Beschreibung:

7 albumen photographs of art and architecture. 4 loose, 1 picture postcard, 2 mounted. Captioned and attributed in negatives. Sizes vary. Giorgio Sommer was born in Germany, and became one of Europe’s most important and prolific photographers of the 19th century. Active from 1857 to 1888, he primarily produced images of archeological ruins, landscapes, art objects, and portraits. Sommer opened his first photography studio in Switzerland, where he made relief images of mountains for the Swiss government. In 1856 moved his business to Naples and became one of the largest photography concerns in Italy. Sommer’s catalog included images from the Vatican Museum, the National Archeological Museum at Naples, the Roman ruins at Pompeii, as well as street and architectural scenes of Naples, Florence, Rome, Capri and Sicily. Sommer exhibited extensively and earned numerous honors and prizes (London 1862, Paris 1867, Vienna 1873, Nuremberg 1885). At one time, Sommer was appointed official photographer to King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. Sommer was involved in every aspect of the photography business. He published his own images that he sold in his studios and to customers across Europe. In later years, he photographed custom images for book illustrations, as well as printing his own albums and postcards. Sommer worked in all the popular formats of his day: carte de visite, stereoview, and large albumen prints (approximately 8x10) which were sold individually and in bound albums.