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.
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THOMSON, John.
Illustrations of China and its People. A Series of two Hundred Photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the...
London, Sampson Low &c, 1873–1874.
A good copy of this rare work (vol. I marked second edition, the rest first editions), showing superb images of Imperial China including rare portraits of high government officials as well as a large number of architectural and scenic views; this item ranks amongst the most spectacular photographically...
£35000
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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
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[LUYNES, Honoré Théodore Paul Joseph d’Albert, duc de.] VIGNES, Louis, photographer; Charles NEGRES, printer.
Voyage d’exploration à la mer Morte, à Petra et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain par M. Le Duc de Luynes,...
Printed 1874–76.
A fine set of the photogravures for which Nègre was justly celebrated, from the collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes. The titles and plate numbers are added in pencil, likely by the author or publisher (Arthus Bertrand, Paris, 1874-76). The albumen prints, from the original negatives...
£25000
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[HILL & ADAMSON.]
ELLIOT, Andrew, and Dr Elliot; ANNAN, Thomas. Calotypes by D. O. Hill and R. Adamson Illustrating...
Edinburgh, Printed for Private Circulation, 1928.
First edition, one of 38 copies, of the first monograph on the pioneering Scottish photographers David Octavius Hill & Robert Adamson, fifty years in publication, sumptuously illustrated with carbon prints from the original calotype negatives.
£15000
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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
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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
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LEIGHTON, J. Harold.
Collection of exhibition prints,
1920s–1940s.
An impressive international exhibition portfolio - by renowned Pictorialist and an expert in this process.
£7500
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STACEY, George et al.
Daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits of Stacey and members of his family.
London, 1850s.
A handsome set of photographs of the English Quaker and abolitionist George Stacey (1787-1857), his second wife Mary née Barclay (1797-1876) and members of their extended family, taken by some of the finest portraitists in England at that time.
£7500
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MANTELL, A. M. (attr.).
Views in North Wales.
Circa 1880.
A magnificent album of large-format views of North Wales and Chester, likely produced in celebration of the new harbour and hotel at Holyhead, which was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales in June 1880 – a group portrait of the event is depicted here.
£6500
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[EMPRESS DOWAGER and DALAI LAMA.]
Photographs of religious traditions in Peking.
Beijing, c. 1908.
A record of religious cultures and traditions with rare images of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Beijing and the preparation for the Empress Dowager Cixi’s funeral procession, in 1908.
£4500
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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
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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
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[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
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PAGANORI, Vincenzo, photographer, and Riccardo MAGNELLI, attributed taxidermist.
[Cover title:] Saggio della collezione...
[c. 1880s?]
An unusual and very rare photographic portfolio of taxidermy, featuring twelve displays – including flamingos, a brown bear, seabirds, and ibex – and one scene of work under preparation, showing the taxidermist and his young apprentice.
£2500
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[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
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[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
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JOHNSTON, J. Dudley.
Snowbound.
1923-’24.
An attractive Swiss winter scene by J. Dudley Johnston. Johnston (1868–1955) was President of the Royal Photographic Society from 1923-’5 and again from 1929-’31. He was a leading Pictorialist photographer, a member of the Linked Ring Brotherhood, and responsible for establishing the historic...
£2200
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PURSEY, Thomas.
The last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.
[Edinburgh, T. Pursey, 1900.]
A photographic tour-de-force, assembling many hundreds of individual photographic portraits neatly incorporated into a painted scenario, and then reproduced as a photogravure, depicting all the attendees of the last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, held in May 1900. Evidently a...
£2000
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[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