eishiya reviewed Heinrich Tönnies by Heinrich Tönnies
Portraits of Danish working and middle classes
3 stars
This is a collection of carte-de-visite photographs by Heinrich Tönnies, a photographer who worked in 19th century Aalborg, Denmark. Unusually, many of his subjects pose in their work clothes rather than their best clothes, which makes his work and this book a useful reference for such outfits.
The quality of the photographs is better than any other prints I've seen from cartes-de-visite, owing to Alland producing them from the original glass negatives and removing some of the original retouching. The photographs in the book are crisp and have a good richness of tone.
The text is a biography of Tönnies and some brief information about the author's involvement with the prints, in both English and Danish.
Unfortunately, although the text mentions that many of the sitters were identified through Tönnies's records, neither names nor dates are provided for the photographs in the book.