Historical Portrait
Unidentified child, portrait photograph
Archive record
1 negative : nitrate ; 4 x 5 in. or smaller.
About this photograph
This portrait shows an unidentified child, photographed by Arnold Genthe in 1896. The negative is preserved in nitrate format.
Genthe worked in the soft-focus pictorialist style and maintained a studio in San Francisco from 1896 to 1911 before relocating to New York. This photograph dates from the year he opened his San Francisco studio.
The Library of Congress holds approximately 20,000 items from Genthe's unclaimed studio, acquired after his death in 1942. The collection includes several thousand studio portraits alongside images of San Francisco's Chinatown, dance photographs, and autochromes.
The child's name and the circumstances of the sitting are not recorded. Nitrate negatives, though widely used in this period, are chemically unstable and require careful preservation.
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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