1310
ranks of popular photographers. Thus, when Alfred
Stieglitz formed the Photo-Secession in 1902, the insti-
tutionalization of fi ne art photography (and pictorialism)
in the U.S. was so advanced that the issue was no longer
to “elevate” photography, but rather to strip it of both its
professional and amateurish connotations, which over
half a century had jointly and consistently amounted to
a code of photographic correctness.
François Brunet
See also: Southworth, Albert Sands, and Josiah
Johnson Hawes; Daguerreotype; Daguerre, Louis-
Jacques-Mandé; Brady, Mathew B.; Cutting, James
Ambrose; Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry
of All Nations, Crystal Palace, Hyde Park (1851);
Snelling, Henry Hunt; Whipple, John Adams; Kodak;
and Pictorialism.
Further Reading
Greenough, Sarah, “‘Of Charming Glens, Graceful Glades, and
Frowning Cliffs’: The Economic Incentives, Social Induce-
ments, and Aesthetic Issues of American Pictorial Photog-
raphy, 1880–1902.” In Photography in Nineteenth-century
America, edited by Martha A. Sandweiss, 259–281.
Rinhart, Floyd, and Marion Rinhart, The American Daguerreo-
type, Athens (Ga.): University of Georgia Press, 1981.
Sandweiss Martha A. (ed.), Photography in Nineteenth-century
America, Fort Worth and New York: Amon Carter Museum,
Harry N. Abrams, 1991.
Southworth, Albert Sands, “The Early History of Photography
in the United States” (1871), repr. in Beaumont Newhall,
Photography: Essays and Images, 37–43, New York: The
Museum of Modern Art, 1980..
Taft, Robert, Photography and the American Scene: A Social
History 1839–1889 (1938), repr. New York: Dover, 1964.
Welling, William, Photography in America, The Formative Years
1839–1900 (1978), Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1987.
SOMMER, GIORGIO (1834–1914)
Italian photographer
Giorgio Sommer was born at Frankfurt am Main on
the 2nd of September 1834. His parents were Georg
and Anna Margaretha Gauff. His father had been the
proprietor of a famous hostelry since 1826 and was
able to give his growing family a certain measure of
comfort. Later, however, he lost everything because of
gambling and was forced to put his eldest sons to work
to support the family. Thus Giorgio Sommer, the ninth
of a very large family, served his apprenticeship in the
fi rm of Andreas and Sons in Frankfurt until 1853. Im-
mediately afterwards he started working professionally
as a photographer.
In 1857 he went to Italy, fi rst to Rome and then to
Naples, where he chose to take up permanent residence.
He went back to Rome in 1859 to keep up his acquain-
tance with his fellow-countryman Edmondo Behles
(1841–921), with whom he had formed an association
as soon as he had arrived in Rome. This acquaintance
lasted until about 1866. Behles was the most brilliant
and most qualifi ed cameraman in Sommer’s fi rm, and
even today it is diffi cult to tell his work from that of
Sommer’s, since the earliest photographs of both do
not indicate copyright.
Behles remained in Rome when Sommer set up in
Naples, and worked independently until 1878 in Via
Mario dei Fiori 28. Both Sommer and Behles in their
new premises sold photographs taken in Rome under
their own names while they were working together. This
made the attribution of the studio’s fi rst photographs
very diffi cult. The years spent in Rome were very
fruitful ones for Sommer however and it was there that
he put his experience to the test and he made contacts
that helped him to consolidate and enlarge his own
visual capacity. Rome was the meeting place of artists
and intellectuals from all over Europe, the goal of a
cultured elite of travellers, and the seat of academies
and cultural institutes of different countries. There gath-
ered some of the most eminent photographers, such as
James Anderson (1813–1877), Angelo (1793–1858) and
Giacomo (1819–1891) Luswergh, Robert MacPherson
(1811–1872), the calotypists who gathered around Fréd-
éric Flachéron (1813–1883) of the “Roman school of
photography.” Of these the most famous were Eugène
Constant and Giacomo Caneva, who were often to be
found at the famous “Caffè Greco” in Via Condotti. Also
in Rome at that time there were many other German
photographers, such as Wilhelm Osvald Ufer, Gustav
Reiger, Michael Mang and Alfredo Noack. In Rome,
Sommer and his fellow-countrymen pursued their inter-
est in archaeology and the ancient world, and often met
at the Deutscher Künstlerverein or in Palazzo Caffarelli.
They loved the beauties of the Italian countryside and
of Italian art, thanks to the return of Classicism and its
myths, which were much transformed and “revisited”
at a symbolic level. Such a passion for antiquity was
nourished at the time by the fi nds at the excavations
around Rome and Naples.
Of Sommer’s work at Rome there remain several
views and his complete set of photographs of the works
of art in the Vatican, especially of the ancient statues
of Braccio Nuovo, the Museo Chiaramonti, the Museo
Pio Clementino, the cabinet of Pope Pius the VIth, the
Rooms of the Muses, the Rotonda and the Candelabra.
When he was at Rome, his preferrence was for stereo-
scopic formats and carte de visite, which he abandoned
after the 1860s, and for “Medium” (21 by 27 cms) and
“Large” (28 by 38 cms) photographic apparatus.
At Naples there were many foreign photographers and
artists, such as George Conrad, Roberto Rive, Alphonse
Bernoud, and Wilhelm Weintraub. Here Sommer set up