Photography & Ephemera

EASTERLY, Thomas Martin, photographer (1809–1882). –– BOEHL, Emil, photographer (1839–1919). Views of Early St. Louis [cover title]. Circa 1890. Oblong folio (14 ½ x 18”). 35 large format sepia toned photographs by Boehl and Easterly, each mounted on heavy stock. Bound in original full straight–grain crimson morocco lettered in gilt (wear to joints and spine with some separation and loss, covers also with some wear, corners rubbed). Includes several Easterly photographs from daguerreotypes as seen in Dolores A. Kilgo’s Likeness and Landscape: Thomas M. Easterly and the Art of the Daguerreotype (1994) with numerous other variants of Easterly’s photographs including an almost exact view of Kilgo’s cover image (Chateau Pond 1850). Boehl was a St. Louis commercial photographer that primarily focused on capturing St. Louis streets, buildings, and locales, as well as producing copies of Easterly’s daguerreotypes and distributing them as his own. Easterly is considered one of the most prominent daguerreotypists of the Midwest whose “likeness and landscapes recall a time when each photographic image was unique, deliberate, and cherished”. Kilgo, Likeness and Landscape: Thomas M. Easterly and the Art of the Daguerreotype pp. 160–209.