Alvan S. Harper

Laurie A. Perkins posed in Harper's studio showing setup and backdrop scenery Alvan S. Harper (1847– May 19, 1911) was an American photographer who was active in Tallahassee, Florida.

Biography Harper was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania in 1847 the son of Hannah Pownal Harper and Joseph Harper; he had two sisters. Harper worked as a photographer in Philadelphia before moving to Tallahassee, Florida with his wife Agnes in 1884.

He opened a studio under the name A. S. Harper doing photography and portraits. He posed portraits with backdrops, cabinet photos, and also took photographs of residences, buildings, farming, hunting, railway activity, political leaders, and many local people.

In 1891 he took photographs of the state senators from Florida which were available for viewing at the office of the local newspaper. When fifteen Florida Senators fled to Georgia to try to block the Legislature from deciding a U.S. Senate election, Harper took their photograph and titled it "Fifteen Babes in the Woods - Fugitives from Injustice," and sold large print copies for $3 each.

A book of his photography, Features of the Hill Country, Florida, was published in 1894 by the Commissioners of Leon County with the intent of getting people to move there. His photographs were used to illustrate an article about "the hill country of Florida" in 1896. A review in Picturescope magazine said they reflect "a small rather bucolic state capital." In 1903 he was the photographer for the Florida State College yearbook, The Argo.

In 1905, Harper was commissioned to produce a series of portraits of Florida's early Supreme Court Justices, a total of 33 men. He based them on earlier images, where he could find them, or photographs he took himself. The originals were lost.

Rediscovery of work Some of Harper's negatives were lost when his photography studio was demolished in the 1920s. A book of his photographs was published in 1986, The Photographs of Alvan S. Harper: Tallahassee, 1885-1910, and was reviewed in the Southern Historian. A travelling exhibition of select photographs he took of African Americans has been made into a travelling exhibition by the Museum of Florida.

In 2017 a "Trolley ride through Alvan S. Harper's Tallahassee" was held. An exhibition of a selection of his photographs of African Americans was held at the Wentworth Museum in Pensacola 2016.

Gallery