John Alfred Spranger was born in Florence on 24 June 1889. His father, William, moved to Tuscany from England in the middle of the nineteenth century and was a professor at the Academy of Arts and Drawings in Florence. John Alfred was a leading figure in the cultural milieu of Florence at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both archaeologist and photographer (as well as engineer, topographer, mountain climber, art collector ), he was the author of several photo reportages detailing archaeological monuments and landscapes especially in Italy, Albania, Greece, Canada, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
In 1913-1914, he participated in the Filippo De Filippi Expedition to the Himalayan Karakoram, as assistant topographer. The photographers of the expedition - Cesare Antilli, Major of the Italian Army, and Giorgio Abetti, a Florentine astronomer - systematically used cameras during the expedition, creating a real reportage, and Spranger surely gained a great passion for photography thanks to this expedition.
In the 1920s-1930s, he took part in a number of Etruscan excavations in Tuscany and paid great attention to the use of the camera to document the excavation work in progress. During this period, he spent time with Harry Burton, photographer of the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun. It was, in fact, in Florence that Burton was hired as a photographer and archaeologist by Theodore M. Davis, who obtained the concession for the excavations in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Their friendship is witnessed by Spranger in his Egyptian album, where Burton is portrayed in some photos taken in 1929 during the excavations at Deir el-Bahari.
Spranger died in 1968 at Newbury, in England, and was buried in Florence.
The passion for photography accompanied Spranger for life. He took thousands of photographs, collecting them in refined photo-albums, consistent in shape, size and style, enriched by annotations, topographic maps and plans (most of the original stereograms were recently retrieved at the public library of Vaiano, a small town close to Florence where many documents from Spranger's family are held today). On Spranger's death, some albums, i.e. those dedicated to archaeological subjects were donated by his heirs to the then Superintendency of Antiquities of Etruria, and are currently held at the Photo-Archive of the Archaeological Museum of Florence.
Bibliography:
Stefano Anastasio, Barbara Arbeid, 2019, Egitto, Iraq ed Etruria nelle fotografie di John Alfred Spranger. Viaggi e ricerche archeologiche (1929-1936) (Oxford, Archaeopress)
Dr. Stefano Anastasio & Dr. Barbara Arbeid
Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio - Firenze
Piazza Pitti 1 - 50125 Firenze
Tel. 055 2651885
Genealogy of John Alfred Spranger
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