Photography

Contact Donovan Rees

Fine photographs and photobooks with an emphasis on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We stock images by recognised masters such as Hill & Adamson, Roger Fenton or Julia Margaret Cameron as well as more eclectic examples illustrating the range of formats and processes used in the early years of the medium. This might include fine daguerreotypes, complete photograph albums, carbon or platinum prints by known or amateur photographers.

We are also interested in the work of early travel photographers, particularly those in the Middle and Far East. From later periods we hold work by British photographers specialising in fine art and documentary photography including Alvin Langdon Coburn, J. Dudley Johnston, Bill Brandt and Raymond Moore.

  1. [AGRICULTURE.]

    Photographs from the countryside around Beijing.

    [Early twentieth century.]

    Details of agricultural work and life, depicting the growing, transporting and selling of agricultural produce. Men carry loads on their backs, presumably to market or a storehouse; a camel caravan arrives in Beijing; other views show oxen ploughing, ponies carrying heavy loads, market stalls and a remarkable...

    £3000

  2. AH FONG, photographer.

    The Sino-Japanese Hostilities 1937.

    Shanghai, Nanking Road, 1937.

    Excellently preserved copy of this rare album of photographs documenting the bombing of Shanghai at the opening of the Second Sino-Japanese war, a haunting and moving visual record of what is considered by many to be the first battle of World War II.

    £3750

  3. ANNAN, Thomas.

    Memorials of the Old College of Glasgow.

    Glasgow, T. Annan Photographer; J. Maclehose, Publisher and Bookseller to the University, 1871

    A very good copy illustrated with albumen rather than carbon prints.

    £3450

  4. [ATO PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATION.]

    Album of 100 gelatin silver prints of Tianjin (Tientsin), the Hai (Peiho) estuary, and Beijing...

    [Circa 1930s.]

    An attractive example of the commercially available albums produced by the Ato Photographic Association in the 1920s–30s. The present album is devoted to the area formerly known as Zhili or Chihli, encompassing Beijing and Tianjin. Small groups of images are devoted to the Hai forts and to...

    £2500

  5. [ATO PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATION.]

    Album of 100 gelatin silver prints of Fuzhou (Foochow) and Yunnan.

    [1930s.]

    Includes panoramas of Fuzhou apparently taken at different dates (the captions state a population of variously 600,000 and 700,000), and scenes of Kunming, the capital of Yunan province. There is an interesting short series on railway engineering in Yunnan province, and images of zinc mining, and poppy...

    £2500

  6. [BEIJING.]

    Album of Beijing and environs.

    [1920s.]

    A meticulously presented and captioned series of views, by a tourist or resident in Beijing (then Peking) with a thorough approach to recording their experience of the city and environs.

    £1500

  7. [BEIJING.]

    [Cover title:] ‘The most interesting views of Peiping’.

    [c. 1900–1920.]

    A very good example of a commercial souvenir album of Beijing and the Great Wall of China.

    £1750

  8. [BEIJING.]

    [Cover title:] ‘The most interesting views of Peiping’.

    [C. 1900–1910.]

    A very unusual commercial album of Beijing, with thirty-eight hand-coloured scenes of the city, probably taken using a swing-lens panoramic camera.

    £2000

  9. BENNETT, Terry.

    History of Photography in China: Chinese Photographers 1844-1879.

    London, Quaritch, 2013.

    This book is the first extensive survey of early Chinese photographers in any language. It is profusely illustrated with more than 400 photographs, many of which are published here for the first time, including a fine selection of Foochow landscapes from the studios of Lai Fong, China’s leading...

    £80

  10. BENNETT, Terry.

    History of Photography in China.

    London, Quaritch, 2009-2013.

    First editions of the three-volume set of Bennett’s comprehensive History of Photography in China, together providing a study and survey of the development of Chinese photography from 1842 to 1879 both by Chinese and by Western photographers. The work examines photographs and photographers...

    £175

  11. BISSON, Louis-Auguste. 

    ‘Wildfire’. 

    Paris, c. 1844. 

    An extraordinary equine portrait, testimony to the improvements made in the daguerreotype process made by Louis-August Bisson which allowed greater spontaneity through shorter exposure times. 

    £14500

  12. BRANDT, Bill.

    Stonehenge: after Thomas Hardy,

    c. 1946.

    In Bill Brandt Behind the Camera, Mark Haworth-Booth writes on Brandt’s landscape photographs from the five-year period between 1945 and 1950:

    £8500

  13. [DAGUERRE.] MAYER & PIERSON [after Charles Richard MEADE.]

    Carte-de-visite albumen print portrait of Louis Daguerre.

    Paris, late 1860s.

    In 1848 the pioneering American photographer Charles Richard Meade secured the commission for which he is now best known, a series of daguerrotypes of the medium’s founding father Louis Jaques Mandé Daguerre. The five images, known as the white-tie series to distinguish them from other portraits,...

    £1200

  14. DALLMEYER, Thomas.

    Telephotography: An elementary Treatise on the Construction and Application of the telephotographic Lens …...

    London, William Heinemann, 1899.

    First edition of the authoritative treatise on telephotography by the inventor of the first practical telephotographic lens.

    £200

  15. DURHAM, Arthur E. 

    Transverse Section of Wood (Salisburia). 

    Circa 1870s. 

    A rare and attractive microphotograph of a transverse section of Ginkgo biloba wood, traditionally used in Chinese medicine and homeopathy. 

    £1100

  16. [ELIZABETH II.] KEYSTONE (PARIS).

    La Princesse Elisabeth fille du Duc d’York, et héritier, du trône d’Angleterre …

    1936.

    Princess Elizabeth on the day of the announcement of the abdication of Edward VII.

    £1200

  17. [FARSARI, Adolfo, Studio of.]

    Japanese flower seller.

    [Yokohama?, c. 1887.]

    A striking image of a Japanese flower vendor, with delicate contemporary hand colouring, most notably to the flowers. After time spent in America, where he fought in the Civil War, Adolfo Farsari (1841 - 1898) moved to Japan in 1873, establishing himself in Yokohama. In 1885 he opened his own...

    £200

  18. FOREST, BISSON FRERES, &c

    A collection of eight albumen prints (or salt and albumen collages) from mammoth-plate negatives...

    France, 1864-5.

    An exceptional series of oversize prints commissioned by the Compagnie de Chemins de Fer de l‘Ouest to commemorate the construction of a series of new bridges completed 1861–1864, including the metal bridge at Orival, later destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War, and the oblique stone bridge of...

    £30000

  19. HARLINGUE, L. [Albert].

    'Baktiaris Persans'.

    [Iran, c. 1905-1911].

    An impressive press image of the Bakhtiari tribe – revolutionaries in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 – here posing in strength with their weapons. Their leader, Sardar As’ad Bakhtiari (1856-1917), was a key figure in the Iranian revolution; under his command (and with German...

    £1500