Picture This! is an occasional series featuring (hopefully) interesting and enlightening photographs from the Homestead Museum Collection.
Stereoview, "No. 97. Pico House, Los Angeles, Cal." Circa 1880. Alexander C. Varela, republished by Isaiah W. Taber. From the Homestead Museum Collection.
This view of the Pico House hotel is from a stereoscopic photograph (identical dual images pasted onto a paper mount that show a single composite in 3-D when viewed through a stereopticon) published by Isaiah W. Taber of San Francisco, probably around 1880. It was taken from the south side of the historic Los Angeles Plaza on Main Street.
Because Taber’s name appears on the orange mount, one might guess that he was the photographer. In this case, however, that would be a mistaken assumption. The caption on the bottom right corner of the photograph indicates that the original photographer was Alexander C. Varela, who worked briefly in Los Angeles during the late-1870s (and whose work has previously been discussed on this blog—see the earlier entry). The distinctive script on the caption, as opposed to type-set block letters, is identifiable to Varela.
Detail, stereoview caption. From the Homestead Museum Collection.
Varela’s Los Angeles stereoviews, self-published in the late-1870s, all have the distinctive captioning style found in this Taber-published view of the Pico House. Varela relocated to San José and practiced photography there in 1880 before moving back to the east coast. Meanwhile, Taber bought out the inventory of Carleton Watkins, famed photographer of Yosemite National Park as well as the Los Angeles region. So, an obvious conclusion is that Varela may have sold his negatives and other material to Taber for financial reasons, as Watkins did. The work of a full-time professional photographer was difficult and uncertain, particularly with competition, a fluctuating economy, and the overhead of maintaining equipment and a studio. It seems likely that Varela decided to leave the profession to return to steady, predictable work as a federal employee, and he found a ready buyer in Taber.
This was for good reason, as Varela took excellent photographs that were well-composed, clear, and balanced in tone and content. (This example happens to be a little faded and soiled and doesn’t represent his work as well as, for example, the earlier example on this blog.) Although it would have been more fair for Taber to have cited Varela as the original photographer, it was almost certainly accepted at the time that Taber had the right to reissue the images under his own name as the purchaser and owner of the negatives. Taber is believed to have republished hundreds of images in this manner, including those from Watkins’s inventory.
Without proper attribution, it would be extremely difficult to identify the original photographer of a republished image. In this particular case, it could be said that it is all in the writing.
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