Underwood & Underwood
Underwood & Underwood was an American company for the manufacture and sale of stereoscopes and other photographic images . With the emergence of reportage photography at the end of the 19th century , Underwood & Underwood advanced to become one of the first worldwide news photo agencies with offices in London , New York and Toronto .
history
The company was founded in 1881 in Ottawa , Kansas , by the brothers Elmer Underwood (* 1859 in Fulton County , Illinois , † 1947 in Saint Petersburg , Florida ) and Bert Elias Underwood (* 1862 in Oxford, Illinois; † 1943 in Tucson , Arizona ) was founded. In 1887 the flourishing company moved to New York.
Bert Underwood began taking photos himself around 1890 and expanded the company's spectrum to include photo documentation . From 1897 Underwood & Underwood employed a staff of freelance and permanent photographers, in the same year the company took over the stereoscopy manufacturers Charles Bierstadt, JF Jarvis and Littleton View Company. The war photographers of Underwood & Underwood documented Meanwhile, almost all the major flashpoints of that time: the Turkish-Greek war of 1897 (photographed by Bert Underwood on the Greek front), the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Boer War from 1899 to 1902 and Russo-Japanese War of 1904/1905.
At the turn of the century in 1900 the company was producing around 25,000 stereo photo cards a day and was the world's largest supplier at the time, producing a total of 10 million cards and 30,000 viewing devices a year. The photo cards were offered in thematically sorted boxes, most of which contained illustrative material for school purposes, religious subjects and travel photographs of popular tourist destinations. Corresponding titles were, for example, Palestine Through the Stereoscope or Traveling in the Holy Land Through the Stereoscope . In the United States, stereoscopy almost became a mass movement.
Educational stereoscopies
The series of images were often arranged as ongoing narratives that were intended to enlighten the viewer, especially children, in a haunting manner about the causes and effects of "sinful behavior" such as alcoholism, sexual temptation, adultery or theft. This was done through sometimes surprisingly drastic depictions, such as gloomy scenarios with drunk children who lived in shabby apartments. Albert E. Osborne, President of Underwood & Underwood, advertised in a manual published by the company that "the stereoscope introduces the viewer to a wide range of different environments and also shows the shameful conditions that plague modern society." In addition to the educational aspect, Osborne also dealt with the feelings that images can create in the viewer and tried to illustrate this with diagrams.
Photo reporting and war photography
From 1910, Underwood & Underwood increasingly relied on current photographic reporting, while the production of stereoscopic images was reduced with the start of the First World War . Elmer Underwood was now head of the London office. Increasingly acting as a news picture agency, the Underwoods served the most important American and European newspapers and magazines with press photos. A well-known, often reprinted photo by the agency shows the arrest of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst on May 22, 1914 in front of Buckingham Palace in London. In 1915 Underwood & Underwood released the first “European War Boxset” with stereo photographs of the war. At the end of the war, however, the European market proved to be unprofitable and the demand for stereo photography declined. In the USA, the preference for three-dimensional images lasted a little longer, after all, postcards finally supplanted stereoscopy. In the 1920s, Underwood & Underwood sold most of the rights of their stereo copies (estimated one million subjects) to the Keystone View Company in Meadville , Pennsylvania , which thus were market leaders. In the 1930s, Keystone marketed stereoscopy as a therapy for eliminating malocclusions and founded a "Stereophthalmic Department" for this purpose .
Aerial photography
In 1924 and 1925, the picture agency delivered the first controlled aerial photographs of the still young cities of Miami and Miami Beach . The approximately 400 photographs document the first construction boom in the emerging metropolises before the devastating hurricane in 1926 (Great Miami Hurricane).
resolution
In 1924 the illustrator and photographer Lejaren (John) Hiller (1880-1969) became Vice President of Underwood & Underwood. In 1925 the Underwood brothers withdrew from the business. As late as the late 1920s, Underwood & Underwood were among the largest commercial photo service providers in the United States, but with the onset of the Great Depression , interest in stereoscopy was lost. From 1931 the company, now under the management of the sons C. Thomas Underwood and E. Roy Underwood, was divided into four individual companies. In 1940 the company was dissolved.
Whereabouts
Overall, Underwood & Underwood brought about 30,000 to 40,000 titles of stereoscopic series on the market. The Underwood & Underwood photo archives were bought by the Bettmann Archives in 1972 (now Corbis ). There are also holdings in the collections of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and Trent University in Peterborough (Ontario) , Canada .
literature
- William Culp Darrah: World of Stereographs . Natl Stereoscopic Assn, 1977, ISBN 0-913116-04-1 (English)
- Greg Clingham: Questioning History: The Postmodern Turn to the Eighteenth Century . Bucknell University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8387-5383-3 , p. 131f (English, Google books )
- Pierre-Marc Richard: Life as a relief - the charm of stereoscopy in: New history of photography . Könemann, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-8290-1327-2 , pp. 175-183
Web links
- Underwood & Underwood - short history (English)
- The Great War in Stereoviews - Underwood & Underwood ( Memento from April 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Underwood and Underwood. Smithsonian American Art Museum , accessed March 13, 2010 .
- ^ The Great War in Stereoviews: Underwood & Underwood. Archived from the original on June 23, 2010 ; accessed on September 8, 2012 .
- ↑ Pierre-Marc Richard: Life as a relief - the charm of stereoscopy ; in: New History of Photography , p. 179
- ^ Albert E. Osborne: The Stereograph and The Stereoscope: With Special Maps and Books Forming A Travel System . Underwood and Underwood, New York 1909; Excerpt from JSTOR ; see. Greg Clingham: Questioning History: The Postmodern Turn to the Eighteenth Century , p. 131
- ^ Underwood & Underwood Stereographs. Trent University, accessed March 13, 2010 .
- ↑ Pierre-Marc Richard: Life as a relief - the charm of stereoscopy ; in: New History of Photography , p. 183
- ↑ See web link: The Great War in Stereoviews: Keystone View Company
- ^ PW Harlem: Aerial photographic interpretation of the historical changes in northern Biscayne Bay, Florida 1925-1976. (PDF) (No longer available online.) In: University of Miami Sea Grant Publication No. 40th 1979, archived from the original on July 19, 2011 ; accessed on March 13, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Elspeth H. Brown: The Corporate Eye. Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884-1929 . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8018-8970-7 , pp. 211ff
