Kaslov, Steve, ca. 1888-1949 (King of the Red Bandanna Romany Gypsies ) Search this
Extent:
0.25 Cubic feet (4 boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photographs
Oral history
Interviews
Audio cassettes
Place:
Virgin Islands -- 1930-1940
New York (N.Y.) -- 1930-1940
Bowery (New York, N.Y.) -- 1930-1940
Chinatown (New York, N.Y.) -- 1930-1940
St. Thomas (Virgin Islands) -- 1930-1940
Date:
1985 - 1986
1930 - 1943
Scope and Contents:
This collection contains 273 silver gelatin photoprints (Series 1), most of which apparently were made during the 1930s and early 1940s, contemporaneously with the original negatives. All are 8" x 10" or slightly smaller, unmounted except for flush mounted linen on the backs of some prints. The photographs were made primarily in two locations, New York City and the Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands pictures were made as part of a special documentary project in 1939, as described above, whereas the New York photographs stem from Mr. Alland's largely self assigned documentation of various ethnic and religious groups in New York from approximately 1932 to 1943. The projects include photographs of the "Red Bandanna" Romany Gypsy group in the Bowery, a black Jewish congregation, Mohawk Indians in Brooklyn, and other groups, which required extensive exploration, research, and photographing over periods of many days or weeks. A variety of miscellaneous ethnic and religious groups are covered in the general "Other Religions" and "Nationalities" folders. The contents of the "Judaism" folder include primarily New York sites and people, but there are also additional views of a synagogue from the Virgin Islands project.
Series 2 of the collection contains four cassette tape recordings of two interviews with Mr. Alland, three made by Richard Ahlborn (with Eugene Ostroff and Matt Salo) in 1985, and one by David Haberstich and Richard Ahlborn, June 2-3, 1986 (at which time the photographs were donated). The tapes include readings from his autobiography, personal reminiscences on his experiences as an immigrant and a photographer, and commentary on the photographs.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into two series.
Series 1: Photoprints, 1930-1943
Series 2: Audiotape Cassettes, 1985-1986
The photographs are arranged topically and by nationality.
Biographical / Historical:
Alexander Alland, Sr., was born in Sevastopol, Crimea (formerly in the Soviet Union) on 6 August 1902. His last name originally was Landschaft, but he legally changed it to Alland following the birth of his son. Alland's interest in photography began at the age of twelve, when he helped a local photographer with darkroom work. He constructed his own camera from cardboard with a simple meniscus lens and exposed glass plate negatives with the device.
Toward the end of the Civil War in Russia in 1920, Alland relocated in Constantinople, Turkey, where he was hired as an apprentice by a graduate of the Vienna Academy of Photography. When the Union Nationale des Combatants Francais went on a pilgrimage to Gallipoli, a former battle zone on the Dardanelles, he was asked to accompany them in order to document events. After having his request for a pay increase refused, he left his employer two years later and opened his own portrait studio, "Photo d'Art Russe." When civil unrest threatened Constantinople in 1923, he decided to emigrate to the United States.
During his first years in the United States he worked in photo finishing businesses while engaged in home portraiture independently. He married in 1929 and a son, Alexander, Jr., was born. In the 1930s he became one of the best known photographers portraying the life of immigrants and various ethnic groups in New York. (1) In 1936 he was appointed supervisor of the Photo Mural section of the W.P.A. Federal Art Project, and worked as a free lance photographer for magazines and periodicals featuring the activities of various ethnic groups living in New York City. He specialized in making photomurals with montage techniques. (2)
In 1937 Alland became photography instructor at the American Artists' School and joined the American Artists Congress. In 1939, his first book, Portrait of New York, was published and he became president of the "Exploration Photo Syndicate" and went to the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of a project to produce a pictorial record of the West Indian Islands. His photographs appeared in publications and were exhibited at the New School for Social Research and at the Schomberg Collection. In 1942 he joined the staff of Common Ground magazine as photography editor and was appointed by the National Youth Administration to supervise their photography workshop. His book American Counterpoint appeared in 1943 and was selected as "One of the Fifty Best Books of the Year." The original prints from that book were exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, which also exhibited a portfolio of his work on American Gypsies. In 1944 he became director of an agency, "Pictures for Democracy," and in 1945 his book The Springfield Plan was proclaimed another "One of the Fifty Best Books of the Year."
During World War II Alland did technical photography for the War Department, receiving a commendation for this work. After another book My Dog Rinty was published, he left New York City to establish a school of photography, combined with a school of dance directed by his wife, Alexandra, a professional dancer and choreographer. (3) He then began to exhibit his own photographs and to collect glass plate negatives and vintage prints by significant photographers. He is perhaps best known for locating a collection of Jacob Riis negatives and making them available. In 1974 Aperture published his biography, Jacob A. Riis: Photographer and Citizen4. Because of his efforts in providing the Riis negatives to the Museum of the City of New York, that institution awarded a special commemorative medal to him in 1973. The Riis book was followed by two more studies of photographers, Jessie Tarbox Beals, First Woman News Photographer (5) and Heinrich Tonnies, Cartes de Visite Photographer Extraordinaire. (6)
Retrospective exhibitions of Alland's work were held in two major Danish museums in summer 1979 and he was honored for contributions to the cultural history of Denmark. In 1991 studies for his photomural work were included in an historical survey exhibition of American photomontage at the University of Maryland at College Park. (7).
Sources
1. My text is based upon the biographical information recorded on my taped interviews with Mr. Alland in this collection, but see also Bonnie Yochelson, The Committed Eye: Alexander Alland's Photography. New York: The Museum of the City of New York, Inc., 1991.
2. Merry A. Foresta, "Art and Document: Photography of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project," in Official Images: New Deal Photography (essays by Foresta, Pete Daniel, Maren Stange, and Sally Stein), Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987, p. 153, based on an interview with Alland, January 1987.
3. Photographic historian Anne Peterson, contractor for three Archives Center photographic collection projects between 1986 and 1982, reports that she studied ballet as a child with Mrs. Alland.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid
7. See catalog by Cynthia Wayne, Dreams, Lies, and Exaggeration: Photomontage in America. The Art Gallery, University of Maryland at College Park, 1991 (exhibition at the gallery Oct. 21 Dec. 20, 1991).
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center
Carlos de Wendler Funaro Gypsy Research Collection (AC0161)
Contains additional Alland photographs. De Wendler Funaro also photographed Steve Kaslov, his family, and his Bowery coppersmith workshop.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Alexander Alland, June 3, 1986.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Copyrighted material: photographs may not be reproduced without written permission from the Estate of Alexander Alland, Sr.
Topic:
Synagogues -- Photographs -- 1930-1940 -- New York, N.Y. Search this
Newspapers -- Photographs -- 1930-1940 -- New York N.Y. Search this
Muslims -- Photographs -- 1930-1940 -- New York N.Y. Search this
Minorities -- Housing -- 1930-1940 -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Minorities -- Housing -- 1930-1940 -- Virgin Islands Search this
Metropolitan Fair (1864:New York, N.Y.) Search this
Brady, Mathew B., approximately 1823-1896 Search this
Extent:
2.2 Linear feet
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Drawings
Photographs
Paintings
Sketchbooks
Date:
circa 1840s-1965
bulk 1849-1908
Summary:
The papers of landscape painter Worthington Whittredge measure 2.2 linear feet and date from the 1840s to 1965, with the bulk of the papers dating from 1849 to 1908. This small collection documents Whittredge's career as a painter, particularly his years in Europe from 1849 to 1859, through biographical materials, a manuscript of his autobiography, news clippings, catalogs, six sketchbooks and numerous drawings and paintings. Also found are two photographs of Whittredge and a nineteenth-century photo album containing photographs of 32 famous artists.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of landscape painter Worthington Whittredge measure 2.2 linear feet and date from the 1840s to 1965, with the bulk of the papers dating from 1849 to 1908. This small collection documents Whittredge's career as a painter, particularly his years in Europe from 1849 to 1859, through biographical materials, a manuscript of his autobiography, news clippings, catalogs, six sketchbooks and numerous drawings and paintings. Also found are two photographs of Whittredge and a nineteenth-century photo album containing photographs of 32 famous artists.
Biographical materials include a manuscript of his autobiography, passport, award certificates, and a ledger he kept while living in Düsseldorf, Germany, that documents commissions, accounts, and business activities. Printed material includes news clippings, catalogs, and the book Recollections of the Art Exhibition, Metropolitan Fair, New York, published by Mathew Brady, which includes a catalog of the art exhibition at the fair and 20 printed images by Brady.
Artwork consists of six sketchbooks and numerous drawings and paintings. The sketchbooks contain drawings Whittredge executed on a trip down the Rhine River in 1849 as well as during his travels in Italy and Mexico. Other loose drawings and paintings include numerous landscapes, figure studies, trees, animals, and other miscellaneous sketches.
There are two photographs of Whittredge, taken by M. Louise Greene, and a nineteenth-century photo album containing cartes de visite photographs of 32 artists. Most of these photographs include the artists autograph as well. Included are Albert Bierstadt, George H. Baker, William Holbrook Beard, Albert F. Bellows, John G. Brown, Seth Wells Cheney, Frederic Church, Jasper Cropsey, Thomas Seir Cummings, Mauritz De Haas, Francois Regis Gignoux, Henry Peters Gray, Seymour Guy, George Henry Hall, William Hart, William Hennessy, Richard W. Hubbard, Daniel Huntington, Henry Augustus Loop, Jervis McEntee, Samuel F. B. Morse, William Page, Horace Wolcott Robbins, Aaron Shattuck, James Augustus Suydam, Launt Thompson, Robert W. Weir, Henry Wenzler, Edwin White, and George Yewell, and two unidentified artists.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into 4 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1849-circa 1940s (Box 1, 5, OV 9; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 2: Printed Material, 1861-1965 (Box 1, 4, 5, OV9; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 3: Artwork, circa 1840s-1902 (Box 2, 5, OV 6-9; 0.6 linear feet)
Series 4: Photographs, circa 1850s-1860s, circa 1900 (Box 2-3; 0.3 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Thomas Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910) was born in 1820 in Springfield, Ohio. Receiving very little formal education, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio at the age of 17 to serve as an apprentice house and sign painter. A few years later, in his early twenties, he briefly ran a daguerreotype studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and worked as a portrait painter in Charleston, West Virginia.
In 1843 Whittredge decided to pursue landscape painting, and was greatly influenced by Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole. In 1849 he traveled to Düsseldorf, Germany, to further his training at the Düsseldorf Academy. There, he met painter Emanuel Leutze and modeled for Leutze's painting Washington Crossing the Delaware (1850). He lived for a year in the home of landscape painter Andreas Achenbach and became friends with Carl Friedrich Lessing. Whittredge spent the summer of 1856 sketching in Switzerland with Albert Bierstadt. That fall Whittredge and Bierstadt moved to Rome where they were joined by fellow artists Sanford Robinson Gifford and William Stanley Haseltine.
Whittredge stayed in Italy until 1859 when he returned to America and settled in New York City, renting a space at Richard Morris Hunt's famous Tenth Street Studio Building, which was frequented by some of the best-known artists, writers, and actors of the time. He kept company with Jervis McEntee, Eastman Johnson, Sanford Robinson Gifford, John Ferguson Weir, and other artists of the "old guard". Whittredge quickly became a very successful artist, adapting what he had learned in Europe to the American landscape. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1860 and became a full member in 1862. He also served as President of the National Academy of Design from 1874 to 1877.
In 1866 Whittredge went along on a government inspection tour of the Missouri Territory and was greatly inspired by the landscape. He traveled to Colorado in 1870 with John Frederick Kensett and Sanford Gifford and, in the late 1870s, began painting these new landscapes. He moved with his family to Summit, New Jersey, in 1880. In 1893 he went on a sketching trip to Mexico with fellow artist Frederic Church and continued painting into the early 1900s. Around this time he also began writing his autobiography which he completed in 1905. Worthington Whittredge died in 1910 at the age of 89.
Related Material:
Also found in the Archives of American Art are several collections relating to Whitteredge: the Anthony F. Janson research material on Worthington Whittredge, 1969-2003; the Worthington Whittredge sale records, 1900; the Edith Wilkinson Letter to E.P. Richardson and biographical notes on Worthington Whittredge, 1957; and a Worthington Whittredge letter to John Ferguson Weir, 1871.
Separated Material:
One sketchbook was loaned by William W. Katzenbach for microfilming in 1959 and returned. Loaned material is available on microfilm reel 153, but is not described in container listing of this finding aid.
Provenance:
The Worthington Whittredge papers were donated by William W. and L. Emery Katzenbach, grandsons of Whittredge, in 1959. Additional items were donated by William W. Katzenbach in 1968.
Restrictions:
The collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Topic:
Landscape painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
