FOUND PHOTOS: 4x5 Glass Plates

These photographs belong to Elizabeth Avedon/All Rights Reserved

I found a package of turn of the century 4x5 glass plates in a junk store. I gave them as a present to a photographer many years ago, who gave me prints made from the plates. I just found these three.

NEW ORLEANS: Ancestors and Descendants

Antelope Priests Shaking Rattles, 1901
Hand-colored glass lantern slide by Sumner W. Matteson
Middle American Research Institute/Tulane University

George Hubbard Pepper slide from around 1899
Middle American Research Institute/Tulane University

Portrait of Hopi Maiden with Hair Whorls, 1901
Hand-colored glass lantern slide by Sumner W. Matteson
Middle American Research Institute/Tulane University

Leisure Time at George Pepper's Tent
Hand-colored glass lantern slide
Middle American Research Institute/Tulane University

"Ancestors and Descendants: Ancient Southwestern America at the Dawn of the 20th Century." Photography, Artifacts, and Archival Research from the George Hubbard Pepper Native American Archive.

The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) unveiled a little-known Native American archive this past week. Ancestors and Descendants presents a rare opportunity to see a collection that was put together over one hundred years ago by George H. Pepper, a museum ethnologist and early collector and scholar of Native American art. The exhibition, curated by Paul J. Tarver NOMA’s Curator of Pre-Columbian and Native American Art and co-curated by Cristin J. Nunez, includes 140 photographs and 150 objects from Pepper's personal collection. Pepper used textiles, pottery, baskets and other Pueblo and Navajo objects in his lectures. Many of these objects have never been seen by the general public since 1924. "Even in his lifetime, Pepper could only display a handful of objects with a few dozen images he projected through a magic lantern," said Tarver, "This is the first time the breadth of the archive has been researched and displayed."

"In the New Orleans show, An entire gallery is devoted to his relics of snake dances, the Hopis’ prayers for rain. The museum catalog ($24.95) quotes his unpublished eyewitness accounts, which turned up in the Tulane paperwork. Hopi tribesmen would collect a hundred snakes at a time, and then priests would emit a “weird droning” over the “writhing twisting forms of the reptiles,” Pepper wrote. Priests used their teeth to carry the snakes and waved around feathers to distract them. “Snake maidens” showered cornmeal on the reptiles, which were then released “in the sacred earth-mouths in the rock,” Pepper reported." (from NY Times, July 22, 2010)

The New Orleans Museum of Art
July 24-October 24, 2010

CAMILLE SILVY: 19th Century Modern Life

Adelina Patti as La Somnambula, 1880-1881.
(Patti was a highly acclaimed Opera diva of the time)
Photograph (c) National Portrait Gallery, London

Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies, Goddaughter of Queen Victoria, with her husband James Pinson Labulo Davies. September 15, 1862. Photograph (c) National Portrait Gallery, London

Camille Silvy with a Boy, August 1859
Photograph (c) National Portrait Gallery, London

View of the House, ca 1862
Photograph (c) National Portrait Gallery, London

Henry Ker Seymer's Dog, 1860
(HKS was a Member of Parliament for Dorset)
Photograph (c) National Portrait Gallery, London

John Robert Townshend, 1st Earl Sydney, 1860
Photograph (c) National Portrait Gallery, London

Honore de Balzac, 1862
Photograph (c) National Portrait Gallery, London

CAMILLE SILVY
Photographer of Modern Life: 1834-1910

"Camille Silvy was a pioneer of early photography and one of the greatest French photographers of the nineteenth century. Working under the patronage of Queen Victoria, Silvy photographed royalty, aristocrats and celebrities. He also portrayed uncelebrated people, the professional classes and country gentry, their wives, children and servants. The results offer a unique glimpse into nineteenth-century society through the eyes of one of photography's outstanding innovators.

This exhibition includes many remarkable images which have not been exhibited since the 1860s. The over 100 images, including a large number of carte de visites, focus on a ten-year creative burst from 1857-67 working in Algiers, rural France, Paris and London, and illustrates how Silvy pioneered many now familiar branches of the medium including theatre, fashion and street photography."

The National Portrait Gallery London
July 15-Oct 24, 2010

LOOKING BACK: Vintage Texas

Harris County Mounted Sheriff's Posse
Downtown Rodeo Parade, Main Street, Houston, Texas 1950's
Photographs (c) Elizabeth Paul /All Rights Reserved

Harris County Mounted Sheriff's Posse Practice Formations, 1950's
Photographs (c) Elizabeth Paul /All Rights Reserved

The Salt Grass Trail Riders Assembling
Memorial Drive Country Club grounds, Houston, Texas, 1953 80 riders.
Photographs (c) Elizabeth Paul /All Rights Reserved

The Salt Grass Trail Ride coincides every year with the opening of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. The Trail Ride was first established in 1952 with only 17 riders. By 1959 the ride consisted of more than 90 wagons and over 2000 riders on horseback and is still going strong today.

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, is the world's largest livestock exhibition as well as the richest regular-season PRCA rodeo event, with an average of 2 million attendees a year. This 20 day event is still kicked off by the Downtown Rodeo Parade and traditional Trail Rides arriving in Houston from all over Texas. The Rodeo has drawn music legends Elvis Presley, Roy Rogers, Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, and Lynyrd Skynyrd among so many other Performers.

Houston Press News

All Photographs (c) Elizabeth Paul /All Rights Reserved

BENNO GRAZIANI: La Dolce Vita

Fiat's Gianni Agnelli and guest Heidi von Salvisberg, Beaulieu 1967
Photograph (c) Benno Graziani /All Rights Reserved

Jackie et les Paparazzi's, Port d'Amalfi 1962
Photograph (c) Benno Graziani /All Rights Reserved

Benno Graziani photographing Jackie Kennedy and Marella Agnelli, Amalfi, Italy 1962 Photograph(c)Benno Graziani /All Rights Reserved

Jackie Kennedy Nageant, Ravello, Italy August 1962
Photograph (c) Benno Graziani /All Rights Reserved

Jacqueline Kennedy and sister Princess Lee Radziwill, Ravello, Italy 1962
Photograph (c) Benno Graziani /All Rights Reserved

'Match was our little club, there were no editors meetings because we hardly spent time apart from each other – and it worked! Some editions sold more than two million copies...The world's press envied us and tried in vain to imitate us

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BENNO GRAZIANI, photojournalist and former editor of Paris Match, exhibits his iconic black and white images of the legendary rich and famous on the French-Italian Riviera of the 1950's-1970's. Graziani was friends with some of the biggest celebrities of his era. He was the inspiration for Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

Having met as journalist's while Jacqueline Kennedy, then Jacqueline Bouvier, was working for the Washington Times Herald in the 1950's, Graziani had the privilege of documenting the Kennedy lifestyle as seen in his book Private Collection (Editions Verlhac). His work has been exhibited in The Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2000; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 2001 and Galerie Photo12, Paris, 2007 and 2009.

NYC exhibition by appointment only through Nov 14. public_realations(at)olegcassini(dot)com galerie–photo12

Post thanks to Jean-Jacques Naudet, legendary editor,
author and champion of important image-makers

HALLOWEEN TREAT: Vintage Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix with Texas psychedelic group The Moving Sidewalks.
Center, Lead singer Billy Gibbons, pre-ZZ Top, Fort Worth, Texas, 1968

BILLY GIBBONS founded the '60's Texas psychedelic group The Moving Sidewalks. They came into prominence opening for The Jimi Hendrix Experience during Hendrix's first American tour. Billy was still in high school when Hendrix, one of the greatest electric guitarist in rock history, named Gibbons his favorite guitar player on "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson". Billy went on to ZZ Top fame (Sharp Dressed Man, Legs). Photographer unknown. l to r: Tom Moore, Jimi Hendrix, Don Summers, Billy Gibbons (pre-ZZ Top), Dan Mitchell. Happy Halloween!