Saint Petersburg, Russia circa 1910s
Among the larger collections at George Eastman House are nearly 11,000
glass negatives by Ch. Chusseau-Flaviens.
The collection was received in the 1970s from Kodak Pathé.
Little is known about Chusseau-Flaviens beyond what we can deduce from
this substantial body of work itself. Chusseau-Flaviens' by-line
has been sited along-side illustrations in French, German, and Belgian
newspapers of the 1910s era. He seems to have been an early free-lance
photojournalist able to travel and gain access to various European royalty,
armies, and political rallies. Since those images credited to Chusseau-Flaviens
in period publications do not match negatives at GEH, it is clear that
the GEH holdings do not represent his entire production. Holdings
at GEH include work from England, Romania, Turkey, Egypt, Spain, Germany,
Norway, and Russia, among others.
Chusseau-Flaviens acquired work by other photographers which he pinned
to a copy board and annotated for retrieval in the same style used on his
own original negatives. He often includes the name of the photographer
in the annotations in French along the edge of the glass negative.
In this manner, his offerings also included New Zealand, Japan and other
areas to which he may not have travelled in person. Conspicuous in
its absence is any coverage of France. This is another reason to
suspect that the GEH holdings are incomplete.
The small selection presented here is from Saint Petersburg and is believed to represent construction work on the Nevsky Prospekt in the pre-1919 period. The road surface, rather than using cobblestone or brick, consisted of logs placed on-end, leveled and the interstices filled in. The purpose of this presentation is to gain a better understanding of these documents. Please share with us your knowledge and insights.
Note: The digital images presented here were reprocessed from videodisc frames. By returning to the 35mm film intermediate or the original glass negative much more detail can be provided.
A. Eskind
January 1999