A gentleman's fancy

[Albumen photograph collage]. Photograph album.

€ 4,500.00

A playful photograph album and scrapbook, perhaps a bit transgressive, from the lively fin du siècle. A pasted-in ticket to the Tuileries and a menu from the Grand Hotel de Rome in Berlin perhaps place the creator(s) on a trip through Europe, or they were may simply have been avid collectors of hotel cards and menus. The majority of the album, however, is dedicated to an enjoyment of pastiche and early photography: cut-out figures from albumen photographs have had their original faces neatly clipped off, and a new head (also carefully cut out from an albumen photograph) pasted on top. For maximum effect, most figures include a mustached masculine head, paired with a body featuring a fine feminine hoop skirt. Or, vice versa, a grim-faced woman will appear dressed as a 19th century dandy. Four photographs have not been altered, and feature women in semi-military dress, and a flash of some garters.