Swann Galleries - The Vernacular Eye - Sale 2345 - April 17, 2014 - page 29

20
(NEWYORK)
Amateur photographer’s album with 22 prints, including scenes of Manhattan and Central Park. A
group enjoys an excursion on a boat shaped like a swan, plus views of City Hall, street laborers, a
sideshow tent, well-dressed children, and a train ride up the Hudson, where a mill set in a pastoral
landscape precedes two pictures of gushing waterfalls.Albumen prints, 3
3
/
4
x4
3
/
4
inches (9.5x12.1 cm.),
with the initials L.C.B. in plate #1. Square 8vo, cloth, rebound; with the original label. Late 1880s
[700/1,000]
George Eastman’s cameras resulted in a kind of cultural revolution, one in which taking pictures emerged
as a new national obsession. Indeed, the novelty of the camera was not lost on this photographer. He or
she used it to snap llamas and ostriches at the zoo or unaware children talking or playing games.They
also captured something new: the poignancy of laborers’ (read: strangers) hard-scrabble lives and the
anonymity of the street. In many ways, the curiosity with which the photographer politely photographed
people speaks to the special qualities of the quintessential NewYorker.
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20
I...,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28 30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,...250
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