A very large albumen print with a stunning view of the upper part of Cologne Cathedral. It's still a mystery how the photographer managed to take this photograph from high above. The sharpness is extraordinary— Creifelds used glass negatives up to 70 x 90 cm large! - recto notation: ”Details des tours de la Cathedrale de Cologne” AGE: c. 1875 PROCESS: albumen print, mounted DIMENSIONS: 36.8 x 31 cm (actual image only); total: 39.6 x 32.3 cm CONDITION: very good – exactly as illustrated in the scans. Theodor Johann Hubert Creifelds (born September 9, 1839 in Koblenz; † May 21, 1902 in Unkel) was a German photographer. Born in Koblenz as the son of a decorative painter and his wife Henriette von Werden, he came to Cologne in 1849, where his father of the same name (1813–1875) established himself as a painter and photographer. In 1855 he opened a “photographic institute” at the cathedral monastery and in 1859 a workshop at Hohe Straße 19, where he received his training. In addition to cheap “transparent portraits” (with the help of glass negatives) and art reproductions, they mainly dealt with architectural and landscape photography, with Cologne, especially the cathedral, Koblenz, the Siebengebirge, the Moselle area and the Rhine valley up to Wiesbaden and Mainz as well Frankfurt's preferred motifs. Selling photos as souvenirs to tourists was an essential basis of their business. They documented bridge construction on the Rhine with particular passion. He or his father received a medal for landscape photography at the General Photographic Exhibition in Berlin on May 21, 1865. On October 6, 1865 he became a member of the Berlin Photographic Association. In 1866 he employed six assistants in two studios. In 1867 they showed an album with views of the Rhine at the Paris World Exhibition. From 1870 he specialized in collotypes and carbon prints, which were sometimes mistakenly viewed as silver prints. In 1871 he set up Cologne's first lithographic printing company. In 1873 he delivered 4,000 commemorative sheets to the Cologne Cathedral Building Association using the collotype process. Creifelds was head of the “Rhine Westphalian Association for the Care of Photography and Related Arts” founded in 1876 in Cologne a. Rh.” He died in 1902 at the age of 62 and was buried in the Melaten Cemetery in Cologne.