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3 500 €

Réf : 73160

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Jean GEISER

Album photographique contenant 28 portraits d'Algériens finement rehaussés à l'aquarelle

Alger s.d. (circa 1870), Album : 13x17cm / photographies : 6,3x10,4cm, 28 portraits sur cartes de visite consignés dans un album.

Photographic album containing 28 portraits of Algerians finely enhanced with watercolour




Photographic album comprising 28 photograph portraits, in contemporary albumen print, pasted on card in carte-de-visite format.
These photographs, well contrasted and finely enhanced with watercolour at the time, are of great intensity: the models stare at the photographer's lens with pride and nobility.
Binding in full black grained leather, metal clasp, all edges gilt. Rubbing.
Superb photographic testimony by one of the first European photographers established in Algeria.
A Swiss expatriate in Algeria, Jean Geiser (1848-1923) was immersed in photography from childhood. In 1852, his mother joined forces with Antoine Alary, one of the pioneers of Algerian photography; together they founded a studio which lasted until 1867, when Jean Geiser took charge.
Initially specialising in portraits of the city's European bourgeois, the photographer quickly understood the city's interest for folk images.
These rare and magnificent “typical” portraits, depicting all the layers of the indigenous populations – from street children to caïd – are today sought after for their ethnographic value, testimony of an Algeria at the dawn of colonisation.

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