Steven Evans  Vintage Photography

Featured Images

Gallery 2

Works by Achille Quinet

Achille Quinet (1831-1900) maintained a studio in Paris where he documented the streets, the monuments and the architectural landmarks of the city before and after the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. He frequently exhibited his photographs of Paris, along with his sublime rustic images of the trees and forests of Fontainbleu and the Gardens of Versailles. His images are characterized by exceptional detail, striking contrasts and rich tones.

Working with wet plate negatives and preparing his own albumen paper, his prints are recognized by his straight forward documentary style, and identified by a distinctive red stamp that appears on the mount below the print.

Examples of his work can be found in the collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), Societé Francaise de Paris, as well as the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

The photographs on offer here are all approximately 7.5” X 9.75” and mounted to boards that are 12” X 17”. The print conditions range from very good to excellent showing good tones, contrast, and sharpness. The mounts, which have varying degrees of foxing and minor stains, bear Quinet’s trademark red signature.

Click below to view works by Achille Quinet.

Gallery 1

A Grand Tour: 19th-century Photographs of Distant Places

The fascination with the other was a hallmark of 19th century thinking.  The lure of the exotic and the mass public craving for information about people, places and things far-away gave rise to a huge industry that furnished tourists, armchair travelers, researchers, and the general public with visual records to study, preserve, and venerate. Huge numbers of images were produced through-out the world and sold individually, assembled in albums and portfolios, or published in deluxe books. Today the few photographs that survive serve as reminders of how the world, and even some attitudes, may or may not have changed.

On exhibit in this gallery are works produced by known and unknown makers active in Europe, the Middle East, India and the Far East.

If you have a particular interest in any of these subject areas but do not see what you are looking for, please feel free to contact us as we have many other images in stock and available for sale.

Click on the image below to visit the gallery.