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his studio most strategically in the centre, although he
changed his address several times. Once his association
with Behles had come to an end, between 1873 and 1874
he established himself fi nally in a palazzo in the piazza
della Vittoria, where he stayed until he died on the 7th
of August 1914. At the end of the sixties his studio was
one of the foremost in Naples, which enabled him to
live in considerable ease.
Of the photographs he took while at Naples there
remain some extraordinary views of ancient ruins, of
the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, of the
beauties of nature and of monuments, as well as some
pictures of Neapolitan dress. Thus he continued to
produce the type of work he had experimented with at
Rome. He worked for commission, and free lanced at the
same time to increase his own individual collection.
In 1862 he abandoned portraiture and began look-
ing at the everyday life of the people of Naples, took
photographs of their costumes and of produced genre
scenes. From the numerous photographs of trades at
Naples which he produced in his studio from the end
of the sixties a fi ne cultural connection can be seen with
the tradition of engraving and the eighteenth century
Neapolitan tradition of the crib. However, he did not
portray the real miseries of man’s existence, but by re-
storing a degree of humanity gave somewhat picturesque
view of life and sold his photographs as souvenirs to
middle-class and aristocratic tourists who were looking
for traditional scenes of a Neapolitan popular character.
Indeed, there is no hint of the social confl icts that were
typical of the period. In the nineties Sommer began to
specialize in instant photography, using the new gela-
tine silver bromide process. These photographs, which
show ordinary people in an everyday context, have an
immediacy that reveals the changed priorities of the
photographer, and can be seen as the forerunners of
social reportage.
Perhaps at the commission of the great archaeologist
John Henry Parker he photographed ancient works of art,
in particular those at Pompeii and those in the Museo
Nazionale at Naples. His views of landscape, both in
Italy and in other European countries, are distinguished
by their descriptive clarity and precision of detail. Their
extremely high quality is due to the use of gold toning,
which gives the prints fi ne gradations of tone from red
and purple to violet. His great skill in composition is
shown by the fact that, through a slight deviation from
frontal and symmetrical shots, his photographs of
monuments and architecture are always dynamic and
never static.
His studio became very well-known also abroad,
thanks to clever distribution and advertising techniques
that gave him sales outlets at Vienna, Genoa, Venice,
Florence and Palermo. He also had prestigious com-
missions in the world of art publishing, such that for
the work by Domenico Benedetto Gravina published in
1859 Il Duomo di Monreale illustrato [Illustrations of
Monreale Cathedral]. His remarkable entrepreneurial
and organizational skills helped him to set up a strong
network of collaborators, and his versatility of charac-
ter and gifts enabled him to interpret successfully the
different roles of photographer, printer, publisher, and
distributor. Exploiting the growing taste for antiquities,
he also started producing objects of art in bronze, ter-
racotta, and marble, copying in particular originals of
Pompeii. He won prizes for this, in addition to prizes for
photography, at the international exhibitions at London
(1862), Paris (1867), Vienna (1873), and Nuremberg
(1885). In 1865, together with Behles, he received a
signal honour from Vittorio Emanuele II, and from then
on his style and title was that of Photographer of His
Majesty the King of Italy.
He made many journeys abroad, especially to Swit-
zerland, where, thanks to his reputation, he gained from
1880 to 1890 a commission from the Swiss government
to photograph the mountains in connection with the ex-
tension of the railway network. Thus his last years were
ones of fl ourishing activity, affl uence, and fame also
beyond the Alps. However, the extraordinary quality of
his photographs mark him out as the photographer who
above all defi nitively captured the life, the monuments,
the natural and artistic beauties of Naples, Pompeii,
Herculaneum, Amalfi , and all the region of Campania,
rich in history, art, and tradition.
Sommer’s fi rm was offi cially wound up in 1916, two
years after his death. The plates were given by a nephew
to Bruno La Barbera and were then destroyed.
Today there are many of Sommer’s photographs in
public and private collections, both in Italy and else-
where.
Silvia PaoliBiography
Giorgio Sommer was born at Frankfurt am Main on the
2nd of September 1834. His parents were Georg and
Anna Margaretha Gauff. He was the ninth of a large
family, and had to earn his own living from an early age
because of economic diffi culties. He was apprenticed
to the photographic studio of Andreas and Sons and at
the end of his apprenticeship he decided to work pro-
fessionally. He began to work in Italy in 1857, at fi rst
in partnership with Edmund Behles, and from 1866
on his own. His fi rst studio was in Rome, but almost
immediately he decided to settle in Naples, where he
changed his address several times (Strada di Chiaia
168, Via Monte di Dio 4 and 8, Piazza della Vittoria).
He travelled widely in Italy and abroad, either for his
own private work or on commission. His main interests
were photographing views of archaeological sites and