Photographers Represented

Afong
A Chinese photographer who was active in Hong Kong from the 1860s to the 1880s. He prepared an album of albumen prints from the photographs he took of the typhoon that struck Hong Kong on 22 September 1874.

Alinari
The Italian Fratelli Alinari (Alinari Brothers) consisted of Romualdo Alinari (1830-1891), Leopoldo Alinari (1832-1865), and Giuseppe Alinari (1836-1890). They photographed the architecture, artistic heritage, landscapes and towns of Italy. The company they founded has evolved into the Alina ri publishing empire.

Hippolyte Arnoux
Hippolyte Arnoux was a French commercial photographer working in Egypt in the 1860s and 1870s. Before opening his own studio, he worked for the Zangaki brothers, Greek photographers working in Egypt. Arnoux’s studio was in Port Said where he documented the excavation and construction of the Suez Canal. and published the resulting photographs as ‘Album du Canal de Suez’. Photographing around Egypt, hios portfolio included the major historical sites as well as a series of ethnographic images of the local people. At some time in the late 1860s he partnered with Antonio Beato.

William Baker
Active in 19th century Kasmir, Punjab and Afghanistan sometimes working with John Burke. Together they photographed the Afghan Wars (1878-1880). (More to follow in this biography.)

George Barker
Canadian photographer best known for the over 800 early negatives he did at Niagara Falls including some mammoth plate views. (More to follow in this biography.)

Felice Beato
Early travel photographer active from 1853 onwards. Learned photography from his brother-in-law James Robertson who worked as an engraver for the Imperial Ottoman Mint. Beato and Robertson became partners in Constantinople and photographed the last year of the Crimean War in 1855. Beato traveled widely and photographed the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny, and the Second Opium War in China. Travelling to Japan he settled in Yokohama in 1861. Over the next few years Beato photographed extensively in Japan. Beato became the official British photographer for the Shiminoseki Bombardment, a skirmish between the British and Koreans. An 1866 fire destroyed Beato’s studio and he spent the next year re-creating much of his work. From 1859 till 1877 Beato maintained a studio in Yokohama and in 1877 sold his interest to Baron Raimund von Stillfried. Beato left Japan in or around 1884 and settled in Burma where he opened a curio shop. Beato is recognized as the father of Japanese photography.

Francis Bedford
In 1854 Queen Victoria commissioned him to photograph objects in the royal collection. He later accompanied the Prince of Wales on a tour of the ancient sites of the Holy Land. He also took landscape and urban views of the British Isles.

Thomas Biggs
Served in the Bombay Artillery in 1842. Appointed Government Photographer in 1854 with a commission to photograph architectural and archaeological sites. Over the course of 1855 he produced more than 100 paper negatives of Aihole, Badami, Bijapur and other sites in Western India. His photograph were well recieved by the Photographic Society of Bombay. Although his work was praised in dispatches in 1857, his photographic career was cut short as the army insisted that he return to his military duties due to a staff shortage at a time of war. Succeeded by W.H. Pigou as official Goverment Photographer. Early in 1865, in his offical capacity, Sir Bartle Frere, a member of the Viceroy’s council and his confidential adviser, supervised a photographic survey of the monuments of Bijapur and Ahmadabad by Dr. Pigou and Thomas Biggs. His architectural photographs appear with those of A.C.B. Neill and William Harry Pigou in ‘Architecture in Dharwar and Mysore’ (1866) and ‘Architecture at Beejapoor’ (1866) by James Fergusson and Philip Meadows and Architecture of Ahmedabad (1866) by T.C. Hope and James Fergusson.

Karl Blossfeldt
German biologist photographer best known for his highly detailed plant photographs. In 1928 he published ‘Urformen Der Kunst. Photographische Pflanzenbilder‘ (Berlin) and this along the 1932 ‘Wundergarten der Natur‘ (Berlin) have becomes classics of the history of photography.

Abraham Bogardus
American Daguerreotypist and photographer. Learnt the Daguerreotype process from George W. Prosch and opened his first gallery in New York in 1846. He became very successful and in 1868 he assisted in the formation of the National Photographic Association and was its President for five years.

Félix Bonfils
In 1867 Felix Bonfils opened a photographic studio in Beirut, Lebanon under the name Maison Bonfils. Travelling the Middle East, Bonfils photographed extensively throughout Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey and Greece. Over a period of 10 years, Maison Bonfils grew and opened studios in Cairo, Alexandria and France. Patrons on the ‘Grand Tour’ visited his studio where they could select photographs from a vast portfolio of images. “Those who are prevented from travelling to these sites through illness, lack of funds, or their domestic situation” wrote Félix in the introduction to his 1878 photographic album ‘Egypt and Nubia’ “have the possibility to go there at their leisure, at low cost and with little effort, to those countries which many have reached only at the risk of their lives”. In 1878, his son Adrien became the principal photographer from Felix, allowing him to run the studios. At this time the name changed to F. Bonfils et Cie.

Samuel Bourne
English photographer who arrived in India in early 1863. During the summer of that year Bourne traveled to the Himalayas where he states in an article in the British Journal of Photography, he decided “to see what elements of beauty and grandeur lay concealed in some of the higher and little known regions of the Himalayas.” This was followed by two more excursions into the Cashmere [Kashmir] and the Himalayas (1865-1866). Bourne’s determination to photograph the most picturesque and remote areas of Northern India resulted in the finest examples of scenic photography ever produced by a single photographer.

By 1865 he had established a partnership with Colin Shepherd in the hill town of Simla. And additional studios were established in Calcutta (1867) and Bombay (1870). With more than 2200 images in his catalog by the time he left India seven years later, in 1870, Bourne has to be considered one of the finest artistic photographers of his time.

Bourne & Shepherd
See Samuel Bourne. The Bourne & Shepherd Company was purchased by Colin Murray sometime in the early 1870s. Murray added much of his own work to the existing B& S catalog and continued the company well into the 20th century.

Matthew Brady
Mathew B. Brady was born in Lake George, New York, where he received instruction in art from itinerant painter William Page. He is said to have been introduced to daguerreotyping by Samuel F. B. Morse, the American portraitist and inventor, who was a friend of Page and an early advocate of photography. Brady is believed to have also studied with John W. Draper, another important American daguerrean pioneer.

While Brady is best known today for his Civil War work, he was also among the most successful portraitists of his time. He first opened a studio in New York City in 1844, then a Washington studio in 1847, and two others in New York in 1853 and 1860. Ever aware of history and celebrity, as early as 1845 he conceived an ambitious series of published portraits to be called The Gallery of Illustrious Americans. The lithographed images, derived from Brady’s daguerreotypes and accompanied by explanatory texts, drew attention and acclaim, and initiated his association with celebrated sitters. The series, however, failed to receive adequate backing for completion.
Like many commercial photographers, Brady employed “operators”technicians and artists who worked with him and often took his pictures. Brady and other photographic entrepreneurs took responsibility for overseeing their studios, marketing prints, and devoting themselves to their most important clients and images. It was Brady’s innovation, at the outbreak of the Civil War, to outfit and send a number of talented operators into the field. The thousands of negatives produced of the war’s great generals and battlefields by Brady’s firm are thus usually not the work of the famed photographer himself, but rather that of George S. Cook, Alexander Gardner, Levin Handy, Michael Miley, and Timothy O’Sullivan. Nevertheless, Brady played a key role in envisioning and executing the immense enterprise of photographing the Civil War. For example, he produced a number of portraits of Abraham Lincoln, who avowed that without Brady to present him to the American public, he would have had considerably greater difficulty becoming known. T.W.F. Thomas Weston Fels
Reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art webpage www.cma.org

Bruno Braquehais
French photographer particularly noted for his nude studies of the 1850s. He also took photographs of the Paris Commune in 1871.

A. Briquet
French master of photography at the Saint Cyr Military Academy. In 1876 he was commissioned to photograph the construction of the railway line between Veracruz and Mexico City. Most of his work after that took place in Mexico with his studies on the port of Veracruz in 1880 for the French steamship company ‘La Compagnie Maritime Transatlantique‘. He also prepared a series of commemorative albums ‘Vistas Mexicanas‘ between 1880 to 1895.

John Burke
Active as a commercial photographer from 1861 with studios in Muree, India and Peshewar, Afghanistan. His photographs illustrated ‘Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir’ by H.H. Cole. In partnership with William Baker 1871 – 1880. Burke was an official photographer to the army during the Second Afghan War 1879 – 1880. Opened a studio in his home town of Lahore in 1885 and was in business till 1903. The Getty ULAN website says that he made a record of the archaeological sites of Kashmir in the late 1860s for the Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey, North Western Provinces, Lt. H.H. Cole. Accompanied the British Army expedition to Afghanistan in 1878, although not an official photographer albums of his photographs of the Second Afghan War were sold in Britain.

Burke & Baker
John Burke and William Baker were active in northern India and Afghanistan in the 19th century. Together they photographed the Afghan Wars (1878-1880).

Alfred Henry Burton
British photographer who with his brother Walter went to New Zealand in 1866 to set up a photographic business. Alfred made topographical and anthropological photographs of the Maoris of New Zealand and his brother worked as a portrait photographer in their studio in Dunedin. It was Alfred who named the company Burton Brothers. The brothers learned their skill from their father who was a photographer in England. By 1901 the firm of Burton Brothers had more than 8000 photographs of landscapes, towns and Maoris.

Walter John Burton
British photographer who with his brother Alfred went to New Zealand in 1866 to set up a photographic business. Alfred made topographical and anthropological photographs of the Maoris of New Zealand and Walter worked as a portrait photographer in their studio in Dunedin. It was Alfred who named the company Burton Brothers. The brothers learned their skill from their father who was a photographer in England. By 1901 the firm of Burton Brothers had more than 8000 photographs of landscapes, towns and Maoris.

N.J. Caire
Early Australian photographer of aborigines and landscapes.

Julia Margaret Cameron
An amateur photographer who started photography in 1863 at the age of 48. Mrs. Cameron mixed in all the right circles and as a result was able to photograph many famous people of the Victorian era. The popularity of “genre” pictures during this time led to a series of recreations of biblical and historical events. Using her friends and servants as models. Her first “one-man” show of photographs was in late 1865 at Colnaghi’s in London and this was followed a year later at the French Gallery in London in late 1866 and early 1867 and a third in early 1868 at the German Gallery in London.During the time she was active Mrs. Cameron produced over 3,000 large format wet collodion negatives. She moved back to Ceylon in 1875 and produced a few photographs before her death in 1879.

Francis Chit
Commercial photographer in Thailand in Bangkok, Thailand from 1857 – 1890s.

Melville Clarke
Clarke was a Captain in the Bengal Army and amateur photographer. His early photographs of Kashmir taken in 1861 illustrated his book ‘From Simla through Ladac and Cashmere’ printed in 1862.

Antoine Claudet
In 1841 French born Claudet was the first professional daguerreotypist in England. Claudet’s Adelaide Galleries and Regent Street, London Studios produced delicately tinted daguerreotypes in both single and stereo formats. Some of his distinctive red Morocco stereo leather cases were made with their own built-in viewers. Claudet received many honors, among which was his appointment, in 1853, as “Photographer-in-ordinary” to Queen Victoria, and an award, ten years later, from the Emperor of France.

Lala Deen Dayal
Deen Dayal took up photography in the early 1870s while he was working as an estimator for the Public Works Department at Indore. In 1883 he accompanied Sir Lepel Griffin as his photographer on an architectural tour of Central India. His photographs were published in Griffin’s “Famous Monuments of Central India” published in London in 1886. In 1884 Deen Dayal became the official photographer of the Nizam if Hyderabad and in1885 he was appointed photographer to the Viceroy Lord Dufferin. One of the first notable Indian photographers. His studios continued well into the 20th century.

Henry Dixon
Henry Dixon was a British photographer working in London during 1870s and 1880s. Best known for his series of photographs commissioned by the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London of buildings that were threatened with demolition. Also known for his animal photographs taken at the London Zoo which was close to his home. His son Thomas J. Dixon worked with him.

Adolfo Farsari
Photographer who fought in the American Civil War and arrived in Japan in 1873 originally as a tobacco merchant. He took up photography in 1883 and stayed for 17 years in all, returning to Italy in 1890. His studio became one of the most important in Yokohama and was noted for high quality hand-colored photographs.

Roger Fenton
Whilst studying painting in Paris with Paul Delaroche, Fenton was introduced to photography by several eminent daguerreotypists who frequented Delaroche’s studio. Returning to England, Fenton took up Talbot’s calotype photographic process. In 1847 Fenton, together with other photographers, formed the Calotype Club, the first photographic club in England. Fenton’s photography of the Crimean War in 1855 changed the way that people viewed photography, this was the first time that the public could view images of a war in progress. Queen Victoria patronized Fenton and he was given the unique privilege to photograph the Royal Family in a most informal manner. It is not known if Fenton went to Sebastopol for political or commercial reasons, or both. His trip was made under the patronage of Queen Victoria, but was financed by newspaper publisher Thomas Agnew.. In June of 1855 after spending three months near the battlefield, Fenton could take no more, and returned home. At this point Felice Beato with his partner James Robertson took over as war photographers. When the Queen paid a state visit to Paris in August of that year, she took with her twenty of Fenton’s photographs to show Napoleon. Soon after, Fenton was asked to visit Napoleon and Fenton presented his entire collection of 360 photographs from Crimea. Francis Frith purchased the entire stock of negatives and equipment when Fenton retired in 1861.

James Fergusson
Architectural photographer in India who produced several important photographically illustrated books. The ‘History of Indian and Eastern Architecture’ London 1876, and ‘Architecture of Ahmedabad’ London 1866. For the Paris Exhibition of 1867, Fergusson was invited to organize a photographic display of Indian architecture. The 500 images represented only half of the extensive number of images that he had produced. The exhibition prompted the Indian Government to photographically document the architecture of the country and as a result a number of photographers were appointed to make this happen.

Marc Ferrez
Brazilian photographer – he took a wide variety of subjects but his urban studies taken for the government are particularly notable. These include the ‘Central Avenue Album‘ which is a useful reference point for Rio at the beginning of the 20th century.

Francis Frith
Frith’s photographs of Egypt and Palestine taken by him in 1856/57 were a great success as were his stereo views that he made for Negretti and Zambra. He returned to the Middle East again in 1859 and photographed Jerusalem, Syria and Lebanon venturing further south than any other photographer had done so to date. In 1859 he founded his photographic views publishing company in England, prior to his third photographic tour of the Middle East in the summer of that year. A highly successful businessman Frith enlarged his catalog with views of the British Isles and employed many other photographers to add to his portfolio in other parts of the World. Francis Bedford sold Frith more than 2000 negatives but retained his name on all that were produced. Other photographers were marketed under the Frith label. The company remained in business until 1970.

Ewing Galloway Agency

The photographic agency of Ewing Galloway opened in New York in 1920. The agency grew rapidly and had offices in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Boston, London, Berlin and Amsterdam.. 1953 when Galloway died, the agency had more than 400,000 photographs in their archives. Many photographers contributed to the agency. Every photograph bears the stamp “BY EWING GALLOWAY, N.Y. However, few if any are actually by him.

Milton Greene
Milton Greene started his career at the age of 14. His best known work appeared in the high fashion magazines of the 50s and 60s . Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Life & Look. In his capacity as a Fashion photographer he photographed many famous names of this period including Marilyn Monroe with whom he became close friends and partners in a film production company.

Greene won many awards in his lifetime and much of his work is represented in major museums around the world.

Emil Gsell
German born commercial photographer working in Saigon, Vietnam from 1873 -1878.

Herzog & Higgins
Little known about this firm in India which was owned by two Englishmen – P.A. Herzog & P. Higgins. Herzog was an assistant to John Blees in Jabulpur and probably learned the art of photography from Blees who produced an instructional manual on the subject. Both worked for Lala Deen Dayal and Johnson & Hoffman before opening their own studio at Mhow (Central India) in 1894 and continued till 1921. As official photographers for many important events, including official visits and Durbahs, they preserved an important record of the British Raj and were considered a very successful commercial photographic studio.
John K. Hillers
Photographed John Wesley Powell‘s second expedition down the Colorado River, he also photographed native Americans and the Grand Canyon.

Willoughby Wallace Hooper
Colonel in the 7th Madras Cavalry in 1858 and a keen amateur photographer, Hooper was seconded from his military duties in order to photograph a series of ethnographical images in the Central Provinces of India. Produced in 8 volumes by subscription between 1868 – 1875, ‘The People of India’ contained much of Hooper’s work and that of many other photographers. His photo-montage work illustrating tiger hunting was produced c1872 and Hooper photographed the victims of the Madras Famine in c1878. Heading the Burma Expeditionary Force as Provost Marshal he photographed the campaign and his album ‘a Series of One Hundred Photographs’ was published in 1887.

Jules Itier
French daguerreotypist and photographer. He spent his career with the French customs service and traveled widely. He learnt the Daguerreotype process soon after its announcement in 1839 and from 1842 to 1843 he traveled to Senegal and Guiana in Africa and Guadaloupe in the West Indies. In 1844 he headed a mission to China and took what are thought to be the earliest images of Macao and Canton. On 24 October 1844 he took a Daguerreotype of the signing of the Sino-French peace Treaty.

William Henry Jackson
Commissioned by the Union Pacific Railroad to photograph the scenery of the West to promote rail travel. In 1871 he became the photographer on the U.S. Geological Survey Team headed by Ferdinand Hayden through the Rocky Mountains following the YellowstoneRiver. Jackson worked with several cameras of different sizes as well as a stereo camera. His enduring work is probably the most important early photography of the West.

J. Payne Jennings
English photographer whose panoramic and scenic views of England were used by the Great Eastern Railway Company to encourage rail travel and tourism in the late 19th century. The photographs were published in “Photo Pictures in East Anglia” and “Sun Pictures of the Norfolk Broads. One Hundred Photographs from Nature of the Rivers and Broads of Norfolk and Suffolk.”. He was a contemporary of Peter Henry Emerson and G. Christopher Davies who photographed in the same area. His photographs were used to illustrate books including the “Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson” (1889).He was an expert in early color photography.

Johnson and Henderson
William Johnson started his photographic career as a daguerreotypist in Bombay, India and adopted the wet plate collodion process as daguerreotypes became obsolete. He worked in Bombay between 1852 – 1860. Went into partnership with William Henderson sometime in the mid 1850s, Henderson was already running his own commercial photographic studio in Bombay and probably influenced the change to the wet plate process. Their most important collaboration was the production of a monthly periodical illustrated with albumen photographs ‘Indian Amateurs Photographic Album’ 1856 – 1858. Much of the work was by Johnson & Henderson as well as other photographers both amateur and professional. Henderson also authored and photographed ‘Oriental Races & Tribes, residents and visitors of Bombay’ in 2 volumes 1863 – 1866.

Johnston and Hoffman
Theodore Julius Hoffman and P.A. Johnston, Commercial photographers established in 1882 in Calcutta, India with a second studio opening in Darjeeling in 1890. Probably the second largest commercial photographers in India with their large catalog of views of North and Northeastern India, Sikkim and Nepal. Second to the studios of Bourne and Shepherd.

Philip Adolphe Klier
In 1871 he was a professional photographer in Moulmein, Burma. His business included work as an optician, watchmaker, and jeweller as well running the firm known as Murken & Klier. Around 1880 Klier moved to Rangoon, Burma’s largest city. In the wake of the conquest of the Irrawaddy Delta by the British in 1852, Rangoon had become the center of Indo-British power. Klier worked independently until 1885 when he went into partnership with J. Jackson. By 1890 the partnership was dissolved and Klier became and independent again.
He sold his views of Lower Burma, Maulmain and the Andaman Islands, and ‘Burmese celebrities and characters of Burmese life’. A number of his photographs were produced as photogravures in art books of the time.

William Edward Kilburn
Daguerreotypist in London who took two images of the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common in London in 1848 which are part of the Royal Photographic Collection at Windsor (UK). He also took portraits of the British Royal family (1846-1852)

G.R. Lambert
Lambert arrived in Singapore in 1875. setting up a photographic studio on Orchard Road it had premises in Orchard Road. He photographed extensively in the region and produced some 3000 photographs of Singapore, Borneo, Malaya, Siam and China. Dates of his travels to these locations is unknown. Lambert and Co had studios in Deli, Sumatra and Kuala Lumpur, Malaya. Another in Bangkok, Siam and the firm was by appointment to the King of Siam as well as the Sultan of Johore.
In 1885 Lambert left the Straits Settlement and the business was managed by Alexander Koch.

Kusakabe Kimbei
Kimbei was a Japanese photographer who worked with the Europeans Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried. Developing his own style, he operated his own studio in Yokohama from the early 1880s until 1913. His subjects appear more relaxed with him than they did for Stillfried and Beato and this is probably because he was Japanese.
When Stillfried left Japan in 1885 Kusakabe Kimbei acquired his plates and some of those of Beato and continued to print and hand color them.

Tamamura Kozaburo
(born 1856; date of death unknown) was a Japanese photographer. In 1874 he opened a photographic studio in Asakusa, Tokyo and subsequently moved to Yokohama in 1883, opening his most successful studio. He was an originator of the Yokohama shashin photographic scene. His studio was still operating in 1909.

G.W. Lawrie
Scottish photographer working in Lucknow, India in 1880s and 1890s. Persuaded by his brother-in-law, Fred Bremner, to change to the new dry plate technology in the 1880s.

John William Lindt
Lindt arrived in Australia c1862 and joined the firm of Wagner in Grafton, New South Wales. Wagner specialized in aboriginal scenarios in artificial studio settings. In 1876 Lindt moved to Melbourne, Victoria and set up his own studio. In 1885 he was appointed the position of official photographer to a New Guinea Expedition. In 1889 he visited Fiji and in 1892 he photographed in the New Hebrides.
Lindt’s ethnographic studies of the native peoples of the region are among the most important produced in the 19th century.

Edmund David Lyon
Lyon served in the British Army 1845 – 1854 and was Governor of Dublin District Military Prison 1854 -1856. Traveling to India he opened his photographic studio in Ootacamund in 1865. A series of photographs of the Nilgiris was shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867. Under a commission firstly from the Madras governments and later the Bombay government, he photographed archaeological sites and architectural antiquities during 1867 -1868 assisted by his wife Grace. In 1871 his book ‘Notes to Accompany a Series of Photographs Designed to Illustrate the Ancient Architecture of Western India’ was published. Lyon photographed Malta on his return to England and eventually settled there in the late 1880s.

Joseph Lawton
Joseph Lawton started his photographic career in Kandy, Ceylon as a commercial photographer in 1866. He was commissioned by the Committee on Ancient Architecture to photograph the ruins of Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura and Sigiriya, Ceylon in 1870/1871. His work was given high praise and is the most detailed 19th century photographic work of the unique architecture of Ceylon. Due to ill health he left Ceylon in 1872 and the studio continued selling Lawton’s photographs under the direction of his wife Helen. The firm was taken over by R. Charter in 1885.

John Jabez Edwin Mayall
British photographer and daguerreotypist. Particularly noted for 1851 photographs of the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London.

Jacques Moulin
Early French daguerreotypist who specialized in erotic images. In 1851 he was sentenced to a month in jail for producing images that were “so obscene that even to pronounce the titles . . . would be to commit an indecency”. Pornographers found the new medium of daguerreotypes irresistible.

Josiah Martin
In 1879 after leaving his job as a headmaster in Auckland, New Zealand, Martin concentrated on his photographic hobby. On a visit to England that year he had the opportunity to study the latest improvements in instantaneous photography and on his return to Auckland he opened a studio in partnership with W. H. T. Partington, employing the new dry-plate process. The partnership did not last and he finally set up a studio on his own. Martin produced beautiful topographical images of the country as well as many of the Maoris.His business sold these photographs as well as lantern slides and stereographs.

His work was exhibited in London at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 and he won a gold medal at the Exposition Coloniale in Paris in 1889. Martin photographed Fiji, Samoa and other Pacific islands between 1898 and 1901.

Carlo Naya
Whilst travelling through Paris in 1839, Italian born Carlo Naya was fascinated with the new daguerreotype process and went about learing to make daguerreotypes. For the next fifteen years he and his brother travelled around Europe and Asia where he made daguerreotypes. It is not clear if he was doing this as an amateur or professional as there is a possibilty that he had a studio in Constantinople. Moving to Venice in 1858, he worked for photographer Carlo Ponti who was making albumen photographs using wet plate collodion. In 1868 he opened his own studio in Piazza San Marco, Venice and worked there until his death in 1882. The studios of Carlo Naya and Carlo Ponti competed with each other, both specializing in photographs of Venice and catering to the same wealthy tourists on the ‘Grand Tour’.

Andrew Charles Brisbane Neill
Neill served in the Indian Medical Service in Madras 1838-1858. As an enthusiastic amateur photographer and member of the Photographic Society of Bengal, he photographed the temple architecture of Belur and Halebid. In 1885 his photographs were exhibited at the Madras Industrial Exhibition of Raw Products, Arts and Manufacture of South India to much acclaim. He was a friend of Richard Banner Oakley, who worked in Halebid in 1856. Neill photographed the Indian Mutiny in 1857. His architectural photographs appear with those of Thoams Biggs and William Harry Pigou in ‘Architecture in Dharwar and Mysore’ (1866) by James Fergusson and Philip Meadows.

Colin Murray
See Samuel Bourne & Bourne & Shepherd. After Samuel Bourne returned to England in 1870 Colin Murray took over as the head photographer of Bourne & Shepherd. At this time Charles Shepherd, who had primarily worked as the printer for his firms, continued to run the company and when he left in 1885 Murray took over as the principal. Bourne & Shepherd continues to operate today in Kolkata, India.

Luis Pastorino
Pastorino was a photographer who had a studio “Fotografo” at 94A Calle Minas, Montevideo in about 1880.

John P. Nicholas
Nothing is known of John P. Nicholas’ early years. In 1858 his photographs were shown at an exhibition of work of the Madras Photography Society and much later in 1884 at the Calcutta International Exhibition. His Madras Studio opened around 1861 and was still in business as late as 1905 even though Nicholas probably left India sometime in the 1890s. There is a record of a London, England branch in 1866 although this was only for a short period of time. Possibly he had traveled to England for a short while and then later decided to return to India. Two years later he opened a studio in Ootacamund and partnered with H.V. Curths sometime in 1869 and continued during the 1870s as Nicholas and Curths. In 1881 they published a ‘Catalogue of Photographic Views, Chemicals. Etc.’

In a footnote to John Falconer‘s 1984 article “Ethnographical Photography in India 1850-1900” (Photographic Collector 5(1):16-46) he gives the following additional information:

“John P. Nicholas was in business from c. 1858 and in partnership with H.V. Curths from c. 1869-c. 73. The firm of Nicholas and Co. continued until around 1905, although Nicholas appears to have left Madras in about 1895 (Madras Asylum almanacs).”

William H. Pigou
Pigou served in the Indian Medical Service in Bombay 1841-1858. Pigou succeeded Thomas Biggs as official Government Photographer, Bombay Presidency 1855-1857. Early in 1865, in his official capacity, Sir Bartle Frere, a member of the Viceroy’s council and his confidential adviser, supervised a photographic survey of the monuments of Bijapur and Ahmadabad by Dr. Pigou and Thomas Biggs.

A.W.A. Plate & Co
Commercial photographers in Colombo, Ceylon c1890s. The largest photographic company in Ceylon in the early 20th century. Still in business in the 1970s.

V. & E. Pont
V. & E. Pont were Commercial photographers in Calcutta in the late 1860s and through the 1870s. The relationship between V. & E. is unknown. 10 of V. Pont’s photographs were used to illustrate the ‘Appendix to Report of the Commissioners for making improvements in the Port of Calcutta.’

Marissa Roth
American photojournalist. Artist statement: “I can‘t imagine being anything else. Being a photographer, specifically a photojournalist, has enriched and defined my life by providing me with a creative medium that allows me to express my social concerns, values and outlook on the world. Being raised by Eastern European parents who were forced to leave their homelands because of the Holocaust, gave me a perspective on geography and geopolitics that formed the bedrock of my own desire to understand and see the world. By seeking out and photographing a wide range of subjects, it has also helped me to understand my own life and the culture I grew up in. I was greatly influenced by photo essays I saw in National Geographic, Life and Look magazines when I was a kid, and was moved by the idea of storytelling using multiple photographic images. I was also profoundly influenced by Renaissance painting and the dramatic use of chiaroscuro. I photograph in all mediums, but prefer black and white, and especially love silver gelatin printing, where the drama of light and shadow reflects the content of my images.” (April 2006)

James Robertson
Early travel photographer active from 1853 onwards. Taught photography to his brother-in-law Felice Beato who went on to become one of the most important 19th century photographers. Beato and Robertson became partners in Constantinople and photographed the last year of the Crimean War in 1855 after Roger Fenton fell ill.Photographed extensively in Turkey where he worked for the Imperial Ottoman Mint.

Marcus Aurelius Root
Root learned daguerreotyping from Robert Cornelius c1843. Root had a number of partnerships with other daguerreotypists. His first was with Bennet in Mobile, Alabama. Next with Samuel P. Miller in New Orleans. Root purchased Mayall’s Gallery in Philadelphia which was already a thriving business. He was partners with George S. Cook. Also operated a gallery in New York City. Root made what was probably the first microscopic photographic images; a fly’s foot, a fly’s wing and a flea. Exhibited at the CrystalPalace Exhibition in 1853. Pioneer in paper photography.

Thomas & Julian Rust
The first record of Thomas Rust as a photographer is in 1869 when he worked as an assistant to F.W. Baker in Calcutta. A year later he was running the Calcutta Photographic Company with W. T. Burgess and did so until 1874, so we can assume that he was already an experienced professional photographer before joining Baker. In 1874 Rust opened five of his own studios in Allahabad, Mussoorie, Murree, Landour and Meerut. Thomas Rust’s landscapes are considered very artistic and he may well have had some formal training in this area. His son Julian joined the firm in 1899 and continued until 1914.

Sebastião Salgado
Brazilian photojournalist who has worked for several of the leading photo agencies (Sygma, Gamma, Magnum) at different times. His long term studies of workers, migrations, famine all detail the plight of the human condition.

William Saunders
British born Saunders opened his studio in Shanghai, China c1863. Although he was a portrait photographer, his fascination with the Chinese people prompted him to photograph Chinese at all social levels from the food seller to the high ranking Mandarins. His catalog contained a large number of city views of Shanghai and the surrounding areas. Saunders photographs were sold by other photographers in China and are characteristic in his rectangular shape with rounded corners and oval vignettes. Many of his photographs were reproduced in ‘The Far East Magazine’.

Pascal Sebah
Turkish nineteenth century photographer who opened a studio in Constantinople in 1868 though there is a reference to an earlier one in 1857. He photographed extensively in Egypt taking monuments and views appropriate for the tourist trade. In 1878 he won a silver medal at the ‘Exposition Universelle‘ for his photographs of Nubian desert tribes.

C.R. Savage
English-born photographer who emigrated to the USA in the winter of 1855-1856. He became a prominent photographer of the American west, being the first to photograph the landscape of what would later become ZionNational Park. He photographed in Utah with George Ottinger and took one of the seminal photographs of the American West when he recorded the driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869.

Charles T. Scowen
Charles Scowen produced an incredible number of photographs of Ceylon, landscapes, people and events. Between W.L.H. Skeen and Charles Scowen they covered every part Ceylon. Scowen arrived in Ceylon in 1873 employed as an assistant to R. Edley a Commission Agent. It would appear that his love of the beauty of Ceylon lured him away from this job to become a photographer and he opened his first studio in Kandy in 1876. Nothing is known of his past experience in photography, but it is very obvious that he was a first rate photographer with a good eye for detail. By 1885 he had studios in Colombo and Kandy. During the mid 1890s, the entire stock of Scowen negatives was acquired by Colombo Apothecaries Co.

Colombo Apothecaries Company was established by J. Smith Finlay and W.M. Smith in Colombo, Ceylon in 1883. From a small mercantile establishment the Company grew rapidly into a large general store selling most commodities. The name Colombo Apothecaries Company was established in 1892 and by this time already had a photographic department. As an expansion of this department the company acquired the negatives of Charles Scowen Company and moved their studio to Kandy where the climate was considered better for photographic work than Colombo. After the acquisition of the Scowen portfolio, the Colombo Apothecaries Company produced a fine catalogue and started selling their photographs worldwide. The Company continued a photographic department in Colombo where they had their darkrooms and production facilities.

Sebah & Joaillier
The partnership founded in 1888 between Jean [Pascal] Sébah, son of Pascal Sébah (1823-1886), and Polycarpe Joaillier in Constantinople. They became official photographers to the Sultan.

Shepherd and Robertson
Charles Shepherd who had been photographing in India from 1858 onwards, started a partnership in 1862 as Shepherd and Robertson in Agra and Simla producing a large number of topographical and ethnographical images. This partnership was short-lived as his new partnership with Samuel Bourne began in 1863. Photographs signed and numbered in the negative Shepherd and Robertson. These numbers were kept in the catalog of Bourne and Shepherd.

Charles Shepherd
English photographer active in India in the mid-to-late 19th century. He worked in a series of partnerships “Shepherd & Robertson”, “Howard, Bourne & Shepherd” and finally “Bourne & Shepherd” before leaving India in around 1879. (See Samuel Bourne). In 1865 Shepherd established a partnership with Samuel Bourne in the hill town of Simla. Additional studios were established in Calcutta (1867) and Bombay (1870).The company “Bourne & Shepherd” still operates in Calcutta.

Sze Yuan Ming
Sze Yuan Ming was a Chinese photographer working in Shanghai during the1890s.

Benjamin Simpson
Served in the Indian Medical Service Bengal 1853 – 1890. He served as the Surgeon-General for the Government of India from 1853 until 1890. A keen amateur photographer and member of the Bengal Photographic Society, he produced a series of 80 photographs of ‘Racial Types of Northern India’ which was shown and awarded a gold medal at the London International Exhibition in 1862. Simpson’s trip to Assam in 1867 – 1868 resulted in his photographs illustrating ‘Descriptive ethnology of Bengal’ published in 1872. Many of Simpson’s images were used in the eight volumes of ‘The People of India’ published 1868-1875. Simpson produced a series of photographs of Kandahar, Afghanistan during the Second Afghan War of 1879-1880, which were marketed by Bourne & Shepherd.

William Louis Henry Skeen
Commercial photographer active in Ceylon (1860-1903). The firm of W.L.H. Skeen & Co. became the most successful in Ceylon by the 1870s and continued on under a number of different managers until about 1920. William Skeen started in Ceylon as the first officially appointed Government Printer 1849-1873. During this time, in 1860, he purchased the existing photographic studio of J. Parting in Colombo for his son, William Louis Henry Skeen. W.L.H. Skeen, who trained at the London School of Photography, did not arrive in Colombo until 1862 so it is unclear who was running the the Parting Studio during this time. William Skeen snr. wrote two books that were illustrated with his son’s photographs, ‘The Knuckles and Other Poems’ (1868) and ‘Adam’s Peak’ (1870). The studio in Colombo traded under the name S. Slinn & Co until 1868 when it became W.L.H. Skeen & Co. W.L.H. Skeen’s brother Frederick Albert Edward Skeen arrived in Ceylon in 1878 and he ran a studio under the W.L.H. Skeen name in Rangoon from 1887 although there is no record as to when this studio was opened. In 1891 another studio was opened in Kandy, Ceylon.

Uchida Kuichi
Uchida was the most important Japanese photographer of the Meiji period for he was the only one who was allowed to photograph the emperor. At that time it was forbidden for any commoner to look upon the emperor, punishable by death. Uchida learned photography from his adopted father Matsumoto Ryojun who had learned the art from a Dutch physician Pompe van Meerdervoort. Uchida opened his first studio in Osaka in 1865. The following year he moved his studio to Tokyo and in 1866 he opened a second one in Yokohama.
Baron Raimund von Stillfried Austrian photographer active in Japan in the 1870s. He formed a partnership with Hermann Andersen known initially as “Stillfried & Andersen” and later as the “Japan Photographic Association”. They purchased the negatives of Felice Beato in 1877 and this leads to confusion over who took which photographs. After he returned to Austria in 1883 his stock was sold to Farsari & Co. Linnaeus Tripe Tripe went to India in 1839 as a British Military officer in the Madras Army. He was a keen amateur photographer, but it is unclear where he learned photography. In 1855 he was the official photographer of the British Mission to the Court of Ava, Burma. Here he produced 120 views of Burmese architecture and landscapes. From 1856 – 18598 he was the British Presidency photographer back in Madras. He produced many architectural views of India and in 1858 one hundred and seventy were produced in seven albums.He eventually retired from the army as Honorary Major General in 1875.

E. Taurines
Taurines was a commercial studio in Bombay from 1885 – 1902. Whether Taurines is the name of a photographer or just the name given to the studio, it is hard to say as there is no record of a first name. As a result nobody knows of the origins. Taurines claim to fame was an extensive photographic record of the construction of the Victoria Dock, Bombay. Taurines was in partnership for a short time, 1891 – 1892, with Charles Nicond under the name of Taurines, Nicond & Co.

John Thomson
Traveled widely in the Far East (particularly China, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Thailand) taking photographs during the period 1860-1879 frequently working in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain for whom he had worked as their instructor in photography in 1866. His books include: ‘The antiquities of Cambodia‘ (1867), ‘Illustrations of China and its people‘ (1873-1874), his photographs of working class life are included in ‘Street life in London‘ (1877-1878), ‘Through Cyprus with the camera‘ (1879), and ‘Through China with a camera‘ (1898).

Christian Vogt
Swiss photographer – often with erotic overtones. He has produced a varied portfolio that includes portraits, still-lifes, nudes and landscapes.

James Valentine
Valentine was a well-known photographer of Scotland. Valentines of Dundee produced Scottish topographical views from the 1860s, and later became internationally famous as the producers of picture postcards.

The business was founded in 1851 by James Valentine (1815-1879). He added portrait photography to the activities of his established Dundee business, which had been based up to 1851 on the engraving, printing and supply of business stationery. In 1855 he erected one of the largest photographic glasshouses in Britain. In 1866 James Valentine carried out his first Royal commission and received the Royal warrant in 1867. His organisational and presentational skills were essential in the rapidly expanding and thriving concern which opened a large printing works in Dundee. William Dobson Valentine (1844-1907), son of James Valentine, took a course of chemistry at LondonUniversity and trained to be a landscape specialist in the studios of Francis Frith at Reigate, Surrey, the largest English publisher of the commercial landscape. He entered the family business in about 1860.

Valentine views in the nineteenth century aimed at the national middle and upper class tourist market, with the production of both drawing room albums containing selections of photographs arranged geographically and individual landscape prints. Landscapes were available in a choice of sizes – cabinet, imperial and card. Stereoscopic views were also produced. Subjects concentrated on tourist sights in Scotland, then to England in 1882 and on to fashionable resorts abroad, including Norway, Jamaica, Tangiers, Morocco, Madeira and New Zealand before 1900.

The company became very widely known after the TayBridge disaster of 1879, when they were commissioned to photograph the remains of the bridge for the Court of Inquiry. The pictures were sold across the country, and used in picture postcards.

Charles Leander Weed
Born in New York state, Weed moved to Sacramento, where he became a camera operator in the daguerreotype portrait studio of George J. Watson in 1854. Four years later he was named the junior partner of Robert Vance, the leading daguerreotypist in California during the 1850s. In June 1859 he was the first known photographer to venture into Yosemite valley taken there by the publisher, developer, and entrepreneur James Hutchings, who printed woodcuts after Weed’s wet plate photographs later that year in his Hutchings’ California Magazine. Like other photographers, Weed switched from daguerreotypes to the wet collodion technique soon after its local introduction at the 1855 California State Fair. His views of early mining and settlement in California have been much admired. In 1860 Weed left his partnership to make the first of several visits to Asia, briefly establishing a studio in Hong Kong before returning to California the following year. He photographed Yosemite in 1864, then traveled to produce views of Hawaii in 1865 and of the Far East in 1867. That same year he showed his photographs at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, winning an international award for landscape photography. Weed made another trip to Yosemite in 1872, probably with Eadweard Muybridge, and later worked as a photoengraver. T.W.F. Thomas Weston Fels With his brothers (J.A. and F.M. Weed) he was in Honolulu for nine months in 1865 and made carte de visites and mammoth plates. He left for Hong Kong (Dec 9, 1865) and sold his negatives to Henry Chase. Reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art webpage www.cma.org

Carleton E. Watkins
Born in Oneonta, New York, Carleton Watkins traveled west to California in the early 1850s, shortly after the gold rush. He learned photography in 1854 from Robert Vance, one of the earliest and best of San Francisco’s daguerreotypists. Vance’s landscape photography, unusually skilled for the time, may have influenced Watkins’s work.
Watkins was among the first photographers in the Yosemite valley, shooting there in 1861, and his mammoth-plate landscape photographs of the area are believed to have contributed to Yosemite’s early designation as a national park. His YosemiteArtGallery opened in San Francisco in 1867, but unlike most photographers of the time, Watkins is not known to have done much portrait work. His subjects included topographical, scenic, survey, agricultural, and urban views of California and surrounding states, including Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. Through his friendship with railroad magnate Collis Huntington, Watkins photographed along railway lines and was able to reach distant sites. Huntington later bought him the farm where he retired. Watkins’s landscapes were well received; he was awarded an international medal at the Paris Exposition (1867) and a medal of progress at the Vienna International Exposition (1873).

The numerous commissions and the work produced for the public market by Watkins combine clarity of vision with technical expertise. His work set the standard for subsequent photographers of western views, such as William Henry Jackson, Timothy O’Sullivan, and John K. Hillers. Although his life was difficult and his business sense lacking, his photographic efforts were protracted and indefatigable. Watkins’s negatives were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. He died several years later blind and insane. T.W.F. Thomas Weston Fels Reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art webpage www.cma.org

George Washington Wilson
After studying art in Edinburgh and Paris, Wilson returned to his native city of Aberdeen in 1849 and built his first camera. There he established himself as Scotland’s premier portrait photographer, famously photographing Queen Victoria in 1855. He went on to pioneer techniques for photography outside of the studio and the mass production of photographic prints. By 1864 he claimed to have sold over half a million prints. At the time of his death in 1893 his business employed 40 staff and was one of the largest publisher of photographic prints in the world, competing with James Valentine, who was also a prolific photographer, with a large company in Dundee.

Over 40,000 of Wilson’s photographic plates still exist today, largely due to the meticulous washing and chemical treatments he insisted on. AberdeenUniversity is in possession of those donated by an Aberdeen photographer, the late Archibald J.B. Strachan, in 1958. The University also cares for a second significant collection discovered in a private house in Aberdeen in 1970.

Walery
Early 20th century photographer who photographed the rich and famous in Paris. He is known for his images of the girls of the Folies Bergère photographed nude and semi-nude. Produced an important art deco folio of 100 nudes ‘NUS‘ in photogravure c1924 under the name Laryew.

The premier 19th Century photo gallery