A cabinet card and four cartes de visite of occupational and street types from North Africa and the Middle East, circa 1870 to 1890. The cabinet card is a staged game scene by Jean Geiser of Algiers, titled in pencil on the verso “Joueurs d’échecs” (chess players).

In the Geiser, three men gather at a small game table. At left an elderly player with a white beard sits barefoot in a turban and ragged hooded cloak, chin propped on his hand. At right his opponent, in a striped hooded robe and white head cloth, rests his head on one hand and reaches for a piece with the other. Between them a standing man in a small cap, braided jacket and wide striped sash leans in to point at the board. A tray of small cups waits on a low carved octagonal stand in the foreground. The print is on a blue mottled mount.

The first carte shows a veiled fruit seller balancing a flat woven basket on her head and holding out a single fruit, a barefoot girl in a headscarf standing beside her with one hand at her chest. The second is a full-length portrait of a mustached man in a tasseled cap, short open jacket, striped sash and voluminous trousers, holding a cane across his body beside a turned balustrade. The third shows a white-bearded porter in turban and patched clothing, bent nearly double under a trunk roped to his back, a pail in his hand. The fourth, a horizontal view taken outdoors against a whitewashed wall, shows a groom in a patterned cap, vest and striped trousers holding the bridle of a donkey fitted with a forked wooden saddle over a mottled blanket.

Geiser (1848-1923) was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and raised in Algiers, where his mother Julie Geiser opened a photographic studio in the 1850s. He took over the business in 1874 and worked at 7 rue Bab-Azoun for nearly fifty years, adding a branch at Blida and building one of the most successful photographic firms in Algeria. He was known for staged scenes of daily life and later became a leading publisher of postcards.

Cabinet card imprint: Jean Geiser, Phot., 7, Rue Bab-Azoun, Alger. The porter is captioned “Carrier” in ink on the mount, and the standing man carries an inscription in Arabic script on the verso. The four cartes are without photographer’s imprint.