Sarony’s Living Pictures

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SARONY’S LIVING PICTURES

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In my recent book review of Penn State’s Napoleon Sarony’s Living Pictures: The Celebrity Photograph in Gilded Age New York by Erin Pauwels (2024)¹, I made reference to a short-lived magazine that Napoleon Sarony, the famous Oscar Wilde photographer, produced towards the end of his career.

It was titled Sarony’s Living Pictures, and was an attempt pre-dating that of Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), to translate photographs into accessible, half-tone, staged works of art.

By the fifth issue of February 1895, the title was changed to Sarony’s Sketch-Book. It ceased publication with the ninth issue in June, 1895. Complete sets are rare with most institutions holding only a single issue or two.

Example from Sarony’s Living Pictures, Vol. 1, no. 1, (1894)
[author’s collection]

To view all the plates in this first issue visit the digitized copy at the Clark Library:
https://maca.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p1325coll1/id/4614

© John Cooper, 2024

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Footnote:

1. The Wildean, No. 65 (Oscar Wilde Society, July 2024).
   https://oscarwildesociety.co.uk/ ↩︎

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Erin Pauwels, Napoleon Sarony’s Living Pictures:
The Celebrity Photograph in Gilded Age New York
(Pennsylvania State University, 2024)

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