The 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop has established itself as one of America's most important dealers and collectors of historical images over more than four decades. Founded by Stephan Loewentheil, who left his legal career to pursue a passion for books and photography, the shop has built collections of remarkable precision and historical significance. Today, his son Jacob has taken over the business, continuing the family tradition while bringing a fresh generational perspective to the collection of vintage photographs.
Under Jacob's leadership, the shop has created several major collections of historic photography, including works focusing on 19th century China, the Civil War period, and Western American photography. The latter collection specializes in photographic plates taken with the iconic Mammoth camera, the world's largest photographic apparatus of its time. This collection features works by the most prominent photographers of the American West: Carleton Watkins, Charles Leander Weed, Eadweard Muybridge, William Henry Jackson, and Edward Curtis.
A recurring theme throughout these images is Yosemite National Park, a true jewel of America's natural world and a founding symbol of the nation's identity. The Loewentheil collection includes some of the earliest photographs of Yosemite, dating from the 1850s to 1870s, as well as rare drawings by artist Thomas A. Ayres that first revealed the waterfalls of this magnificent valley to the public. Among the collection's treasures is a superb 1880s album featuring views by Carleton Watkins and Isaiah Taber, two major figures in mid-19th century California photography.
These photographers' images of waterfalls, giant sequoias in Mariposa Grove, and monumental rock formations reveal the full power of the park as both a place of contemplation and an emblem of American grandeur. Several large-format works by photographer Eadweard Muybridge demonstrate how Yosemite National Park inspired photographic vision and technique. Before becoming known for his work in stereoscopy, Muybridge had established himself as a major figure among San Francisco's landscape photographers.
In 1872, Muybridge undertook an ambitious photographic expedition to Yosemite that would prove groundbreaking. Over six months, he created nearly five hundred views that were among the most daring of their time. Breaking with the conventions of the era, he adopted very modern viewpoints, choosing vertiginous heights from the tops of cliffs and waterfalls. As Philip Brookman, chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, explains in a catalog devoted to Muybridge ("Eadweard Muybridge," Tate Britain, 2010): "Muybridge's images were markedly different from those of Watkins or any other Yosemite photographer before him... because he was more concerned with effects of light, clouds, and moving water than with the solidity of forms. He painted the temporality of nature with the visual tools of light, atmosphere, and composition."
Through these two bodies of work and the broader collection that continues to grow, the unique role of the 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop becomes clear. By gathering, preserving, and disseminating these images, the shop enables today's audiences to rediscover the foundational works that shaped how we view Yosemite and the American landscape. The collection also offers insight into the different photographic approaches that have influenced our understanding of nature and national identity throughout history.
