TOURING 19TH CENTURY : PHOTOGRAPHY BUFF FINDS 1800S PRINTS IN AREA JUNK SHOP.

Byline: W. Majied-Muhammad Daily News Staff Writer

It was just a fluke, Marilyn Dalrymple says, that she even found the stack of old photos in the junk shop in Pearblossom.

``I just saw a brown edge sticking out and started digging,'' she recalled in a hesitant, timid voice. ``And the musty smell let me know that this was something old.

``They were horrible. They were underneath rusting car parts and mismatched silverware, and there were some old books stacked on top that had been wet and swollen. They were covered with dust and dirt.''

Dalrymple paid junk dealer Dave London $15 for the mildewed prints. Once she got them home and cleaned them up, Dalrymple got a better look at the prints.

Most were of old buildings in Naples, Vienna, Paris and the Rhineland. Some were labeled with names only a photo historian might recognize, such as Luigi Pozzi Locario and the mysterious Monsieur X.

``Wow! These are old photographic prints - and they are beautiful,'' Dalrymple said she thought about her discovery.

Dalrymple communicated via e-mail with Wendy Watson, curator of Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Watson said Monsieur X was an associate of Giorgio Sommer, a popular German-born photographer who settled in Italy and worked there from about 1850.

In fact, 12 of the 90 images were labeled ``G. Sommer - Napoli.''

A two-year search, on and off the Internet, has satisfied Dalrymple that her treasures were produced by Sommer or in studios belonging to Sommer.

European aristocrats on tour sought after photographic services by Sommer, best-known for his landscapes and shots of architecture, Greco-Roman antiquities and archeological sites.

``Just having something in your hands that was done 100 years ago, by a process they did then - that excites me,'' said Dalrymple, a commercial photographer who wants to make the transition to art photography.

Dale Stultz, a Los Angeles area appraiser who specializes in photography, has looked at print copies from Dalrymple's collection.

``These are kind of typical images of the time, and they could well be prints from negatives that Sommer took or commissioned,'' said Stultz, who said he would have to do a $200-an-hour appraisal to judge their authenticity.

Depending on condition, aesthetics and sentimental value, the prints might be worth $25 to $50 each, said Stultz, who worked at Sotheby's auction house in the early 1970s and founded the photography department at Christie's in 1978. He noted that a collection of albumen prints from the 1870s, attributed to Sommer, fetched about $1,100 at a Swann Gallery auction in New York.

And the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu contains about 300 images by Sommer and photographer Edmundo Behles, said museum intern Annie Lyden. Smaller collections can be found in other U.S. museums.

Dalrymple remains curious about how the photos wound up in a junk shop in the Antelope Valley, 150 years after they probably were taken.

London, a self-described ``retired piano man,'' gets his stock from a variety of sales. Often he buys the contents of storage lockers emptied for nonpayment of storage fees.

London believes he acquired the musty stack of photographs at a Pasadena estate sale 10 or 15 years ago.

``I've got stuff that's been here 40 years that I've never even looked at, . . . boxes I haven't even opened,'' London said. ``I have it and don't know what I have. I just sell it for $10 or $15.''

Photographs aren't Dalrymple's only connection to the past. She said closets, drawers and shelves of her home are full of her collection.

A camera from the 1960s is displayed prominently in her living room. Cameras litter the dining-room table. Photo props lean against the wall.

Dalrymple unabashedly admits her fascination with the past, when photographers were shrouded in dark cloth while they composed their shots and depended on time and light to etch the image.

``I can actually do the process that this photographer did,'' she said, referring to the collection of 1850s prints. ``When you're out standing on a hill, looking over the Antelope Valley with all this equipment, and you go home and do nonsilver printing . . . it's like being carried back a hundred years, and I just appreciate the work that he did,'' she said.

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Photo: (1-2-3-4-5--color in AV edition only) Marilyn Dalrymple of Lancaster looks through rare 19th century photographs she salvaged from junk in a Pearblossom store.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News