Gästgifvar Eric Matson

This week I discovered Gästgifvar Eric Matson who was also a pioneer and master of his craft. But Eric Matson (as he was known) did not live in Cyprus. He lived in Palestine and only visited Cyprus for scouting expeditions or in transit to other places. Amongst this small collection of photos I have posted here today are a few gems that were taken in Cyprus in August 1945.

Eric Maston was born in Sweden in June 1888 but when he was almost one, his parents moved to Palestine to join an American Colony so they can offer charity and help to the sick and needy of Jerusalem. The Colony consisted of a small community of Americans and Swedes who emigrated to Palestine towards the end of the 19th Century in order to be closer to God and to offer Christian service to the locals. In time, they were loved by Arabs, Jews and Christians alike.

Nobel Prize winning novelist, Selma Lagerlof once wrote that the Colony “owned a great palace as well as smaller buildings, shops and workrooms. They owned dromedaries (Arabian camels), horses, cows and goats and plenty of land full of olive and fig trees.”

In 1898, the American Colony set up a ‘photographic department’ to meet the demand for photographic mementoes of the Holy Land and to satisfy the increasing needs of tourism.

The department located in Jerusalem, was one of several photo services operating in the Middle East at the turn of the twentieth century. The firm’s photographers were actual residents of Palestine which gave them an advantage over other visiting photographers since they possessed an intimate knowledge of the land and people which made their coverage more comprehensive. They documented Middle East culture, history, and political events from before World War I through the collapse of Ottoman rule, the British Mandate period, World War II, and the emergence of the State of Israel. Eventually these photographers were able to move away from the 19th-century large-size albumen silver prints to the smaller, less expensive picture postcard format which dominated the twentieth century.

Eric Matson grew up in the Colony and as a teenager. He pursued an interest in photography learning the craft from masters such as Elijah Meyers and Lewis Larsson. In 1905, he met Edith Yantiss, when they both worked as apprentices for Larsson.

Eric and Edith were working predominately as darkroom assistants but they learned quickly (often by trial and error), all the complex techniques that separated professional photography from that of amateurs. They were particularly successful in using oil paints to hand colour photographs, and produce double stereoscopic photographs to create 3-D pictures. They were also involved in infrared photography and aerial work.

In 1924, Eric and Edith decided to get married after a long courtship. Ten years later, in 1934 they took over the American Colony Photo Store in Jerusalem and renamed it Matson Photo Service. When customers walked into Eric Matson’s store, they frequently requested photos of specific places and people. His immense catalogue of photographs and lantern slides spanning almost five decades meant that he could satisfy most requests.

Eric and Edith Matson worked together as documentary photographers in the Middle-East and Jerusalem through two World Wars and many Arab-Jewish uprisings. It was the terrorist activities of 1946 however, which forced them to flee Palestine for South California with their three children (Anne, David and Margaret) taking two-thirds of their photographic archive with them.

The other third, around 7,000 glass negatives, remained trapped in an often-flooded basement in East Jerusalem for over 20 years until they were liberated after the Six-Day War of 1967 and eventually shipped to the Library of Congress in Washington. The Matson family continued to sell photographs of the Holy Land from their home in California.

Eric Matson died in December 1977 aged eighty-nine. He was a man of peace, as were all his associates in the American Colony. His simple faith, love and understanding of his fellow man enabled him to move freely among Arabs, Christians, and Jews, photographing their holiest shrines and their simple way of life. It was his lifelong wish to see a lasting peace in the Middle East.

If you are interested in the techniques used by photographers such as Eric Matson then the following description was written by Matson himself in 1969.

“In looking for the ‘right composition,’ I rely on feelings and intuition. In general, particularly with black-and-white photography, I avoid taking outdoor pictures near the noon hour, when the sun is overhead; I prefer the lighting and the shadows provided earlier or later in the day.

In the early days, our picture-taking and processing were somewhat primitive and often improvised. We had to sensitize our own printing paper and used sunlight as our light source. Our earliest enlargements were made by placing a box camera through the window of a darkened room, putting the glass negative of the picture to be enlarged into the camera, and projecting its image by means of the daylight behind the camera, onto bromide paper that was placed on an easel inside the room at a distance determined by the desired size of the enlargement.

For a number of years, we used a ‘cabinet size’ camera for 13 x 18 cm glass plates. The camera had a division fixture and was used for taking stereoscopic views with a double lens. For a full-plate picture, the division was removed and a single lens used. We also used a large plate camera with which our 24 x 30 cm negatives were taken.

In later years, after glass plates were generally replaced by films, I used 8 x 12 cm films and, to a lesser extent, the smaller, 6 x 9 cm film packs. In the later years, our cameras included the German Plaubel Machina for press work, the German 9 x 12 cm Voigtlander, Eastman’s Graflex, and, for 35mm, the Contax and Leica.”

As some of you may already know, I have a keen interest in photography – especially early vintage photography. For me, nothing can compare with the charm, glamour and beauty that is evoked by these pioneer photographers using their old-world camera techniques. I have been fortunate to have met the son of Edwards of Limassol and the son of Haigaz Mangoian of Nicosia. I was also fortunate to meet the granddaughter of Leopold Glazsner.

Although I cannot travel back in time, I can at least imagine a time gone by through the art of these beautiful photographs.