An Archive of Photographs of Russian Movie and Theater Actors, Cinematographers, and Ballet Dancers (A number of Them Signed/Inscribed)
first edition
1915 · Various
by Various
Various: Various, 1915. First Edition. Very good. A hundred and five real photo poscards + two original photographs, mounted in an album with small, paper, corner slips, covering the years 1915 - ca1930; images aprox. 5 1/4 x 3 1/2 and 10 x 8; album 13 1/4 x 10 1/4; most pictures subtitled in the margins of the photos themselves; some also identified in manuscript to verso; overall in very good to near fine and better condition, with occasional wear to corners; album - leather over boards, embossed to imitate aligator skin, tied with a decorative string; wear and chipping to edges, in about good condition. An astonishing and meticulously collected and assembled archive of photographs, it represented the most important figures of the Russsian cinema, ballet, and theater at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the photos were portraits, while in others the artists were in costumes, performing in various productions. A number of them were signed and/or inscribed in Russian and English. Two of the images were taken by renowned German-Russian photographer Karl Andreevich Fisher (1859 - ?). A few of the names included: Vera Karalli (1889 - 1972) - ballet dancer, choreographer, silent film actress, and, allegedly, a co-conspirator in the murder of Grigorii Rasputin; actor Viktor Petipa (1878 - 1933), signed; Elza (Elizaveta) Kruger (ca1893 - 1941) - dancer, actress, and later, founder of the Russian Romantic Ballet Theater in Berlin; Mikhail Mordkin (1880 - 1944) - ballet master at Sergei Diagilev's Ballets Russes, later founder of Mordkin Ballet in the US; Aleksandr Vertinskii (1889 - 1957) - artist, composer, poet, and actor; Vera Kholodnaia (1893 - 1919) - the first star of Russian silent cinema, most of whose films have been lost, as many of her features had been destroyed by the Soviet Government after the Revolution; actress Vera Baranovskaia (1885 - 1935), signed; Vsevolod Bliumental-Tamarin (1881 - 1945) - actor, director, and author, who officially died of a suicide in Switzerland, but was, allegedly, murdered by Russian Counter-intelligence agents (SMERSH), signed; Andrei Petrovskii (1869 - 1933) - actor, director, and educator, signed; and others. (Inventory #: 002504)