Photograph albums are assemblages of images that have meaning to their compiler or audience. These albums can be highly personal in nature, or they can be intended to reach a broader audience. The photographs they contain may be the work of the compiler or a close associate, a selection of commercially available images; or a combination thereof. Photograph albums can be compiled by an individual or family in a single sitting or over time; they can be the product of a photographer or studio wishing to disseminate their work; or they can comprise an individual’s selection of images available through a photography studio which would then bind the images into an album whose cover title often referenced the purchaser’s travels or other interests.
Early photograph albums represent visual diaries of their time, narrating slow-moving pre-cinematic stories with a point of view directed by the compiler. Often unique, they provide insight into their period by illuminating particular aspects of a culture through the selection of images and their unfolding juxtaposition. As the photographic medium advanced, photographic albums evolved to house new formats, represented most prominently by the snapshot album. Nearly 150 in number, the photograph albums held by the GRI are geographically diverse, picturing different subjects whose intended reasons for assemblage are not always apparent. A few examples illuminate their potential as tools of research.
Among GRI’s holdings, is one of the earliest and most distinctive albums because of its floral Qajar-style lacquer covers is a presentation object made by Neapolitan lieutenant colonel Luigi Pesce who was hired in 1848 by by Nasir al-Din Shah to modernize the Persian army. An amateur photographer, Pesce routinely photographed the city and other notable sites. The dedication on the album’s flyleaf records that it was a personal gift presented on 12 May 1860 by Pesce to his friend Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895) British counsel to Tehran. The album’s 42 photographs, taken in the late 1850s, range of images from views of the Golestan Palace to ancient Persian sites including the Achaemenid ruins of Persepolis, the Achaemenid tombs and Sasanian reliefs at Naqsh-i Rustam, and the Sasanian reliefs at Tāq-e Bostān in Kirmānshāhān province.
Created some eight decades later, an album recording the Spanish Civil War from the perspective of the Spanish Nationalists was made by Roman Stempka (1909-1990), a German photojournalist sent by Scherl Bilderdienst. The album’s 121 photographs depict fighting at the front, soldiers in their dugouts, a signed portrait of General Franco, along with the caudillo in the company of Eberhard von Stohrer, the Nazi envoy to Franco's headquarters from February to October of 1937. Stempka’s album is his personal record of his experiences during the Spanish Civil War and the images he chose to include in it reflect his political views.
Another highly personal album among the Library collection is an album of 19 hand-colored snapshots recording a trip to New York City and the 1939 World’s Fair. Taken by an unidentified amateur photographer, who presumably also applied the coloring and compiled the album, they stand in marked contrast to the numerous albums in the collections produced and distributed by the official photographers to earlier world expositions by presenting an individual’s experience and consumption of an exposition rather than the official version proffered by the exposition organizers.
Image: Abdu Rabbih al Wahhab (n.d.). [Al Djazair and Tunis Album] Cover. 1881. Carved wood, tooled and painted leather set into brass backings, closed with brass hinges. Getty Research Institute, 2001.R.20.