New York State Education Department Division of Visual Instruction Caption Notebooks for Original Negatives by Rudolph Raffius

Numeric by photographer's assigned negative number.

Rudolph Raffius was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1883 and emigrated to the United States in 1902. Between that time and 1920, he resided in Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Butler, Pennsylvania; Detroit, Michigan; and New York City. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1916.

On a 1920 passport application, he listed his occupation as "Photography for Education." On the same application, he indicated that he intended to travel to Central and South America, as well as Cuba and the West Indies to make photographs for use in teaching. Underwood & Underwood, Inc. of New York City, a company which specialized in supplying visual instruction materials to schools, confirmed that Raffius was travelling for the reasons he stated. Raffius had entered into an agreement with Underwood & Underwood to photograph and provide negatives depicting the principal industries in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. At the time, Raffius was residing and working out of a studio in Corona, Queens, New York. Raffius died in 1956.

Photographer Rudolph Raffius used the notebooks in this series to catalog and describe negatives that he provided to the Division of Visual Instruction (DVI). Each notebook entry includes a brief description of the image, location where photographed, date photographed, and negative number assigned by Raffius. The DVI used many of the negatives to produce test lantern slides, which were then assigned preliminary numbers (denoted by an "X" preceding the number). The notebook entries for these negatives are annotated with the preliminary numbers (in red ink).

The DVI subsequently classified some of the images submitted by Raffius for use in educational slide sets loaned to schools. Although these images were assigned negative and call numbers, the DVI did not annotate the notebook entries with these numbers. The images cataloged and described in the notebooks depict industrial sites, buildings and other structures, works of art, people, and outdoor scenes in European countries including Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, and Belgium.

Use of original caption notebooks is restricted due to fragile condition. Photocopies of the original caption notebooks are available for use and creation of additional copies.