Original Self Portrait Photograph of Filmmaker Merl La Voy.

Original silver gelatin photograph. 9 3/4 x 8 inches. Self portrait of Merle La Voy. It portrays Merl standing next to his hand-crank movie camera. The camera tripod is weighted down with coconuts and two indigenous Islanders are holding palm fronds over La Voy and his camera. An intriguing self-portrait of this adventurous photographer. Merl La Voy was an American photographer, cinematographer, director. One of the first internationally famous news photographers, Merl La Voy was born in 1885 in the small town of Royalton, Wisconsin. By 1907 he was working for the Great Northern Development Company, which was prospecting for copper on the Kotsina River in Alaska. In 1912 he was a member of the Parker-Browne Expedition that made an attempt to climb the summit of Mount McKinley, the highest mountain peak in North America, though bad weather forced them to turn back just 125 feet short of reaching their goal. While the United States only entered World War I in 1917, by 1915 LaVoy had already left for France, covering the war under the auspices of the American Relief Clearing House. His first film, Heroic France (1917), was widely shown and this was followed by Victorious Serbia (1918), made for the American Red Cross, as was The Children of the Sahara (1919-20). During the war he also visited Turkey, Macedonia, Transylvania, Greece and Siberia. At some stage during this decade he was also in Mexico to photograph the revolution that was taking place.In 1927 Pathé appointed La Voy as their peripatetic cameraman and in this capacity he travelled the world. When, in 1928-29, President-elect Herbert Hoover went to South America on a goodwill tour, La Voy was on board the U.S.S. Maryland to cover the journey. During the 1920s he also visited Australia, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines and China, and was responsible for a comprehensive photographic study of Inuit life. Many of the photographs he took in China were taken in Nanking during the Kuomintang rule of Chiang Kai-shek, from 1928 onwards. Back in Alaska in 1932, he was a member of the Lindley-Liek Expedition on a return journey to Mount McKinley to recover the frozen remains of Theodore G. Koven, who died in an accident during an expedition the previous year.…