Historical Portrait
Portrait photograph of an unidentified woman
Archive record
1 slide : lantern ; 4 x 5 in. or smaller.
About this photograph
This lantern slide preserves a portrait of a woman whose name was not recorded. Arnold Genthe made the photograph in 1896, working in the soft-focus pictorialist style that characterized his long career.
Genthe kept a studio in San Francisco from 1896 to 1911 before moving to New York. The Library of Congress acquired roughly 20,000 items from his unclaimed studio after his death in 1942.
The format is a lantern slide, a type of positive transparent image designed for projection. Measuring four by five inches or smaller, such slides were used for public lectures, educational programs, and entertainment during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The portrait remains one of thousands in Genthe's studio archive, many of which, like this one, document sitters whose identities have been lost.
Compiled from the catalogue record and reference notes on the formats and events involved. The archive record above is the primary source.
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