Item No: #307723 Chinese Vegetable Pedler (sic) in San Francisco, Cal. (B 5399). Isaiah W. Taber.

A terrific view of Chinese American domestic life

Chinese Vegetable Pedler (sic) in San Francisco, Cal. (B 5399)

Taber, Isaiah W.

Notes: Perhaps the most compelling of Taber's Chinatown photographs, a portrait of a traveling vegetable seller, carrying two large baskets of produce suspended from a pole balanced on his shoulder. Another man, also Chinese, poses, perhaps as a customer. The two men are standing in a landscaped park or public garden, with a row of poultry enclosures behind them.

This rare glimpse of Chinese-American domestic life has few comparable commercial images—the majority of Chinatown photographs sold by professional photographers in the late 19th century are street scenes or views inside of restaurants. Only Arnold Genthe's Old Chinatown series offers similar insight. In fact, Genthe also took a photograph of an itinerant peddler, "Vegetable Peddler, Old Chinatown" which has more street life but the peddler's face is turned away from the camera, and his baskets are much smaller.

Large cabinet card albumen silver print on thin photographic paper, roughly 7-7/8 by 4-7/8 inches, on a somewhat larger original mount. Titles and captioned using a negative strip at the bottom of the image.

Edition + Condition: A medium contrast print, evenly toned, on a cardstock mount with rounded corners. Minor chipping to mount.

Publication: San Francisco: Taber Photo. (ca. 1890).

Item No: #307723

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