Alexander Bassano – Pioneer Photographer

Alexander Bassano (10 May 1829 – 21 October 1913) was the leading royal and high society portrait photographer in Victorian London.

He was the second youngest child of Clemente Bassano, originally a fishmonger of Cranbourne Street, later an oilman and Italian warehouseman of Jermyn Street, London. He opened his first studio in 1850 in Regent Street. The studio then moved to Piccadilly 1859-1863, to Pall Mall and then to 25 Old Bond Street in 1877. Bassano also had studios at: 122 Regent Street, 1862–76; 72 Piccadilly, 1870–81; 25 Old Bond Street, 1878–1903; 182 Oxford Street, 1889; 42 Pall Mall, 1891–92; 18 Alpha Road, 1892-96. There was also a company named "Bassano and Davis" at 122 Regent Street in 1866, a firm named "Bassano Limited" at 25 Old Bond Street from 1906 and a "Bassano’s Studio’s Ltd" at 25 Old Bond Street, 1904-05. The National Portrait Gallery, owner of a large number of Bassano’s photographs, states that Bassano’s firm was based at 25 Old Bond Street from 1876 to 1921.

In addition to the various London premises mentioned above, there was also a Bassano branch studio at 132 King’s Road, Brighton from 1893 to 1899.

The Old Bond Street studio was decorated with carbon photographic prints and plaster busts, and was large enough to accommodate an 80-foot panoramic background scene mounted on rollers, which provided a variety of outdoor scenes or court backgrounds. He had taken portraits of William Ewart Gladstone and even Queen Victoria. Bassano’s head of Lord Kitchener formed the basis of the First World war recruiting poster Your Country Needs You. Bassano retired from work at the studio around 1903, when the premises were extensively refurbished and relaunched as "Bassano Ltd, Royal Photographers".

The studio moved once again in 1921: a move written about by the Lady’s Pictorial at the time. The article described about a million negatives, all systematically numbered, which had to be moved from the cellars of the premises to the new location at 38 Dover Street. The company became "Bassano and Vandyk" in 1964. The following year it incorporated Elliott & Fry, a photographic partnership that had been running in Baker Street since 1863. In 1977, the company became "Industrial Photographic", based at 35 Moreton Street, SW1.

Many glass plates from the Bassano Studios, including some by Alexander Bassano, are held in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The Museum of London holds a large number of the fashion-related plates. His sister Louisa Bassano was a noted singer and teacher.

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Read Full Post »

Eve Arnold, April 12 1912 – January 4 2012 – Photographer

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.” –Eve Arnold

Marilyn Monroe in the Nevada desert going over her lines for a difficult scene she is about to play with Clarke Gable in the film "The Misfits" by John Huston. 1960 – Photographer Eve Arnold had known Marilyn Monroe for 10 years by the time she photographed her on the set of The Misfits.

Photographer Eve Arnold, who died Thursday morning at the age of 99, is probably best remembered for her celebrity photographs of Marilyn Monroe, made over the span of a decade from the early 1950s to those taken on the set of the movie star’s final film, The Misfits. But Arnold also traveled the world to make equally exceptional photographs of the poor and disposed.

Arnold, the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1912. In the late 1940’s, she studied photography—alongside Richard Avedon—under inspirational art director Alexei Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her first photo story documented African-American fashion shows in Harlem and the project would lead directly to her being granted unprecedented access by Malcom X to document the Black Muslims and the way they worked over the next two years.

In the early 1950’s, she began working for the photo news publications of the day, first for Picture Post, then Time and Life magazines. And in 1957 she became the first woman photographer to join Magnum Photos.

She will perhaps be best remembered for her exceptional photographs of people: the famous, politicians, musicians, artists —among them Malcolm X, Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Jacqueline Kennedy and Monroe. “I look for a sense of reality with everything I did,” she once said. “I didn’t work in a studio, I didn’t light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn’t have to frighten people with heavy equipment, it was that little black box and me”

But it is the long term reportage stories that drove Arnold’s curiosity and passion. She traveled extensively to make work on regions that had been off limits to the west—to China, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, and also to Cuba, South Africa and Afghanistan. In 1971 she made a film, Women Behind the Veil, going inside Arabian harems and hammams.

Arnold continued to work for respected publications, most notably the Sunday Times color supplement. In 2003 she was honored with an OBE in recognition for her services to photography. Her work is renowned for its intimacy. Whether photographing celebrity or the everyday, Arnold’s portraits are magical, memorable and enduring.

Text from “TIME LightBox”

Related articles

• Eve Arnold, photographer was 99 (laobserved.com)
• Beautiful Marilyn Monroe Photos By Eve Arnold (vintage-everyday.blogspot.com)
• Eve Arnold, Famous Photojournalist Dies at 99 (ginagenis.wordpress.com)
• American photographer Eve Arnold dies aged 99 (telegraph.co.uk)
• Marilyn Monroe photographer Eve Arnold dies at 99 (thejc.com)
• Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold (fashion-mommy.com)

Read Full Post »

Roosevelt In Drags

Like other young boys of his era, Franklin Roosevelt wears a dress. This studio portrait was likely taken in New York in 1884.

And still he became president of in America. I don’t think a picture of a candidate in a dress no matter at what age it was taken would have helped the campaign along to day. Times changes – Ted

Image and top text found at:

Read Full Post »

Clarence Sinclair Bull – Portrait Photographer

Clarence Sinclair Bull,  the head of MGM’s stills department for nearly forty years, Clarence Sinclair Bull, along with Hurrell, virtually invented celebrity portraiture as we know it today, capturing with rare artistry a breathtaking roster of stars in brilliant and often surprising ways. His magical and dream-like photographs – in particular his collaboration with Greta Garbo, whom he photographed almost exclusively from 1929 until 1941 became the classic images of Hollywood portrait photography, instrumental in fixing the essential look of a star and in setting standards of beauty male and female – to this day.

Bull’s days at MGM included 200 of his enduring portraits of such legendary film stars as Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Gary Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Vivian Leigh, Spencer Tracy, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, and, of course, Greta Garbo.

Winner of four Academy still photography exhibition awards, Clarence Sinclair Bull was born in Sun River, Montana in 1896 and studied with the great Western painter Charles Marion Russell.

His early interest in photography took him to Hollywood in 1918 where he was hired as an assistant cameraman at Metro Pictures. He shot stills of the stars during the production breaks, and when Goldwyn merged with Metro in 1924, he became head of the MGM stills department, and remained at MGM for the rest of his career.

Though Bull was experienced in every branch of his department, from lighting to printing and retouching, he is best-known for his remarkable portraits of Hollywood stars, especially of Greta Garbo. Clarence Sinclair Bull died in 1979.

Text from Hurrellphotos.com

Read Full Post »

Dorothy Wilding – Society Photographer

Dorothy Wilding (10 January 1893 – 9 February 1976) was a noted English society photographer from Gloucester. She wanted to become an actress or artist but this career was disallowed by her uncle, in whose family she lived, so she chose the art of photography which she started to learn from the age of sixteen.

By 1929 she had already moved studio a few times and in her Bond Street, London, studio she attracted theatrical stars and shot her first British Royal Family portrait of the 17-year-old Prince George (later Duke of Kent). This sitting was eventually followed by the famous Wilding portrait of the new Queen Elizabeth II that was used for a series of definitive postage stamps of Great Britain used between 1953 and 1967, and a series of Canadian stamps in use from 1954 to 1962. A previous portrait sitting of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon Queen Consort of King George VI had turned into a double portrait of the royal couple and was adapted for the 1937 Coronation issue stamp. That portrait led to her being the first woman awarded a Royal Warrant to be the official photographer to a King and Queen at their coronation. She opened a second photo studio in New York in 1937.
Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Princess Margaret

Louis Jourdan

Harry Belafanter

Tallulah Bankhead

Indira Devi

Marilyn Monroe

Mrs Simpson

George Bernard Shaw

Read Full Post »

Three Queens

	Three illustrations made by my alter ego in a combination of Painter, Photoshop & CorelPaint often moved from software to software several time before I was happy with the result. An observant visitor will recognize Jayne Mansfield as the queen of ice and Marilyn Monroe as the queen of the lake. Who the queen of the fire was has slipped my mind.

Read Full Post »

The Riddle Of The Carte-de–Visite

Among collectors the term passes without comment — carte-de-visite. At antiques fairs and collectors’ markets they are ubiquitous, these little photographs, on the one side perhaps a fashionable young man in elegant topper or young woman in voluminous crinoline, or (less commonly) a small family group: on the other the elaborately presented studio address of the photographer. As records of costume they are invaluable, but as more personal records they are not without poignancy. In old shoe boxes amid the pots and pans of the boot fair, divested now of the family context that once brought them into being, we buy them at 50p a card. Who are these people whose eyes now touch ours across the years? We cannot know.
Read the whole article at
The Ephemera Society

Related articles

• About the (Old) photos (pussonalamp.wordpress.com)
• SPECIAL FEATURE: Ghost Babies (boingboing.net)
• Sunday music… (stytzer.blogspot.com)
• These children were turned out of the St. Lawrence Hotel, Chestnut St., Philadelphia, on account of Colour (fansinaflashbulb.wordpress.com)
• The Victor Gulotta Collection of Charles Dickens (finebooksmagazine.com)

Read Full Post »

Sexy People

I know I posted “Awkward Family Photos” just a few days ago, but these kind of blogs touch the string of malignance in me. There is something about looking at pictures you know you’re not supposed to laugh at and still you cant keep from doing it that tickles my fancy something awful. So here’s “Sexy People”, another blog that brings out the worst in us.

Image found at:

Read Full Post »

Old Portraits

The miserable looking sod on the photo here were later to marry my grand aunt Emma, who loved another man who in turn loved someone else and went off and married her. Not a good start on a marriage for Emma and Edvin as the miserable sod was called, but they stuck it out till the bitter end as their generation usually did.

When ever a half decent occasion occurred one went to have ones photos taken in the old days. Had a bath, put on ones Sunday’s best , shined ones shoes and went in search of a photographer. Pictures like the ones showed here were ordered in many copies and sent off to friends and relatives, home and abroad. The ones who had emigrated to America send photos to show how prosperous and well they looked, the ones who stayed home to show that things weren’t that bad at the home front either. Confirmation, enlistment in the army, weddings, anniversaries, you name it, photos were taken and sent off. The photos in this Picasa gallery were made on thin photographic paper and were glued onto a cardboard sheet  with the photographer’s address and other information on the back. These were often rather fancy so I have included a few of these as well. To the rest of the miserable lot:

Read Full Post »