1484
California at an unknown date. His photographic career
began in 1854 as a daguerreotypist, and he later formed
a partnership with Robert Vance between 1858–1859.
Weed rose to prominence after his June 1859 trip
to Yosemite Valley and publication of some of his
photographs as engravings. Carleton Eugene Watkins
was inspired by these images to create his own large
prints of Yosemite. Both Weed and Watkins exhibited
their prize-winning “mammoth-plate” prints at the
1867 Paris International Exposition. A remarkable
aspect of Weed’s career were travels to Hong Kong,
China and Honolulu where he established four studios
between 1860 and 1866, returning to California in
1861 before going back to Hong Kong via Honolulu
in 1865. From 1864 to 1870 Weed associated himself
with publisher Lawrence & Houseworth (later Thomas
Houseworth & Co.), then operated his own studio or
worked for other photographers and photo publishers
in the 1870s. Married to Sarah P. Weed (born March
30, 1833) in the mid-1870s, they resided in Oakland,
California, until his death on August 31, 1903. Weed’s
photographs survive only as prints in various formats,
principally stereographs and albumen prints, with the
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley,
and the New York Public Library, holding signifi cant
examples, including the 1864 Yosemite Valley mam-
moth-plate prints.
David Mattison
WEGENER, OTTO (1849–1922)
Otto Wegener was born in Helsingborg, Sweden, and
moved to Paris, France, 1867. Nothing is known about
his introduction to photography; all we know is that
he opened his magnifi cient studio at the fashionable
address 3, Place de la Madeleine in 1883, success-
fully competing with Nadar and Reutlinger for the
elite audience.
He had then already simplifi ed his name to Otto, a
signature that gleamed in gold above the sixth fl oor on
the building. He maintained contacts with the Swedish
colony of artists and the writer August Strindberg dined
in his house 1894.
A Swedish journalist wrote an appendix to a book
about Paris and described him as the leading photog-
rapher in the capital, representing France at the Paris
World Exhibition in 1900. Only one photographer
made more money than Otto, and still did not have his
aristocratic customers, nor his artistic merits. Visitors
lined up outside his gallery on Rue Royale—where
one of his apprentices, Edward Steichen, was given
an exhibition. Otto even represented France in in-
ternational photo exhibitions in Dresden 1908 and
Leipzig 1914.
That year, 1914, the leading Swedish pictorialist
Henry B. Goodwin visited him and wrote a piece in a
monthly photo journal describing his four storey com-
bination of studios, parlours, dark-rooms and living
quarters, all fi lled with antiques, paintings and the art
noveau furniture he loved to design.
He had studied the new reproduction methods as
oil transfers and gum prints with Robert Demachy
and Constant Puyo, and he still photographed with an
Eidoscope soft focus lens.
Despite this success, he is usually overlooked in ma-
jor works on the history of photography, and only few
of his negatives can be traced in French archives.
Pär RittselWEHNERT-BECKMANN, BERTHA
(1815–1901)
Bertha Beckmann was born January 15, 1815, in Cott-
bus; there is no knowledge about any training until
she met the “mechanicus,” Eduard Wehnert in 1839 at
Dresden. He opened a photographic studio in Leipzig
in 1842 which she operated until 1843 in Dresden. She
married Eduard Wehnert in 1845 and carried on his busi-
ness after his sudden death in 1847 under the name of
Wehnert-Beckmann. From 1849 to 1851, Bertha Beck-
mann owned a studio in New York City, and around 1866
there seemed to have existed a branch of her businesses
in Vienna. Bertha Wehnert-Beckmann seemed to be
the female entrepreneur par excellence in 19th century
photography, any business she founded had prospered
within a year or two, mostly concentrating on hitherto
unusual aspects of portraiture like children photography.
Basically, her work was of very good quality but in no
way different from typical work, with the exception that
she had a sensitive approach to human beings. She never
seemed to have aimed at any fate but fulfi lling the needs
of her clients; her historical importance lies in the fact
that she successfully practised photography in a male
world for nearly half a century. She practised photogra-
phy until 1883, with the assistance of her brother Rudolf
Julius Arnold Beckmann. Bertha Beckmann died in
Leipzig on Dec.6, 1901.
Rolf SachsseWELFORD, WALTER D. (d. 1919)
Welford was born in Newcastle, and began his career as
a journalist for the newly established sport of cycling.
He founded and edited Cycling (1878–82), and issued a
pioneer annual Wheel man’s Yearbook in 1881. In 1884,
persistent ill health forced his move to London, where
he quickly immersed himself in photography, starting
as sub- editor on Photography, in the late 1880s.
In rapid succession, Welford founded and edited the
Photographic Review of Reviews, later revamped as