Thomas Houseworth
Thomas Houseworth (born June 21, 1828 in New York , † April 13, 1915 in San Francisco ) was an American photo publisher and photographer . With the distribution of stereoscopic photos from California in particular , he had a major influence on the perception of the North American Pacific region in the 1860s and 1870s.
Life
Immediately after the California Gold Rush began , in the fall of 1848 Houseworth joined a group of sixty men who wanted to go gold digging on the West Coast, including his later partner George S. Lawrence . The men bought a sailing ship, left New York Harbor on April 1, 1849, and arrived in San Francisco on October 4, after nearly two hundred days of voyage. From there they sailed on to Stockton , where the group broke up. Houseworth and Lawrence stayed together, prospecting for gold in Calaveras County with some success through the summer of 1850 . They then continued this activity in Trinity County for a year . In mid-1851 they decided to give up gold digging.
It is not certain where Houseworth stayed in the following years. Possibly he worked as an employee of Lawrence, who first ran a jewelry and from 1852 an optician's shop in San Francisco, the latter allegedly the first of its kind on the American Pacific coast. In May 1855 the two entered into a partnership. In the years that followed, the sale of stereoscopic recordings (the technology had been known in San Francisco since 1853) and business cards became an important secondary line of business for Lawrence & Houseworth . In 1860 the company advertised that it had the sole distribution rights for images from the London Stereographic Company in California. The offer soon included photo series on England or the Middle East , Paris or Salt Lake City , as well as nature photos from North America in general and California in particular. Photos of the civil war were also part of the offer.
In 1863 Lawrence & Houseworth opened a branch in New York. After only doing sales up to now, they founded a photo publishing company, entering an industry in which Carleton Watkins had previously had a monopoly in San Francisco. Lawrence & Houseworth announced their willingness to "buy good stereoscopic negatives from anywhere of interest on the Pacific Coast." The most important photographer, who supplied them in the following years, was Charles Leander Weed , whose photographs contributed significantly to the company's business success. In 1864, Lawrence & Houseworth sponsored Weeds' trip to Yosemite Valley and Nevada , which yielded 900 stereoscopic photos. They were distributed under the title California and Nevada Views . In the same year, the company was able to advertise with the statement that it had the largest inventory of photos on the west coast.
Lawrence & Houseworth's recordings were the attraction of an exhibition at the Mechanics' Institute in San Francisco in 1865 and received awards there. In the same year the company published a catalog called Gems of California Scenery , which was mailed free of charge around the world upon request. The company's bestsellers included photos of the Yosemite Valley, giant sequoias , San Francisco, geysers , the scenery along the Central Pacific Railroad, and hydraulic mining , which had replaced gold diggers early on. During the 1860s, a rivalry developed between Watkins' company and Lawrence & Houseworth . Both companies took part in the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867 and each received the highest award that was given for photos.
In 1868, Lawrence retired from the business and his previous partner renamed the company Thomas Houseworth & Company . Houseworth intensified the competition in the stereoscopy market against Watkins and against Bradley & Rulofsen , another industry representative in San Francisco. In marketing in particular, he showed himself to be superior to rivals for a long time. He was also supplied by accomplished photographers, including George Fiske , Eadweard Muybridge , Charles A. Garthorne, John Randolph Leavenworth and Joseph Thwaites. The company's publishing house, headed by Houseworth's brother William, continued to publish catalogs as well as two illustrated books in 1871 and 1872, which also served to advertise their own offer. After several larger premises had already become necessary before, Thomas Houseworth & Company moved to Montgomery Street in 1872, where the vicinity of the Lick House hotel brought tourists to the company as customers. Houseworth also worked with carriage companies that took visitors to the Yosemite Valley or the giant sequoia trees in Calaveras County.
At that time, however, the star of Thomas Houseworth & Company began to decline. Houseworth commissioned Muybridge in 1872 to take pictures in the Yosemite Valley, but then had to experience that these were distributed by Bradley & Rulofsen . Houseworth then placed the poor print of a Muybridge photo in its shop window to draw attention to the allegedly poor quality of the competition's products. It was his reputation, however, that suffered when Muybridge sided with Bradley & Rulofsen in the dispute and compared Houseworth to a donkey in a newspaper article. Growing competition and falling prices forced Houseworth to drastically reduce production in 1874.
In order to secure his business base, Houseworth followed the example of Bradley & Rulofsen in 1874 and opened a photo studio for portraits, which he apparently managed himself from the start. It became a success and numerous recordings of local personalities were made, from singers and actors to visual artists and politicians. The Houseworth's Celebrities photo series ultimately comprised more than 3000 pictures. In 1875, Houseworth was elected President of the Photographic Art Society of the Pacific . The following year he won the bid to participate in the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia . It turned out to be his last business success.
A legal battle in 1876 made it public that Houseworth owed 32 creditors a total of over $ 15,000. The following year he had to vacate his Montgomery Street shop; he kept the photo studio on the same street for a few years. He now worked exclusively as a photographer, but with steadily decreasing success. After having to change the location of his studio several times a year, he finally gave up photography in 1894.
Houseworth worked as an accountant for several years before returning to work as an optician in 1904 at the age of 75. His election as president of the San Francisco Opticians' Association in 1908 shows that he soon regained a certain reputation. A journalist who interviewed him five years later described him as "the youngest old man in San Francisco".
Thomas Houseworth celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in October 1910 with his wife Emma, whom he married while on a trip to New York . He died in April 1915 at the age of 86.
In 1867 the Library of Congress had acquired more than 900 recordings from Lawrence & Houseworth ; they were among the first photographic works in the library's holdings. A large number of photos sold by Houseworth can now also be found in the New York Public Library's Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views , the California State Library, the George Eastman House , the Yosemite Museum, the Oakland Museum of California and the Museum of New Mexico.
gallery
A selection of other typical motifs from the stereoscopic series by Lawrence & Houseworth and Houseworth & Company :
Hydraulic Mining - Behind the Pipes, in the Kennebeck Claim, Nevada County
Steamship Sacramento Leaving Port
Cave Rock, Eastern Shore of Lake Tahoe
Witches Cauldron, Sonoma County ; Tourists at a geyser
Publications (selection)
- Gems of California Scenery. San Francisco 1965.
- Catalog of Photographic Views of Scenery on the Pacific Coast. And Views in China and Japan. For the Stereoscope, Portfolio, and Mammoth Size for Framing. San Francisco 1870.
- Tourists Guide to the Shortest Route to Yo-Semite Valley. San Francisco 1871.
- Stereoscopic Views of the Great Geyser Springs, the Most Wonderful in the World. Also Views of Calistoga and White Sulfur Spring. San Francisco 1872.
- Pacific Coast Scenery. San Francisco 1872.
literature
- Peter E. Palmquist, Thomas R. Kailbourn: Houseworth, Thomas (1828-1915). In: Dies .: Pioneer Photographers of the Far West. A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865. Stanford University Press, Stanford 2000, ISBN 0-80473-883-1 , pp. 304-307.
- Bob Zeller: Houseworth, Thomas (1828–1915). In: John Hannavy (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Taylor and Francis Group, New York 2008, ISBN 0-41597-235-3 , p. 716.
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the original: "good stereoscopic negatives of every place of interest on the Pacific Coast". Quoted from: Peter E. Palmquist, Thomas R. Kailbourn: Pioneer Photographers of the Far West. A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865. Stanford University Press, Stanford 2000, ISBN 0-80473-883-1 , p. 306.
- ↑ In the original: "youngest old man in San Francisco". Quoted from: Palmquist, Kailbourn: Pioneer Photographers of the Far West. P. 307.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Houseworth, Thomas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American photo publisher and photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 21, 1828 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New York City |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 13, 1915 |
| Place of death | San Francisco |