The Remarkable Photographs of Leon Abdalian (Event Video)

Aaron Schmidt, the Curator of Photographs for the Boston Public Library’s Special Collections speaks about Leon Abdalian. The photographer Leon Hampartzoum Abdalian was born in 1884 in what was Cilician Armenia, then located in the Ottoman Empire (now modern Turkey). He migrated with his family to the United States in April of 1896 and they eventually settled in JP. It is believed that he was largely self-taught as a photographer. For most of the time he was photographing (1913 -1967) he also worked full-time as a conductor on the Boston Elevated Railway. Leon Abdalian was primarily a large-format photographer. His photographs were published in the Boston Globe, Boston Traveler and Boston Herald newspapers. He had photographs published in National Geographic Magazine in March of 1920 as part of an article on business in Massachusetts. Leon Abdalian retired as a conductor in 1951 but continued his career as a photographer into the 1960s almost to the year of his death in 1967.

Please find the photograph collection at the Digital Commonwealth. This program was supported by a grant from the Bridge Street Fund, a special initiative of Mass Humanities.

The event was held on April 25, 2021 at 6:00 p.m via Zoom. Click on the triangle below to watch the presentation.