Firm
Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic Depot
The Charleston partnership of James M. Osborn and Frederick Eugene Durbec, trading from No. 223 King Street as a photographic depot — a gallery and a supply house in one. It made the stereoscopic record of Charleston, its harbor forts and the plantations around it that survives in the Library of Congress today.
Osborn and Durbec formed their partnership in 1858. The firm traded as a depot rather than a portrait gallery alone: it sold apparatus and stock as well as pictures, and its stereographs carry the King Street address printed on the mount, which is why they can still be attributed.
In the autumn of 1860 the firm went out to the plantations below Charleston and made a stereoscopic series at Rockville — the planter’s house, the fields, and the church where enslaved people worshipped. Almost nobody else was pointing a camera at that subject, and the series is the reason the firm is remembered outside Charleston.
After Fort Sumter fell in April 1861 James Osborn went out to the fort. The Charleston Courier reported on 23 April that he had been allowed to visit and had taken twenty-six different views inside and out, and had also been to Morris and Sullivan’s islands.
The partnership ended in February 1862. Osborn opened a gallery of his own at King and Liberty streets; Durbec, twenty-five, went into the Beauregard Light Infantry Volunteers.
Partners and operators
- James M. Osbornpartner · 1858 – 1862
- Frederick Eugene Durbecpartner · 1858 – 1862
Addresses
- Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic DepotNo. 223 King Street
- Osborn & Durbec, No. 245 King Street245 King Street
Works
- Fort Sumter, interior, with a dismounted gunCharleston, S.C. : Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic Depot, 223 King Street, [between 1860 and 1861] · Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic DepotVerifiedLibrary of Congress · LOT 14110-1, no. 33 (H) [P&P]
- Goose Creek church interior — an 1860 negative reissued in the 1870sCharleston, S.C. : Jesse A. Bolles, cor. King & Market Streets, [photographed ca. 1860, printed between 1873 and 1877] · Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic DepotAttributedLibrary of Congress · LOT 14110-11, no. 52 [P&P]
- South Carolina Institute Hall, Charleston, S.C.Charleston, S.C. : Quinby & Co., 261 King Street [ca. 1860] · Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic DepotAttributedLibrary of Congress · LOT 14110-11, no. 59 [P&P]
- Plantation no. 1 Planter’s house near Rockville, Charleston, S.C.[Charleston, S.C.] : [Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic Depot, 223 King Street], [October 1860] · Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic DepotVerifiedLibrary of Congress · LOT 14110-1, no. 39 (H) [P&P]
- Fort Moultrie, no. 1Charleston, S.C. : Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic Depot, 223 King Street, [1861] · Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic DepotVerifiedLibrary of Congress · LOT 14110-1, no. 29 (H) [P&P]
- Mills House (section)Charleston, S.C. : Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic Depot, 223 King Street, [1863] · Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic DepotVerifiedLibrary of Congress · LOT 14110-1, no. 26 (H) [P&P]
Statement by statement
- VerifiedThe firm traded from No. 223 King Street, Charleston, under the name Osborn & Durbec’s Southern Stereoscopic & Photographic Depot.Library of Congress
- VerifiedThe partnership was formed in 1858 and dissolved in February 1862.Davis & Melton 2020
- VerifiedJ. M. Osborn made twenty-six views at Fort Sumter after the surrender, as reported by the Charleston Courier of 23 April 1861.Civil War Day by Day, UNC-Chapel Hill
- VerifiedThe firm photographed a plantation series near Rockville in October 1860.Library of Congress Davis & Melton 2020
Sources
- Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/
- Stephen Davis and Jack W. Melton Jr., 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War (Charleston: Historical Publications LLC, 2020).
- “17 April 1861: Two stereo views of Fort Sumter,” Civil War Day by Day, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 17 April 2011, with a correction posted in the comments by Bob Zeller. Item: folder 222(b), Miscellaneous Pictures, #4090. https://web.lib.unc.edu/civilwar/index.php/2011/04/17/17-april-1861-two-stereo-views-of-fort-sumter/
- Harvey S. Teal, Partners with the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840–1940 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001).
- Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection