its contents for a potential customer. That’s part of what makes archives so exciting to work with, but it also increases the risk of misleading your client (and/or yourself) by imposing a narrative, rather than letting the narrative be dictated by the material.

Physical Content

First things first, to borrow from Brian Cassidy’s oft-repeated maxim at CABS: Look. At. The. Archive.

An archive in progress -- stay tuned!

An archive in progress — stay tuned!

It can be easy to skip over an archive’s physical content and dive right into those letters, or diaries, or photographs — after all, that’s the fun part, when you get to read on the job(!), hunt for clues, do research, and, in general, be utterly and exquisitely nerdy.  In contrast, cataloguing the physical content of an archive is tedious, sometimes mind-numbingly so: you count the different things in the archive, and you figure out what they’re made of and how big they are, and, if you’re like me, you also probably recount something at least once, because the phone rang in the middle and you want to make absolutely sure you’ve gotten it right.  So what’s the big deal about physical content?

Put simply: everything in an archive is a function of its physical content. It’s impossible to draw accurate conclusions about an archive’s intellectual content without knowing its actual composition, and, consequently, to determine a commercial value based on those factors. (Note the qualifiers, here. Sometimes it’s far more practical to slap a price on a minimally-catalogued archive and send it on to another bookseller who knows more about the subject. More on this later.)

Take those photographs of Alaskan beauty pageant contestants, for example. They might be the most interesting subsection of Alaskan life you’ve ever seen, but what if they’re real photo postcards instead of photographs, issued as souvenirs at an annual fair in downtown Anchorage? Or worse, half-tone reproductions? Conversely, what if your Alaskan pageant contestants are only in ten photographs in an album of 300, all featuring contestants at beauty pageants held around the country during a 20 year period (which would be a pretty kick-ass archive, by the way)? And what if those ten Alaskans are scattered throughout the album, rather than grouped together?

You get my point: establishing an archive’s physical content is a way of applying quantifiers to aspects of valuation like rarity and significance, as well as forcing you to reconcile the parts of an archive you found interesting (Alaskan beauty pageant contestants) with the likely intent of the person who formed the archive (beauty pageant contestants). It’s a way of grounding your enthusiasm and, ultimately, making you focus on what an archive actually is, rather than what you might want it to be.

Not everyone includes the same amount and kinds of information when describing an archive’s physical contents. Nevertheless, here is a list of general factors that we include at Tavistock, and which I’ve found to be helpful:

For textual material:

  • number of pages and size of leaves
  • if unique, whether the material is manuscript and/or typescript
  • if manuscript, overall legibility
  • if printed, whether professionally or not
  • estimated word count (of manuscript/typescript material)

For photographic/visual material:

  • number and type of photographs/images, with a breakdown by category
  • photographic process*
  • color, black and white, etc.?
  • professional vs amateur

This list is far from complete, of course — you’ll note there’s nothing here about film, for example, since we almost never handle it — but these attributes are a good place to start when determining the physical content of most textual and photographic archives from the mid-20th century and earlier.

* For a good reference on how to distinguish the type of photographic process used, with a handy fold-out chart for identification, we recommend James Reilly’s Care and Identification of 19th Century Photographic Prints.

Next up in the series: Intellectual Content and Research Methods

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“A Date Which Will Live in Infamy…” Today we Remember the United States’ Entrance into WWII

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By Margueritte Peterson

Bookstores and businesses in the antiquarian book world are numerous enough that no matter what you are looking for, you can be sure to find it somewhere. On sites like Biblio.com and abaa.org, you can search for booksellers based on what genre of books you are looking for. One genre we would like to salute on this December 7th, an important day of remembrance and respect in United States history, are antiquarian books with a WWII military basis. 

A picture taken from a Japanese fighter jet (where did they find the time?!) as one of the first torpedoes hit the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor.

A picture taken from a Japanese fighter jet (where did they find the time?!) as one of the first torpedoes hit the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor.

On the morning of December 7th, 1941, 353 Japanese fighter planes attacked the United States military base at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii. The lack of any warning for this attack led the president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt to label it “a date which will live in infamy” – primarily based on the lack of a declaration of war (a formal pronouncement) or any true notice of its happening. The Naval base suffered devastating loses, with four of the eight Naval battleships sunk and all severely damaged. This attack, the likes of which many American citizens had never seen up close on our nation’s soil, shocked the nation into joining World War II. 

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had skirted around the edges of the looming World War II. However, on December 8th, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt delivered a speech asking Congress for a formal declaration of war on Japan. Less than an hour after the speech, Congress consented. Due to a previous agreement between Germany, Italy and the Empire of Japan, United States was suddenly (or at least beginning on December 11th) at war with all three nations, all with the objective of restricting the United States’ ability to help any of their other opposition throughout the war. 

Now, all of this is frightfully interesting (not making fun, just stating such with the knowledge that these things have all been heard before, especially today), but what does this have to do with antiquarian bookselling? Well, good thing you ask. Tavistock Books, among other antiquarian booksellers in the United States and abroad, boasts a small collection of WWII items – books, ephemera, memorabilia… even WWII posters printed on linen – all are things we have been lucky enough to have in stock over the years. On this anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, we’d like to highlight some of our most interesting World War II items currently on our shelves. 

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See this interesting book here>

This uncommon military book details the XIII Bomber Command – a WWII command and control organization for the Thirteenth Air Force, activated in January of 1943. This organization was created in order to provide authority of Army Air Force bombardments within the 13th Air Force Area of Responsibility during the war. What is striking about this book is that it was created entirely within the Combat Area of the Bomber Command – its handmade nature evident – and provides extensive documentation of the Command’s activities in the Pacific Theater during the year and a half that it chronicles. 

See this Fine poster here>

See this Fine poster here>

Another WWII item we currently have in stock and would like to bring attention to is this 1945 1st edition broadside/poster (linen-backed) by the Women’s Army Corps. As stated a bit earlier, we often try to carry unusual memorabilia relating to WWII. This poster propagandizes the Female Medical Technician campaign – an organization that came about after 5,000 of the U.S. Army Medical Department’s combat-ready men were forced to transfer to the infantry in early 1944. The department suddenly began a major push to recruit women to fill the positions left open, and created departments like this Female Medical Technician campaign (which, by the way, was hugely successful). By the end of the war, the WACs (Women’s Army Corps) Medical Department employed around 20,000 trained, skilled and determined young women.

Again, on this December 7th we honor and remember members of the military that have, so often, given their lives and their time to protecting citizens of the United States. (We have mentioned before that our very own Vic Zoschak was a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Coast Guard before turning his talents toward a career in the antiquarian book trade, right?) We salute all.

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Who cares that Gold was found near Sacramento? Check out these Gems we Mined at the Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair…

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Circa 1869, this pamphlet titled “God is Love. A Sermon” was authored by George Storrs – one of the leaders of the Second Advent movement, affiliated with William Miller and Joshua V. Himes. After a fair amount of study, Storrs preached to some Adventists on the condition and prospects… for the dead. OCLC records no copies of this pamphlet, nor is it found in the NUC! See more on it here>

 

 

 

Screen Shot 2016-03-28 at 6.38.53 PMThis set of 5 Nursing Student journals were written between 1923 and 1926 by one Mildred Godwin, a class of ’26 nursing student at Crozer Hospital, Chester, Pennsylvania. Within these journals the young lady records diverse class notes beginning in September of 1923 from lectures by her professors – Dr. Crowther, Miss Burkhard, Dr. Gray, etc. The subject of her entries range widely across the medical spectrum, from items such as Social Service to “Why Cases are Referred.” A very interesting archive of post WWI nursing education! Check it out here>

 

Screen Shot 2016-04-01 at 10.05.56 AMThis is no ordinary promotional photograph album or scrapbook… at least, not in terms of subject! The Alaska Blue Fox Company seem to have produced this interesting documentary album, providing an invaluable historical look at a very successful fox farming venture (yes, you read that correctly. No, there’s nothing I can do about it) on Bushy Island, in the Southeast Alaska Islands. After WWI there was a rise in fur prices, giving some eccentric entrepreneurs an opportunity to lease the island in the Tongass National Forest off the coast of Alaska and stock it with some 20 breeding pairs of foxes – all for your wearing pleasure. Be unnerved here>

 

Screen Shot 2016-04-01 at 10.06.36 AMThis 1929 Promotional Project Photograph Album details the Western Maryland Railway – a (primarily) coal & freight hauling operation – with images of the diverse aspects & views of the port facilities & docks, of the ‘up-to-date’ buildings & even some freight moving mechanisms (spiral chutes & cranes, etc). An outstanding, possibly unique album documenting local pre-depression Baltimore history, as well as the capital improvement efforts of one of Maryland’s major transportation firms! Love automotive and locomotive history? This is the album for you…

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On Identifying Photographic Prints and the History of Early Photography

 Photographic Prints in an Antiquarian Bookshop

Without a doubt, every antique store and flea market from California to New York somewhere has a box of photographs – black and white, early Kodaks, or even tintypes… often warped, mirrored, faded – if you are reading this blog it is assumed that at some point or another your interest in antiquarian books and materials has drawn you to such an establishment, and you have at least fingered through a box of photographs labeled “.10 each or 15 for $1.00”. Why is it, then, that those photographs are (seemingly) worthless, while there are photograph albums offered by booksellers with the same types of prints for thousands of dollars? As with all things antiquarian – provenance, condition and interest levels dictate the differences between a bin full of late 19th century silver-gelatin prints and an album full of un-faded, unaltered albumen photographs.

 

Photography in the Early 19th Century

William Henry Fox Talbot in 1864

William Henry Fox Talbot in 1864 by Moffat.

The name William Henry Fox Talbot is known throughout the world as a British inventor, author and photographer of great significance. Talbot claimed experiments in photography as early as 1834, and in 1841 announced his invention of the calotype (also called the Talbotype) process, a process that reflected the work of many of Talbot’s predecessors, such as John Herschel and Thomas Wedgwood. One of Talbot’s main contributions to this fledgling art included creating a photographic image through the use of a negative from which a positive print could be made (though those terms were previously coined by Herschel, Talbot demonstrated the technique with ease). Talbot’s early discoveries culminated in his pioneer finding that silver chloride was the silver compound “most suitable for photographic printing, and to discover how to use it most effectively” (O’Reilly, p. 1). Talbot’s negative to positive printing could also be said to be one of the most important inventions in the field of photography as it allowed the photographer to create numerous prints off of a single negative, simply by exposing more paper to the image. As you will see later, other early forms of photography (such as the popular Daguerreotype process), were not able to form several images from a single exposure.

Now, the art of photography has developed significantly since Talbot began his experiments in rural England. If this blog were to describe every type of photographic print process and the differences and nuances between them all, we would quickly lose the followers we have so far gained. Suffice to say, the history of photographic prints is as diverse and intricate as any popular invention might be. Unfortunately, identifying photographic prints is particularly difficult for the untrained eye as even the slightest changes in the process (and in the final product) can be difficult to observe if you are not sure what to look for.

 

Identifying Photographic Prints in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Photography in this time falls into two distinct categories, True Photographs and Photomechanical Prints. Photomechanical Prints are images not formed directly from exposure to light or from a negative, and are rather more often “mass-produced.” These mechanical techniques include Halftone Illustrations (which some may recognize by their dotted appearance when viewed with a scope) and Photogravure, among others. These prints, while still able to be artistic and popular in their own right, are not usually as desirable as True Photographs when it comes to collectors and institutions. True Photographs encompass many other types.

Evidence of Silver Mirroring is seen in the darker portions of this image (IPI).

Evidence of Silver Mirroring is seen in the darker portions of this image (IPI).

True Photographs include, as stated, many other processes. Some of their results may sound familiar, some not so much. Salted Paper Prints, Cyanotypes, Platinotypes, Albumen Prints, Gelatin and Collodion Printing-Out Papers, Gelatin Developing-Out Papers… all of these, despite their somewhat extreme differences, are examples of True Photographs. They are placed into categories depending on characteristics such as the appearance of their paper fibers, their hues, and, most interestingly, their condition. Signs of fading, mirroring (the slight silvery hue to the darker areas of the photograph due to silver oxidation), warping and cracking can all contribute to telling the difference between the many types of “true” photography.

 

Curious about an image you have? Try http://www.graphicsatlas.org/ to help you identify your items.

 

Photography as a Popular Pastime
A typical Albumen Cabinet Card

A typical 19th century Albumen Carte-de-Visite.

The Daguerreotype studio boomed early in the photographic print age in the mid 1800s. Other early photographic processes included the Salted Paper Print and the Albumen Print. Albumen Prints were quite possibly the most popular type of photographic process, as they are the most widely found today. Around the 1860s and 1870s a certain type of photographic style emerged, a Carte de Visite (quite literally, a Visiting Card) that was traded between friends and family, and most notably took the place of the general “Calling Card” that social guests would deliver to households they stopped in to see. Along with these Cartes de Visite and their cousins “Cabinet Cards”, photography moved into an age of cabinet cards and other studio portraits. Silver gelatin and Matte Collodion Printing-Out Papers and Developing-Out Papers (whose main differences lie in the process by which the image appears – DOP images appear during chemical development, whereas POP images appear on their exposure to sunlight) were quite popular as forms of portraiture, and were also some of the most popular forms of photography for the average civilian to produce at home.

 

Photography in Books

The first book ever to be illustrated through the photographic process was produced by none other than William Henry Fox Talbot, with his book The Pencil of Nature, published in 1844 with his own calotypes pasted into the book. The text within the book details Talbot’s calotype process used for each individual photograph. Each photograph within Talbot’s work were laid in and pasted by hand, not to mention taken and developed by the inventor as well. Though the book was less popular than Talbot expected, it paved the way for an idea that (eventually) became a bit of a phenomenon – illustrating books with photographic prints. Despite the fact that many “jumped on the bandwagon” and illustrated works with photography in mid-to-late 19th C, “in many traditional libraries the illustrations to a book, and its illustrator, were often placed in a role secondary to the author – even in situations when the illustrations were the dominant concern of that work” (Johnson, Nineteenth-Century Photography). This is no longer so. The book trade often sees works collected solely for the photographer or the images represented within a work, the text often being of little to no concern to such a collector.

One of the photos included in Talbot's "Pencil of Nature", published in 1844

One of the photos included in Talbot’s “Pencil of     Nature”, published in 1844.

Photograph albums, on the other hand, can be a different story. Eugenia Parry Janis writes “A love of subject matter leads the bookseller to photographs. He is satisfied to present photographic discoveries which have engaged his attention as they act in collaboration with needs of descriptive science, exploration, documentation or poetic evocation. It is a special quality of photographs to be able to enter into reciprocal relationships with words… The most discriminating private collections of photographs today owe much to booksellers’ at times obsessive, and even indiscriminate salvaging and rescuing of photographs destined for the incinerator. Photographs were not saved because they necessarily conformed to prevailing standards of beauty; they were saved for the richness of what they presented.” (Charles B. Wood III, Catalogue 37). Therefore, when looking through photographic albums, individual photographs, and books illustrated with photographs, it is a great find when the photos are in impeccable condition. However, more often than not, photographs are collected for what they represent – a moment in history, a fashion style, an area of the world, a political event – rather than because of their condition and artistic beauty.

In a catalogue later this month we will offer examples of all of the above – individual photographs, photo albums, and books illustrated with true photographs. Featuring a wide range of subjects, from military bases to train catalogues to family vacations, there is certain to be something of interest to everyone.

*The only reason we at Tavistock Books know any of this information on Photographic Prints is from taking James M. Reilly and Ryan Boatright’s course on these processes at University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. A fair warning – this has been a highly condensed and extremely terse outline in comparison to their course, a course officially endorsed by Tavistock Books!

Photo-WHFTalbot

 

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