Campbell Studios
Time Period: 1903-1928
Location: 538 Fifth Avenue, New York City
Biography:
CAMPBELL STUDIOS
Campbell Studios was founded by Alfred S. Campbell (1840-1912) in Elizabethtown, N.J. Campbell, an early English proponent of art photography, was invited to the United States in 1867 by Napolean Sarony to form a business partnership under the Sarony name. Sarony particularly desired access to Campbell's patented photographic processes. Campbell grew to dislike Sarony's penchant for self-celebration. The relationship frayed until the partnership was dissolved in April 1871. Campbell moved to New Jersey constructing a state of the art studio and image production facility at Elizabethtown. On October 3, 1892, John Walton, the foreman of Campbell's production shop burned the studio down to hide his theft of silver being used in the manufacture of photographic paper. The loss to the business was 30 thousand dollars. Walton and his accomplices were arrested. Campbell rebuilt and was soon flourishing. He made his reputation artistically with a photographically illustrated edition of the Bible featuring pictures taken in the Holy Land. Owner of numbers of camera and print paper patents, he was a technical innovator all his life. He developed a panorama lens that made him the first to advance the art of field photography after Brady. He was also a commercial innovator, operating his business on the 19th-century diversification model. The Elizabethtown office specialized in scenic views, portrait cabinet cards, sterographs, postcards, and reproductions of art works. After Campbell's death, the business became known as Campbell Art Company and was led be Arthur F. Rice and, later, Emil Jacobs. William A. Morand, whose father worked with Arthur Campbell in the early 1870s, opened Campbell Studio, New York, in 1900 on 538 5th Avenue. He was assisted by Rudolph Eickemeyer from 1900 to 1905. Morand belonged to an old New York family and used his social connections to build the studio into one of the strongest in Manhattan. Trained as a fine artist, and tutored in the art of photography by his father, George Henry Morand, William was among the most refined of the professional portraitists in the city until his death in 1909. From Morand's death until 1915 the New York Studio was managed by Rudolf Eickemeyer, the prize winning pictorialist. Under his direction the studio developed its interest in theatrical photography. When Eickemeyer departed in 1915 to set up his own business, Campbell Studio continued as a force in entertainment photography, under the direction of Arthur F. Rice (perhaps most famous for his landmark production stills in Nazimova's and Valentino's motion pictures of 1921-22 after he left Campbell Studio and headed to the west coast to recuperate from a disease that would kill him in 1922). The Studio was one of the innovators in the new style of celebrity portraiture. On March 1, 1925 it took a corporate charter, capitalized for 25K$. But its years as a force in the entertainment market were over by 1928. They remained an active society portrait studio through the 1930s. Notes: "Both Foremen in Plot, How Campbell's Picture Factory was Robbed and Burned." New York Times, (October 4, 1892), 1. "A. S. Campbell, Photographer, Dead." New York Times, New York Times (August 8, 1912), 9. David S. Shields
Specialty:
The New York Branch of Campbell Studios was one of the active celebrity portrait studios in the 1900s to early 1920s. It's forte was the half length portrait photo of stage or screen stars in fashionable modern dress. It regularly supplied photographs to THE THEATRE and to movie magazines. There may have been two or more staff photographers shooting clients, for the style of portraiture varies from static poses shot in natural light to fanciful fashion poses. Photographs r to l: Helen Hayes [Jay Parrino Collection], Ruby DeMymer [Shields Collection], Mary Pickford [Jay Parrino Collection], Vivienne Segal [Shields Collection], Olive Thomas [Jay Parrino Collection]
