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Click on  for detailed listing.
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Record Group Number: |
900000 |
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Series/Collection Number: |
M87- 30 |
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Creator: |
Harper, Alvan S., 1847-1911. |
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Title, Dates: |
Alvan S. Harper photographic collection, 1884-1910. |
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Amount: |
1600.00 photographs Glass negatives 5x7", 8x10"
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Medium Included: |
photographs 5x7", 8x10"
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Organization/Arrangement: |
Organized into broad categories: views; groups; men; women; and children. Numerical by negative number.
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Restrictions: |
***RESTRICTED: Access to originals is restricted due to their fragile condition; digital scans are first-use copy.
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Terms Governing Use: |
Digital scans are first-use copy; access to originals is restricted due to their fragile condition.
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Biographical/Historical: |
Alvan S. Harper was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania in 1847. He worked as a professional photographer in Philadelphia from 1870 to 1884. A chance meeting with Judge J.T. Bernard of Tallahassee, who was in Philadelphia as a commissioner from Florida to the 1876 Centennial Exposition, may have led to Harper's move to Tallahassee in 1884. Soon after moving to Tallahassee, Harper advertised that he would take "artistic photographs" in his first studio, a room in the house he was renting. He moved twice before buying a house and building his own studio where he worked from 1889 until his death in 1911.
Some of Harper's negatives were lost when his studio was demolished in the 1920s. The negatives had been given to a Tallahassee history buff who left them on a porch because they were dirty. The negatives were mistaken for trash and taken to the dump. About 2,000 more Harper negatives were found in 1946 in the attic of the house he had owned. A Tallahassee photographer printed 250 negatives and circulated the prints in the community for identification. The State Library later received the negatives and transferred them to the Florida Photographic Collection after it was founded in 1952.
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Summary: |
This collection consists of the surviving glass negatives of noted portrait photographer Alvan S. Harper of Tallahassee, Florida. The collection includes about 200 portraits of Philadelphia people, some identified; about 100 views of Tallahassee buildings and street scenes, along with a few from Monticello, Quincy, St. Marks, and Panacea; and about 1,300 portraits of groups and individual men, women, and children, mostly unidentified. Especially noteworthy are Harper's portraits of middle class Black people.
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Finding Aids: |
Folder listing available. 0
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Additional Physical Form: |
Select images have been digitized and are available on the Florida Memory web site: https://www.floridamemory.com/discover/photographs/
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Reproduction Note: |
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Location of Originals/Duplicates: |
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Associated Materials: |
For more of Alvan S. Harper's images, see Collection M82-52, Alvan S. Harper Tallahassee Photographs, 1884-1939 (40 photographs).
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Language Notes: |
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Ownership/Custodial History: |
The negatives were found in a home owned by Bernard Byrd and given to the State Library in 1946. The State Library turned them over to the Florida Photographic Collection ca. 1953.
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Publication Note: |
One-hundred twenty-five Harper photographs are published in the book The Photographs of Alvan S. Harper, Tallahassee, 1885-1910 / edited by Joan Perry Morris and Lee H. Warner. Tallahassee : University Presses of Florida, 1983.
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General Note: |
Florida Photographic Collection ID: "Harper Collection." |
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Electronic Records Access: |
https://www.floridamemory.com/discover/photographs/ |
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Subject Access Fields: |
Harper, Alvan S., 1847-1911
Photography
Photography, Artistic
African American women.
African Americans Florida.
Photographs. aat
Negatives. aat
Tallahassee (Fla.)
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