Charles Eisenmann | |
|---|---|
 Cabinet card of Eisenmann, verso | |
| Born | October 5, 1855 |
| Died | December 8, 1927 (aged 72) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | W. W. Washburn in New Orleans |
| Known for | Photography |
Charles Eisenmann (October 5, 1855 – December 8, 1927) was a famous New York photographer during the late 1880s who worked in the Bowery district.[1]
Eisenmann's photography was sold in the form of Cabinet cards, popular in this era, available to the middle class. Eisenmann also supplied Duke Tobacco Company with cheesecake photography to stuff in their tobacco cans. The book Victorian Cartes-de-Visite credits Eisenmann with being the most prolific and well known photographer when it comes to Cabinet cards.
His work was the subject of a 1979 monograph, Monsters of the Gilded Age, focusing on his work on human oddities from the Barnum and Bailey circus, with a notable widely circulated picture of Jojo the Dog-faced Boy.[2] Although a number of his photographs were of obvious fakes (called "gaffed freaks"),[3] many others were genuinely anomalous, including the giant Ruth Goshen, the four-legged girl Myrtle Corbin, and the Siamese twins Chang and Eng and Millie and Christine.
- ^ Ephemeral New York (blog), "A Bowery photographer’s freak show portraits", September 8, 2011. Accessed on March 17, 2012.
- ^ Artnet, "JOJO: The Russian Dog Face Boy by Charles Eisenmann". Accessed on March 17, 2012.
- ^ Dennis Gaffney, "Who Were the Circus 'Freaks'?", Antiques Roadshow, PBS, 2006. Accessed on March 17, 2012.