986
was among London’s fi rst portrait studios to feature
electric lighting.
Negretti & Zambra became best known as publish-
ers of stereoscopic views. By the 1860s their catalogue
included interiors of the Crystal Palace; genre scenes;
views of Europe, America, and India; and Claude-Marie
Ferrier’s instantaneous transparencies on glass. The
landmark series depicting the Near and Far East were
eagerly anticipated and exceptionally well reviewed.
The fi rst of these, Stereoscopic Views in the Holy Land,
Egypt, Nubia, &c., with negatives by Francis Frith,
appeared in 1858; followed by Stereoscopic Views in
China in 1859 and Scenes and Scenery in Java in 1861,
photographed by P. Rossier and Walter Bentley Wood-
bury, respectively. Contrary to contemporary reports,
Negretti & Zambra did not typically commission and
fi nance a photographer to undertake an expedition, but
would purchase the negatives and assume all costs of
production and distribution. These could be consider-
able, as in the case of the views of Japan, which featured
high-quality mounting and packaging in a Japanese
style, as well as special stereoscopes made to the fi rm’s
order in Japan and bearing Japanese-style decorations.
Sales were very brisk, although undercut by poor-quality
pirated versions.
Negretti & Zambra were responsible for innovations
in several other areas of photography. In 1855 they sold
packets of albumen glass plates guaranteed for one
month in the attempt to popularize this process (though
ultimately albumen-on-glass did not compete with col-
lodion wet plates); in 1858 they marketed an advanced
oxy-hydrogen (or limelight) magic lantern capable of
magnifying a projected image to 40 feet in diameter; and
in 1868 they sold an early bellows-style pocket camera
designed by C.D. Smith. The fi rm were also pioneers in
the fi eld of photographically illustrated books and the
reproduction of works of art: they produced the prints,
reduced from 3-foot-square negatives, were tipped into
Richard Henry Smith’s Expositions of the Cartoons of
Raphael (London: J. Nisbet, 1860) and Expositions of
Great Pictures (London: J. Nisbet, 1863). Negretti &
Zambra won a prize at the International Exhibition of
1862 for the series of 100 stereographs Frith made dur-
ing a second trip to the Holy Land, published as Egypt,
Nubia, and Ethiophia (1862), with a text by Joseph
Bonomi and Samuel Sharpe, and sold with a folding
stereoscope for 3 guineas. A photographic venture of
Negretti’s that seems not to have a commercial motiva-
tion was his fl ight in a balloon to take aerial photographs,
accomplished on 28 May 1863, fi ve years after Nadar’s
famous fl ight ascent in France.
A charismatic and energetic man, Negretti enjoyed a
public profi le, especially among the Italian community.
He hosted Garibaldi when he visited London in 1854
and ten years later served as chief of the reception
committee that greeted the now-famous Italian patriot.
In 1864 Negretti intervened in a high-profi le murder
investigation, saving the innocent Serafi no Pelissoni
from the gallows by proving that Pelissoni’s cousin
Gregorio Mogni was in fact guilty of the crime. For this
he received a knighthood from King Victor Emmanuel.
In his last years Negretti spent time in Como, but he
died at his Cricklewood home on 29 September 1879.
Zambra survived him by eighteen years, dying at his
home in Hampstead on 23 December 1897.
Negretti & Zambra’s success was such that in 1861
the Art Journal credited them with completing “what
we might entitle a stereographic cordon in and about
London.” But because the fi rm did not specialize in
subsequent decades, by 1879 it as not, as the British
Journal of Photography noted, quite as well known as it
had been. The last commercial branch closed in 1899.
Britt Salvesen
See also: Books illustrated with photographs: 1850s
and 1860s; Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry
of All Nations, Crystal Palace, Hyde Park (1851);
Delamotte, Philip Henry; Frith, Francis; Rossier,
Pierre; and Woodbury, Walter Bentley.
Further Reading
Bonomi, Joseph, and Samuel Sharpe, Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia,
illustrated with photographs by Francis Frith, London: Smith,
Elder and Co., 1862.
Haaften, Julia Van, “Francis Frith and Negretti & Zambra,” His-
tory of Photography 4, 1 (January 1980): 35–37.
Negretti & Zambra, Egypt and Nubia: Descriptive Catalogue
of One Hundred Stereoscopic Views of Pyramids, the Nile,
Karnack, Thebes, Aboo-Simbel and All the Most Interesting
Objects of Egypt and Nubia, London: Negretti & Zambra,
1858.
Negretti & Zambra, An Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of
Optical, Mathematical, Philosophical, Photographic and
Standard Meteorological Instruments, Manufactured and Sold
by Negretti & Zambra, London, Negretti & Zambra, 1859.
Negretti, P. A., “Henry Negretti—Gentleman and Photographic
Pioneer,” Photographic Collector 5/1 (1984), 96–105.
“The Late Mr. Henry Negretti,” British Journal of Photography
26, 1013 (3 October 1879): .472.
NEKHOROSHEV, N. (active 1870S)
N. Nekhoroshev worked in Tashkent. He was the author
of The Turkistan Album published in 1871–72 in six
copies and divided into three parts: The Ethnographic
Album, The Crafts Album, and The Historical Album.
One of these copies made its way to the Emperor Al-
exander II.
The Ethnographic Album consisted of two volumes
and included the following types of photographs: na-
tional types of the Turkistan Territory, views of towns
and villages, images of clothing, utensils, and musical
instruments.
NEGRETTI AND ZAMBRA
