Bicycle Messengers, c. 1900

This photograph comes from an edition issued by the Library of Congress, printed from negatives in the collection with the assistance of the Alverthorpe Fund. Full description of photograph on verso of mat (see image).

Charles Currier worked in a soapstone yard and in the jewelry business, and he became a professional photographer in the late 1880s, opening a studio in Boston. He was active circa 1887 to 1910. A fairly ordinary, "for-hire" cameraman in his lifetime, Currier gained notable recognition posthumously, as his seemingly mundane but high-quality portraits, interior photos, and New England landscapes are now perceived as invaluable glimpses of the ordinary life of northeastern Americans in the Victorian Era. After his first career as a jeweler, only picking up photography in his mid-30s; in 1889, he opened a studio in downtown Boston. Currier retired in 1909, preserving a little over 500 shots from his 20-year career.

According to the historian Martin Sandler, "Currier sought escape from routine by recording the ostensible signs of an industrial nation - steam engines and railroad locomotives, building exteriors and interiors - with the camera placed in a manner calculated to reveal the inherent geometry of each subject" (This was New England : images of a vanished past, 1977).

After he died in 1938, a German-American painter and muralist Ernst Halberstadt (1910—1987) purchased all of Currier's glass-plate negatives at the estate sale for merely $6 (around $136 in today's currency). Halberstadt later donated these negatives to the Library of Congress, from which the "Bicycle Messengers" print was produced.

A few exhibitions featuring Currier's work have been organized since the 1960s, including the 1964 exhibition mounted by The Rose Art Museum, "Charles H. Currier: A Boston Photographer, 1887-1910," with an accompanying publication printed the same year. In 1966, the Dallas Museum of Art presented "Charles H. Currier: Victorian Photographer." His photos are featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), The New York Public Library, The Rose Art Museum (Brandeis University), and The Library Of Congress.