4094 - St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg Photographer: Joseph Daziaro (active 1832-1918), William Carrick (1827-1878), and others. Souvenir album of St Petersburg. 1880s-90s. Ca. 100 albumen prints, mounted recto and verso to gilt-edged album leaves. Various sizes between 21 x 26 cm and 9,5 x 5,5 cm, or reverse. Some numbered in the negative; most annotated in ink in French below the images on the mounts. Bound in a contemporary blue full-canvas album with the gilt-embossed title “Souvenir de St. Petersbourg” on the front cover. A wide-ranging souvenir album combining views of St Petersburg’s principal monuments and public spaces with scenes of markets and everyday life. Numerous portraits of peasants, monks, merchants and regional costumes belong to the ethnographic mode closely associated with Carrick’s studio, although individual attributions remain tentative. – Album covers soiled, with rubbed and partly torn edges; album leaves time-stained and soiled along the edges, with some warping and water staining on the final two leaves; some prints with light surface scuff marks and fading, particularly along the edges; otherwise most prints in good to very good condition. Lit.: David Elliott. Photography in Russia. 1840-1940. London: Thames & Hudson,1992, see pp. 130-131 (comparable images of peasants by Carrick).