#PA21
Ca. 1905
Seven loose gelatin silver photos ca. 11,5x16 cm (4 ½ x 6 ½ in) mounted on period card ca. 21x27 cm (8 ¼ x 10 ½ in). All photos with period pencil or ink captions in French on recto or verso of the mounts; all but one photo also with period ink numbers on the mounts. A couple of photos mildly faded, several mounts slightly soiled, with creases or small tears, one mount with a loss of the upper right corner not affecting the image, but overall a very good collection of interesting photos.
Interesting collection of lively vernacular photos of the town of Vathy on the Greek Island of Samos, taken by a French traveller in 1905. The island, located in the eastern Aegean Sea just one mile off the coast of western Turkey, was under the administration of the Ottoman Empire from 1835 to 1912. The photos, focusing on scenes of everyday life, show Vathy’s narrow stone-paved streets, one and two-storey houses with street lamps, local people and children, and a European woman (most likely, one of the travellers) posing in front of the camera. One photo shows a sailboat in the Vathy harbour. Overall a nice photo collection showing the everyday life of Vathy in the last years of the Ottoman Empire.
