[A fine amateur photo album of a journey through the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, Ukraine and Poland].

£4,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A fine album of documentary photographs taken and collected by French travellers on an unusual journey through Central Asia, with many candid shots of local people indigenous to the Caucasus, Armenia, and Georgia. The final two images in the album are of a man and woman seated alternately in a horse and trap, and it feels plausible that they are the couple whose travels are recorded. In chronological order, the album opens in the Jewish Quarter of Warsaw and proceeds via a “Relais de Poste” to Finland, showing the Imatra rapids, then on to Moscow where there are 20 or so images of sights and views including the Kremlin, “Cathedral de l’Annonciation, Grand Palais”, “Canon du Tsar” and the “Convent fe Troïtsa”. There are different types and professions captured, including a “Baptisme Russe”, “Police Russe” and a “Prisonnier Russe”. From there they travel to Nizhny Novogrod and Kazan, where the photographer comments on the veils worn by Muslim Tatar women: “une tatarese voile pour ne pas être photographie”. In Orenbourg they see nomads shearing camels for wool, and Bashkir camel caravans crossing the Ural River. In Saratov an enormous fish caught in the Volga is proudly presented to the camera in a market, and at the Astrakhan Kalmytsky Bazar, we see gathered “types de Kalmouks et de Turcomans et de Kirgisses” as well as another shot of “Prètres Kalmouls devant leur tente”. Following scenes of religious pilgrimage in Vladikavkaz, there are a series of dramatic Caucasus mountain

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