Fonds AR-CIFHA-HGO - Harry Grant Olds

The Harry Grant Olds collection has two distinct origins. On the one hand, the photographic documents corresponding to the commercial work carried out by Olds in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century. These were kept by Mateo E. “Cacho” Giordano and sold to Alfredo Srur in 2013. On the other hand, the so-called “North American trunk” containing photographic documents, correspondence and personal writings of Olds concerning his life in the United States, Chile and his early years in Argentina. This trunk was preserved by the American John Waldsmith and donated to CIFHA in 2014. To the H. G. Olds documentary collection is added a set of documents corresponding to research on Olds' life and work carried out by those people who were in contact with the personal archive: John Waldsmith, Mateo Giordano, Abel Alexander, Luis Príamo and Alfredo Srur.
Harry Olds began assembling his Latin American archive, image bank style, in 1899 while living in Valparaiso, Chile. He began numbering this set of photos with the number 1 and continued it later in Argentina. A series of 40 negatives from his stay in Chile (although 13 more are missing due to the numbering) were sold by Mateo Giordano and are currently in the National Historical Museum of Chile. The rest of the photographic negatives were produced in Buenos Aires, where his first commercial premises were located, at 412 25 de Mayo Street (1907), and later moved to Lavalle 1059 (1915) to later end up in the premises of Lavalle 1362 (1937). This series of photographic negatives on glass plate had the particularity of avoiding the gallery portrait and focusing on the photography of landscapes, customs and popular types. It is believed, by the numbering of the plates, that the collection consisted of no less than 5,000 units, of which 4,000 are missing.
After Olds' death in 1943 the archive was sold by his widow Rebecca Jane Rank to José Zupnik, H.G. Olds' last apprentice and collaborator. The number of plates in the archive numbered 2,000, including nitrate glass and paper copies, ranging from his first photographs in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1899, to his last Argentine photographs of the late 1930s. Nothing is known of the 1,000 missing plates from the original archive. José Zupnik moved this archive from his office in Tribunales to his home in Villa Crespo in 1943. For approximately 35 years it remains stored in the attic of a small room in the upper part of his house.
Mateo Giordano, a friend of Bernardo Zupnik (José's son) heard about this archive in the 1960s, when he was his father's photography student. Years later, in June 1977, he discovered through a classified ad in the Clarín newspaper that “an important old photographic archive of Buenos Aires” was for sale. He recognized the phone number as that of his former teacher Zupnik and made the purchase. Between 1977 and 2013, the archive was in Giordano's different houses, without any kind of conservation treatment. In the 2000s, Carlos Dellepiane, a collector friend of Giordano's, put him in contact with Luis Priamo and Abel Alexander, the most important historians of old Argentine photography. From that connection arose the first reconstruction of the archive and the elaboration of a book on Olds edited by Fundación Antorchas.
In August 2013 Alfredo Srur bought the archive of photographic negatives from Mateo Giordano. The photographs were inside polypropylene bags and in boxes inside wooden crates. At some point, Giordano had traded the wooden paper envelopes written by Olds for the polypropylene bags. Srur moved the archive to his home in La Boca (CIFHA's current headquarters) and between 2013 and 2014, the documents were cleaned and stabilized with temperature and humidity control and stored in a stainless steel cabinet. They were also arranged according to the original labeling that H.G. Olds had put on them.
Regarding the origin of the American trunk we know that after Olds' death in 1943 Mrs. J. Harry Craig little is known.
Rank sent this trunk to the United States, to her sister, shortly after her husband's death.
Regarding the American trunk, we know that in 1980 John Waldsmith, who worked at the Oliver Wendell Holmes Stereoscopic Research Library of the National Stereoscopic Association, received a phone call from a lady from J. Harry Craig, who told him that she had in her possession since 1943 the archive of a photographer named Olds and that she wanted to donate it to the institution. Waldsmith went to see the trunk, which contained the letters Olds had exchanged with his family and friends from his years as a student photographer in Detroit to his early years in Argentina, a ferrotype taken of Olds at age 15 as an apprentice photographer in Sandusky's first studio, the manuscripts of his early years in Argentina, his diaries as an apprentice photographer at Sandusky's first studio, the manuscripts of his early years in Argentina, his diaries as an apprentice photographer at Sandusky's first studio, and his manuscripts of his early years in Argentina, his diaries as an apprentice photographer in the late 19th century in the United States, vintage photographs he took aboard the ship that brought him from New York to South America, several glass negatives taken in his hometown, ferrotypes taken in the first photographic studio where he worked in Sandusky, and other personal items and glass plates of his parents. Also in the trunk was Olds' obituary published in the press in 1943.
It is not entirely clear how that trunk had come into the hands of Mrs. J. Harry Craig, but from further research we know that the lady's name was Adelaide C. Snapp (10/8/1898 Mansfield, Ohio - 2/9/1997 Franklin, Ohio) and that she was married to Olds' nephew James Harry Craig, who was the only son of Rebecca J. Rank's sister Minnie's first marriage. We do not know if that trunk was given to them by Olds' widow, Rebecca, from Argentina or if it came to them from some other relative. What is certain is that it was kept by Harry Craig's wife for 37 years in perfect condition. However, as the material was part of the work of a photographer unknown at the time, and not of the stereoscopic type, as the Oliver Wendell Library specialized in, no one paid much attention to it, except for Mr. Waldsmith who undertook a preliminary cataloging and research.
In the late 1990s, Abel Alexander and Luis Priamo were making a collection of books of old Argentine photography and by chance came across the story that Waldsmith had uploaded to the Internet telling the story of the trunk. They contacted him and he provided all the material for their study in Argentina. The day after the purchase made by Alfredo Srur from Cacho Giordano, in 2013, Srur manages to contact Waldsmith. He informs him that the Oliver Wendell Holmes Stereoscopic Research Library had closed a few years earlier and that the documents in the trunk were at his home. In March 2014 Srur travels to the United States, to Cleveland, to meet with John Waldsmith. The latter tells him that in the trunk there was also a white cotton blanket, probably indigenous, perhaps from a trip to the Gran Chaco and there was also some kind of axe. Both items had been lost. In addition, Olds' collection of magic lanterns (old slides) had been sold by some member of the Oliver Wendell, prior to its closing, to a Japanese collector that Waldsmith was never able to locate again. Everything else was in perfect condition. The trunk with its contents was donated to Alfredo Srur to be reunited with the rest of the collection.
At the beginning of 2020, CIFHA began the archival treatment of this documentary section. It allocated financial resources so that a group of professionals could begin to gather all the information available on Olds in general and on the trunk documentation in particular, with the aim of identifying, organizing, systematizing and making this information accessible.