His many specialties include the Civil War, New York City views, ballooning, African Americans, Native Americans, Walt Whitman, scenes of the Hudson Valley and oddities, from portraits of hermitlike characters to dancing bears to organ grinders to freaks. Kraus has all the images from his collection scanned, and he shows me cartes de visite of bearded ladies, Jo-Jo the Russian Dog-Faced Boy (a man with a hirsute face), Isaac Sprague the Living Skeleton, Siamese twins and a repulsively racist depiction of a large-bosomed African-American woman titled “the Zula Queen.” Many of the images were by Charles Eisenmann, who habituated the Barnum & Bailey Circus in New York City. Kraus said that while the individuals were obviously horribly exploited, many also were paid relatively well.
Many of Kraus’s daguerreotypes, tintypes and ambrotypes are each framed in gilt set in a red velvet-lined case. Most are portraits, although there’s a rare daguerreotype of several New York State infantrymen. Daguerreotypes, dating from the 1840s, were printed on silver-covered pieces of copper, Kraus explained; each is a one-of-a-kind image. Ambrotypes, which were printed on glass, date from the 1850s, while tintypes date from the 1860s and are the most common of the three.
His collection includes post-mortem images, mostly of children, and daguerreotypes of daguerreotypes. The most popular collectibles are images of the West – the earlier the better, he said.
A particular favorite of his is the series of New York City views taken by brothers E. and H. T. Anthony from the 1850s to the 1880s, including sad images of orphans in the Home for the Friendless Asylum, located at 32 East 30th Street. “Probably some of these kids were orphaned in the Civil War,” noted Kraus, marveling at the somber arrangement of small children amid the cavernous, shadowy rooms. Other gems are “photographica”: rare behind-the-scenes photos of the photographers and their crews at work. Kraus also showed his most recent acquisition: a series of delicately tinted stereoviews of Japan from the 1860s, whose marvelous images included topless geishas and samurai striking menacing poses.
Kraus’s website includes a “bargain finds” section. A “curved mount” stereoview, for example, sells for a lot less than a “flat mount.” The former has an arched upper border and was mass-produced by big companies starting in the 1880s, eventually pushing out the more quality-driven photographer/entrepreneurs who made the flat mounts. By the 1930s, the demand for stereoviews was decreasing, although the double images were sold into the 1950s. In Kraus’s house, the stereoview regains its fascination, and one could well spend a good part of a lifetime poring over his images and reimagining the past.
