photography

  [CARUSO, Enrico]. Photographic silver gelatin portrait, signed and inscribed by the Tenor. Montevideo, 1915.

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A fine and unusually large portrait (330 x 215 mm) of the Italian Tenor, with his autograph inscription to the famous Polish-born Russian-Jewish Soprano Rosa Raisa, dated from the year when the two were on Tournée in South America, performing Verdi’s Aida at Montevideo that time.

‘Legendary Emma Carelli, an esteemed soprano in her own right, now the director of the Rome Opera introduced Raisa to her husband Walter Mocchi, the important impresario who organized the glamorous opera seasons in Buenos Aires.  As South America was in the Southern Hemisphere, there was a long-standing tradition of the finest Italian artists boarding ships after the end of the opera season in Italy and performing in the reverse seasons, the autumn and winter months in South America.  The annals of operatic performances in South America oftentimes read as the “greatest” Italian opera to be seen, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires a defining theater. 

    [DAGUERROTYPE – MEXICO]. Portrait of a native girl. [Probably Mexico, c. 1845]. 

£5500

 A very rare daguerreotype portrait of a South-American Indian girl, probably of Mexican origin and from a prominent family, the hair braded, and wearing gold jewellery of earrings, rings, bracelets, and a brooch, and holding a gilt-tipped fan in her left hand.

Daguerreotype was introduced in Mexico as soon as 1839 and was mainly employed until 1847, before being overtaken by faster and cheaper techniques (ambrotype, ferrotype, and collodion).

Early examples such as the present are very rare.

  [LANG, Fritz]. Metropolis. 12 silver bromide photographic postcards. Berlin, Ross, [c. 1927-1930].

£12,000

The iconic, complete set of 12 postcards (90 x 140 mm) produced by the Berlin publishers Ross for Universum Film A.G. for promotional purposes, here uniquely with a cut-out autograph signature by the movie’s director, Fritz Lang, and originally contained in an amateur collector's album.

Fritz Lang created the monumental silent movie Metropolis over the period of 1925 to 1926, a film that is regarded a pioneering science-fiction movie, being among the first feature-length movies of that genre.

In 2001 the film was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, the first film thus distinguished.  

   NEW YORK. View onto the Empire State Building from the Hudson River. [New York, signed with the superimposed initials ‘AS’, and dated 1934].

  £3500

A superb, large (420 x 570 mm), soft-grained and moody image of lower Manhattan in the thirties.

Undoubtedly by a professional, the photographer remains as yet unidentified. 

TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich. Photographic portrait. Moscow and St. Petersburg, J[oseph] Daziaro, c. 1892-1894.

£3850

A fine, large, half-length portrait (219 x 213 mm) of the author dressed in the garb of a peasant.