Bas-relief Platinotype of Oberlin Trustee
Title/Subject: Amzi Lorenzo Barber (American, 1843-1909)
Creator: Taber Bas-Relief Photographic Syndicate (San Francisco)
Date: ca. 1900
Type: platinum print
Format: 9 1/2" x 9 1/2" (image); 12 3/8" x 12 3/8" (mount)
Collection: Paintings, Prints, Drawings and other Framed Items (RG 40)
This rare photographic object is three-dimensional, the photograph on paper having been pressed upon a mold to create a bas-relief. The print, made from a glass negative, is a platinotype, finished with a solution of platinum. The photographic image is embedded in the fibers of the paper, not in an emulsion layer above it. Taber's bas-relief print is mounted under a raised, square board with a circular opening.Amzi L. Barber, the subject of this portrait, was an 1867 graduate of Oberlin College and later a trustee from 1889 until his death in 1909. From 1868 to 1871 he was principal of the normal and preparatory department of Howard University. He received the degree of A.M. from Oberlin in 1870, and in 1871 he was made professor of natural philosophy at Howard, but resigned in 1873. He graduated with the LL.B. from Columbia University in 1877. In 1878 he began the manufacture of asphalt pavement, and founded the Barber Asphalt Paving Company, which paved Washington, D.C.'s thoroughfares. He was actively engaged in the business until his illness and death in 1909.
The process for "embossed photographs" was invented and patented by Freeman A. Taber in 1896. He and his brother, Isaiah West Taber, operated a studio in Syracuse, New York from 1857 to 1864, after which Isaiah Taber moved to San Francisco. He opened his own studio there in 1871, and took over the studio of the superb landscape photographer Carleton E. Watkins in 1876. He received a commission to photograph Queen Victoria's Jubilee pageant and to make a portrait of King Edward the VII in 1897. Unfortunately Isaiah Taber's career ended when the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed his entire collection of glass plates, portraits on glass, and view negatives including those by Watkins. There are few remaining bas-relief photographs. The back of the Barber portrait is stamped with Taber's company name, with offices in London and Paris. Thus the portrait would have been made between about 1897 and the earthquake in 1906.
The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley holds the small Isaiah West Taber Family Photographs collection, which includes Taber's own self-portrait in bas-relief. It can be viewed from the Online Archive of California, which also lists Taber photographs in other collections in California.
Sources
Records of Graduates and Former Students (RG 28).
Records of Presidents, Faculty, Trustees and Others (RG 28).
Isaiah West Taber Family Photographs, ca. 1880-1895, The Bancroft Library, Online Archive of California (accessed 11/7/2020).
Patent number 556591, Method of Producing Embossed Photographs, by Freeman A. Taber, March 1896 (Google Patent Search, accessed 4/29/2009).
"Platinotype," National Portrait Gallery website (accessed 11/7/2020).
Related Collections
Archives Museum Collection (digital collection)