The publishers
Moïse Léon and Isaac Lévy had worked within the Ferrier & Soulier studio before acquiring the business in 1864, continuing to publish under the Ferrier & Soulier name while developing their own catalogue under the imprint J. Lévy & Cie. By the 1880s, the firm had become one of the principal photographic publishers in France, with a catalogue spanning Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. T.H. McAllister, established in New York, was one of the leading American manufacturers of optical instruments and distributors of lantern slides; the partnership between the two houses placed European photographic material into scientific and institutional collections across North America.
Geological context
In 1880, Vesuvius was in the midst of a long period of continuous eruptive activity that had begun in 1875. A new intracrateric cone had been forming since 1878, growing through lava effusion and strombolian explosions — the structure visible in this plate. This accumulation continued until 1905, when the cone reached its highest point. The eruption of April 1906 brought this cycle to an abrupt end: the summit cone was decapitated by explosive activity during the night of 7 to 8 April. The silhouette documented here ceased to exist.
The object
The source plate measures 8.5 × 8.5 cm. Printed at 89.5 × 89.5 cm, the enlargement factor is just over ten. At this scale, the granular texture of the cooled lava surface — barely legible in the lantern slide format — becomes the dominant presence in the image: a dense, uneven field occupying the lower two-thirds of the object. The grain of the plate itself, the marks of time on the emulsion, are present at the same scale as the material they document. The print on Awagami Bamboo Washi is thermally bonded between two panes of 2mm mineral glass — extra-clear and non-reflective on the front, float glass on the back — under vacuum for more than ten hours. At 4mm total thickness, the result requires no frame: the image, the paper, and the glass form a single self-sufficient object, its edges diamond-polished, displayable freestanding or wall-mounted.
Glass slide, 8.5 × 8.5 cm, blackprint collection. Published by J. Lévy & Cie, Paris, in collaboration with T.H. McAllister, New York.
