(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Davis & Sanford

active New York 1892-1915

BiographyDavis and Sanford Portrait studio was founded by the partners Charles Henry Davis (1862-1929) and E. Starr Sanford (1862-1917) in 1892. Both emerged as artists during the amateur photography craze of the 1880s and perfected their art in Club competitions around New York with Davis became the star of the Plainfield Club. In the 1890s Davis and Sanford determined to become professionals.

Perhaps the most artistic of the New York portrait studios organized during the Gilded Age, Davis and Sanford pioneered the colonization of Fifth Avenue by photographers. Sanford's social connections (he belonged to one of the founding families of Danbury, Connecticut) and Davis's broad familiarity with the arts (he would moonlight as assistant music critic of the New York Evening Post for years) made them immediately successful in high society and theatrical circles. Their cachet was insured when they secured exclusive rights to photograph the 1893 honeymoon trip of the Count and Countess de Castellane to the Hudson Valley.

Their elegantly linear prints in subtle gradations of gray and silver offered a rival vision of artistic photography to the atmospheric style of the soft-focus pictorialists of Carbon Studios. By 1900 they stood atop the profession.

Sanford retired in 1901; Davis became the sole artistic director of the studio's photography, until 1905 when Rudolph Eickemeyer, Jr., purchased a half interest in the business. The studio was named Davis and Eickemeyer until 1909 when Eickemeyer left to helm the branch of Campbell Studio at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. The firm again became "Davis and Sanford." In 1913 the studio vacated the Fifth Avenue location. In 1915, Davis turned over the studio to others who kept the brand alive. On December 21, 1922 the firm merged with Marceau Studio, keeping the name Davis and Sanford. David S. Shields/ALS https://www.broadway.cas.sc.edu/content/davis-and-sanford accessed 2/8/2019 SM

"Davis and Sanford (Broadway Photographs)." University of South Carolina. Retreived 6 July 2018 from https://www.broadway.cas.sc.edu/content/davis-and-sanford.
"Davis and Sanford (Photographers' Identities Catalog)." The New York Public Library. Retreived 6 July 2018 from https://pic.nypl.org/map/?address.AddressTypeID=*&address.CountryID=*&bbox=*&Nationality=*&gender.TermID=*&process.TermID=*&role.TermID=*&format.TermID=*&biography.TermID=*&collection.TermID=*&DisplayName=(davis~4%20AND%20sanford~4)&Date=*&mode=2.

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated8/7/24

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