Henry Peter Bosse

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Henry Peter Bosse (1844-1903) was a Prussian/German-American photographer, cartographer and cartoonist.

Having emigrated to the United States around 1870, Henry Bosse settled in Chicago where he was involved with the stationery business. By the 1880s Bosse had found employment as a draughtsman and cartographer with the Army Corps of Engineers at Rock Island, Illinois. Between 1882 and 1892 he photographed the upper Mississippi River with a passion for the land and place, and published his large format Views on the Mississippi River between Minneapolis, Minn and St. Louis, Mo. as oversized albums of highly detailed blue cyanotypes. One of these albums was shown at the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, a turning point in photographic history.

Since the Alexander Makenzie album of Henry Bosse cyanotypes surfaced at a Sotheby's auction in 1990, Henry Bosse's photography has been accorded genius status, with individual prints now included in the permanent collection of prominent museums like the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Little is known about Bosse's early life and education, although his surviving family asserts some connection to Abraham Bosse (1620-1676), the famous French engraver and topography theorist. He had two sons, Alexis Bosse and Julien Bosse. Bosse's photography has been the subject of several books, most notably Mississippi Blue (Twin Palms 2002, ISBN 0-944092-98-5) by Charles Wehrenberg, and Views on the Mississippi (UMP 2001, ISBN 0-8166-3647-8) by Mark Neuzil and Merry Foresta.