Group of figures outdoors, Universal Photo Art Co.

The objectphotographed as held, uncropped

Catalogue description

A long line of people is drawn up across the middle ground on open sloping ground, with a figure in light clothing standing nearer the camera at the left and vegetation along the lower edge of the frame. The group is arranged for the photograph.

The card carries the publisher’s imprint and the agent-sales line but no caption identifying the subject in the source photograph, so what is depicted cannot be stated from the object as catalogued. It is recorded here with that gap explicit.

The imprint itself dates and places the object: C. H. Graves ran the Universal Photo Art Co. of Philadelphia around the turn of the century, selling stereographs door to door through a network of commissioned agents — the industrialised end of the trade that began with makers like Watkins and Hart.

Transcriptiontext on the object, as printed

C. H. GRAVES, PUBLISHER AND GEN’L MANAGER
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.
SOLD ONLY BY AGENTS OF
THE UNIVERSAL PHOTO ART CO.

Historical context

By 1900 the stereograph business was dominated by a handful of large firms — Underwood & Underwood, Keystone View Company, and Universal Photo Art among them — selling boxed sets through travelling agents rather than over the counter.

What is not known

• No caption identifying the subject was legible in the source photograph; the verso was not photographed and may carry one.
• Whether this card belongs to the collection’s Chinese American subject matter has not been established from the object and should be confirmed.
• Date inferred from the Universal Photo Art Co. imprint.