WILD ANIMALS TAMED BY ZOOKEEPER AND PHOTOGRAPHER
NISSEN, Peter.
‘Carl Hagenbeck’s Zoologischer Circus’
c. 1891.
Twelve albumen prints, four c. 6¾ x 9 inches (171 x 229 mm), eight c. 9 x 11 inches (229 x 279 mm), each with the photographer’s blindstamp on recto, the eight larger prints dated ‘1891’ in the negatives; mounted on card within ruled red borders, the mounts trimmed on the smaller prints, each with photographer’s ink stamp on verso of mount ‘Photographiesches-Atelier von Peter Nissen, Reeperbahn 28 Hamburg, St. Pauli’; some foxing to mounts rarely affecting images; housed in a contemporary bright blue cloth folder, titled in silver on front cover, ties (frayed and torn) 13¾ x 11¾ inches (349 x 298 mm); with two additional photographs of the circus animals, each c. 6¾ x 9⅛ inches (171 x 232 mm), mounted on card with the printed credit ‘H[einrich] J[ohan] Barby [Danish, 1858–1930], Gl. Kongevej 178’ (one creased).
A rare portfolio of live animal scenes from Carl Hagenbeck’s famous ‘zoological circus’; a wonderful hybrid of the real and the surreal in zoological and photographic history.
Hagenbeck (1844–1913) was an internationally known German animal dealer and trainer whose fishmonger father had run a second business trading in exotic animals. Hagenbeck Junior accompanied explorers and hunters to bring back animals (and occasionally humans) from exotic locations to exhibit in Europe and the United States. He believed in controlling the animals by befriending them, emphasizing their intelligence and tractability over their ferocity.
In 1889 he introduced a lion act (shown here) in which, as a finale, three lions pulled him around the cage in a chariot. He trained animals to display and sell to circuses at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois in 1893, and the Louisiana Exhibition in St. Louis in 1904. He also supplied many zoos, as well as P.T. Barnum, and created the modern zoo with animal enclosures that were closer to the animals’ natural habitat and which made use of moats rather than bars. The Tierpark Hagenbeck still exists in Hamburg today.
This series of photographs must surely have tested the photographer Peter Nissen to the limit. To capture and tame the beasts in action for his audience he has adopted every trick available to the analogue photographer of the nineteenth century. In some photographs the wild beasts are more appealingly fluffy than usual as they breathe and move during the lengthy exposures; in others whole animals or large portions of an animal have clearly been added to the negative by hand or montaged together in one print from multiple negatives.
Not in OCLC or Library Hub.
