Feb 07, 2008 - Sale 2135

Sale 2135 - Lot 42

Price Realized: $ 10,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 9,000 - $ 12,000
WHITE, JAMES GILBERT (active 1890s)
Album entitled "Niagara Falls-Buffalo Transmission," with 34 remarkable photographs depicting the transmission of electricity from Niagara's mighty Falls to the suburbs of Buffalo, a 26-mile journey. Platinum prints, 5 3/4x7 3/4 inches (14.6x19.6 cm.), sheet size 9 1/2x12 inches (24.1x30.4 cm.). Oblong folio, embossed pictorial calf, front cover detached; contents crisp and clean. white's signature and inscription appear, in ink, on the flyleaf. 1897
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Additional Details

originally in the collection of j. g. white, whose signature and notations to his brother "mr. j. b. white, brooklyn, n.y., may 1897," appear on the front flyleaf.

John Gilbert White (born 1861) received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1885 and went on to found the engineering and contracting firm J. G. White & Co. (A prominent alumnus, a position honoring his scientific and technical achievements, The J. G. White Professor of Physics, exists today. ) In 1887 White joined the Western Engineering Company, which was later sold to the Edison-United Manufacturing Company (and was renamed the Edison-General Electric Company), directing its electrical railway installation in the U. S. Soon after, he resigned to develop an engineering business of his own.


While the pictures provide a visual narrative of how long-distance electrical transmission was accomplished, the album is more than an historical artifact, it is also an aesthetic object. Each platinum print is beautifully crafted, artfully composed, and content rich, close-ups of generators and transformers foreshadow the work of Neue Sachlichkeit photographers and images of the rapids reflect early Pictorialist concerns. The notion that a brilliant engineer would take it upon himself to create these remarkable photographs underscores the evolving 19th-century relationship between photography and science.


JPGs are available upon request.