"Jacob Granat was born in 1871 in Lemberg (today Lviv), a city in Western Ukraine, at the time part of the Austrian empire. In 1900, at the invitation of his uncle Jacob Kalt, he moved to Veracruz in Mexico, and a year later in Mexico City. We know that he had an uncle or a cousin working at the casa Boker, one of the most successful German owned business in Mexico. Interestingly, Guillermo Kahlo worked at casa Boker during the last years of the 19th century, and probably took his first photographs during the construction of the new Boker shop in 1898-1899.
We also know that Jacob Granat became rapidly the « curio king » of the capital, selling luggages, post cards and other souvenirs from his shop in calle San Francisco, in the Historical center. But the bulk of the business was apparently luggages, and we are inclined to think that Jacob Granat was not the photographer, but the distributor of these images, either in photographic prints or in post cards.
Guillermo Kahlo and Jacob Granat were born the same year (1871), were both German speaking and both had strong connections with the Boker family. It is therefore almost certain that they knew each other. It is tempting to speculate that when Granat opened his « curio shop » he asked Kahlo for some tipos photographs. We will need further research to validate this hypothesis." - https://earlylatinamerica.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/the-adventurous-and-tragic-life-of-jacob-granat/, 07.06.2021
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