Athens and Constantinople -- 72 Large Format Photos -- Wide Variety, Good Tone

Leather bound album with 72 large format albumen photographs mounted dos-a-dos on tab-mounted card leaves; leaves measure 10.5 x 14 inches (268 X 322 mm), images all measure approximately 8 x 10 inches (200 x 250 mm); album cover detached, back strip perished; cards are a little wavy as is often the case with albumen photos; images are all clear, with good tone. Also included is a typescript list of the photos with brief descriptions by the collector, who purchased them on tour, May and June 1890.

The first twenty-four photos are from Greece, all taken in Athens with the exception of a view of the port of Piraeus and two of Greeks in native dress. A few are signed "Rhomaides" and a few others appear to have the small Rhomaides credit scratched from the plate. The Benaki Musuem and the historical collections of the National Bank of Greece identify ten of the photos as the work of Constantine and Aristotle Romaidis (Rhomaides), probably the most prolific Greek photographers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; three other photos have either the Rhomaides name or its ghost.

The remaining forty-eight are scenes in Constantinople (Istanbul) and the neighboring shores of the Bosporus. All but seven are signed as the work of Pascal Sebah (1823-1886) or that of his successor Policarpe Joaillier (1848-1904), working as Sebah and Joaillier.