With Christmas just three weeks away I thought we should have a picture evocative of that event. This is a typical mid-eastern couple posing with a donkey in a Joseph and Mary on their way to Bethlehem type of scene. The background has been entirely blacked out — I suspect the photographer intended (and maybe did in other prints) add a background suitable to the scene. In the U.S. photographers used something called ‘Bendann Backgrounds’ to add background scenes to studio images, I’m sure this photographer had something similar, either purchased or that he made himself. To print the background a mask was cut out of black paper in the shape of the subject — both parts of the paper were used in turn, the one shaped like the subject blocked that area while the background was printed, then the outline part was used to block the background while the subject was printed.

This public domain image was made by Tancrède R Dumas (1830-1905) of Beirut, Lebanon. We profiled Dumas on our post about the Snake Charmer. He seems to have opened his Beirut studio in 1866, so this image dates from between 1866 and about 1890. The scene is so generic there are no clues to the date directly from the subject, we have to rely on the known dates of operation for the photographer, and the knowledge that the photograph is an Albumen print.

Here is a dramatic image of an Eskimo man, his face framed by the fur of his parka. A studio portrait, the picture alone gives no clues to the date it was taken. This is the traditional style of winter clothing for Eskimos, used from prehistoric times to the present. There is no background, just a cloudy amorphous blotchiness, that has been used in photography from the 1860s to present.

As it happens, though, this image was published, and the copyright date of the publication was 1926, so it was probably taken that year or within a year or two previously. The image comes from the Cann Studio in Fairbanks, Alaska. That studio was open from the 1920s through at least 1939, and probably later. It was owned by Charles F Cann, a native of Estonia, born 15 May 1885, he died in Fairbanks 14 April 1970.