From Today, Painting is Dead - Historic Photos at the Barnes Foundation

From Today, Painting is Dead  - Early Photography in Britain and France

The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia 

February 24 - May 12, 2019

By Ed Voves

Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) was famous in his day for painting historically accurate depictions of tragic scenes of French and English history. Except for The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, painted in 1833, Delaroche is forgotten today as an artist. Instead he is remembered as a prophet.

“From today," Delaroche exclaimed after seeing one of the first photographs in 1840,  "painting is dead!” 

Delaroche's famous (if undocumented) prediction was somewhat premature. Instead, his prophecy serves as the dramatic title of an outstanding exhibition on the history of early photography, currently at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Two hundred-fifty original print photos document the rise of photography from 1839, when two rival photographic processes were demonstrated, to the 1880's.

From Today, Painting is Dead surveys both British and French photos. Last year, I reviewed a notable exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art, Salt and Silver. This was devoted almost exclusively to early British photos. The first decades of photography were noteworthy for a competitive relationship between British and French artists/scientists intent on "fixing a shadow" as the photographic process was at first called. The Barnes exhibition enables visitors to grasp how this cultural cross-pollination took place.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) Gallery view of From Today, Painting is Dead at the Barnes Foundation. The photo shows a display of Daguerreotypes.

The photographs on view at the Barnes come from a private collection belonging to Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg. A husband and wife team, they began to collect vintage photos as a hobby in the 1980's. Their collecting is not a matter of self-indulgence or buying at a whim. Mattis is a physicist, Hochberg a linguist. With backgrounds in rigorous scholarship, they amassed a vast array of original prints from the dawn of photography to Diane Arbus. 

William Henry Fox Talbot, Articles of China,1844

It needs to be emphasized that the Mattis-Hochberg collection photographs are not copies of copies. When we read the names on the exhibition photo credits - William Henry Fox Talbot, Félix Nadar, Gustave Le Gray, Julia Margaret Cameron, among others - we are seeing prints which these pioneers made themselves. These astonishing images are nothing less than the "birth certificates" of photography, historical documents as well as unforgettable visual masterpieces.

 From the very moment upon entering the exhibition, you are confronted with the Janus-like impact which photography made during its first half-century.

 The sensational impact of  photography was much the same as the revolutionary implications of railroad travel. When the first railroad line, the Stockton and Darlington Railroad in the north of England, commenced operation in 1825, only freight was pulled by steam locomotives. People traveled on horse-drawn rail cars until 1833 when it was deemed safe for human beings to entrust their fate to an "iron horse."

Six years later, William Fox Talbot, introduced the ancestor of negative photography,the calotype. This process used sheets of paper coated with silver nitrate, followed by a  wash of potassium iodide. This made it possible to make multiple copies of the same picture. 

Fox Talbot had gone public with his invention in part because of the announcement of a rival method by the French artist, Louis-Jacques Daguerre, earlier in that year, 1839. Daguerreotypes were unique, "one-off" photographs, made with iodized silvered plates which were developed by being exposed to mercury fumes.

Anonymous. Young Frenchman with Gilt Background, 1847

Initially, Daguerreotypes had more appeal to the public because of the clarity and relative permanence of the image. Fox Talbot could make multiple prints but faced a severe challenge of fading. Thus the first years of photography were marked by concentration on technical problems and copyright issues. But it wasn't long before human and social concerns nudged aside "pure" science or technological innovation, as had occurred with the first railroads.

Wasn't photography really a form of creative expression rather than a branch of science? That was the theory propounded by Gustave Le Gray in 1856.

Since its first discovery, photography has made rapid progress, especially as regards the instruments employed in its practice. It now remains for the artist to raise it to its proper position among the fine arts.

Le Gray's photos astonished viewers, earning his landscapes and seascapes wide-spread acclaim. A powerful statement of photography as an art form had been made and thanks to the collecting savvy of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg, two of Le Gray's sensational photos are on view at the Barnes.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) 

   Display of photographs by Gustave Le Gray

The relationship of photography and painting was a curious one during the 1840's and 50's. The determination to direct the new medium along an artistic path siphoned-off some of the scientific spirit of the early pioneers of "fixing a shadow." 

Gustave Le Gray's magnificent photos of sea and sky are among the great art works of the nineteenth century. Le Gray achieved his brilliant results by what today we would call "photoshop" methods. He combined two negatives, one for the sky and one for the sea (or ground in other pictures), joined at the horizon line. 

Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sète, 1857

This seamless combination created a finished photograph which did not suffer from the normal distortions of focus. Thus, a photo by Le Gray which we view on the gallery wall, replicates how the human eye would see the vista and how a painter would depict it.

A science-conscious photographer (especially during the 1800's) could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Le Gray's method is a case of "stacking the deck" in favor of photography as art. All is fair, however, in love, war - and photography

The law of unintended effect soon came into play. Two attempts of "guided photography" - one for using photos as source material for painting, the other for narrating biblical or allegorical stories with artfully posed photos - proved that photography was capable of unique creative achievement without putting on art salon "airs."

William Fox Talbot's calotypes found a ready advocate in Scotland, Sir David Brewster. He, in turn, taught the calotype process to Robert Adamson, a twenty year-old chemist who was  keen to learn. At that time, the early 1840's, Scotland was convulsed by a controversy over religious doctrine. Adamson convinced the painter, David Octavius Hill (1802-1870), to use photo portraits of some of the Scottish clergymen involved in the dispute as source material for painting a group portrait.

The resulting painting, which I saw in the 2016 exhibit, Painting the Shadow, was remarkably lifeless. Hill and Adamson, being stubborn Scots, decided to continue experimenting with the camera to create portraits of their countrymen.

In an amazing creative leap, Hill and Adamson dispensed with painted final versions. The photograph itself would be the intended masterpiece and that is exactly what the incredible pictures  they took of the seafaring folk of Newhaven, a fishing village near Edinburgh, are.

Masterpieces.

The Mattis and Hochberg collection has several of the photos of Hill and Adamson. The picture of the fisherman, Sandy Linton, and his sons, or "bairns" to use the colloquial Scottish word, is surely one of the greatest photos ever taken.

D.O. Hill & Robert Adamson, Sandy Linton, his Boat and his Bairns, New Haven, 1845

After examining Hill and Adamson’s calotypes, the aged watercolor painter, John Harden (1772-1847) declared, “The pictures produced are as Rembrandt’s but improved.” 
After studying Sandy Linton, His Boat and His Bairns, it is difficult to disagree with Harden's view.

Hill and Adamson spent the next few years making over 2,500 calotype photos of breathtaking beauty and originality. Then, as so often happened to artists and writers during the 1800's, the young Adamson fell sick and died in January 1848. A precious moment of genius was cut short but the status of photography as an art form had been established beyond doubt.

The second instance of the law of unintended effect involved one of the most remarkable artists and photographers of the 1800's: Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879).

Cameron's family belonged to the Anglo-Indian colonial elite. Normally, these empire-builders occupied their spare time by shooting tigers while in India and hunting foxes during their leave-time in England. In 1863, Cameron's elder daughter and her husband gave her a camera as a present. Cameron was back in England, living on a rural estate called Freshwater.

"It may amuse you, Mother to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater."

Photography did amuse Cameron. A gregarious, if eccentric, person, Cameron had a circle of friends among England's literary and artistic elite, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson. She began to photograph friends, family members and servants in recreated scenes from the Bible, Shakespeare, the Arthurian legends and other epic tales. 

Julia Margaret Cameron, King David and Bathsheba, 1869

For a photo of the aged King David and his love-interest, Bathsheba, Cameron posed Sir Henry Taylor, a poetry-writing official of the Colonial Office, and a young house maid named Mary Hillier. 

At first glance, Cameron's David and Bathsheba seems suffused with Victorian sentimentality. Closer examination shows that this photo, and virtually all of Cameron's tableaux vivants, are profound studies of the human personality under stress or grappling with desires which cannot be satisfied.

Usually, a survey exhibition only has one or two of Cameron's photos on display. Thanks to the brilliant collecting of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg, the Barnes exhibit is so well endowed with examples of Cameron's oeuvre that we can readily appreciate the depth of her insight into human nature. Furthermore, many of the photos by Cameron on view are ones not often displayed in exhibitions held in the United States.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) 

   Display of 4 photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron

Cameron returned to Britain's Indian empire, where she died in 1879. Less than a decade later, in 1888, George Eastman's Kodak camera was introduced. Pre-loaded with a role of flexible film, the Kodak enabled amateurs to take one hundred pictures. Development of the photos was entrusted to professionals. The "heroic" age of photography was over.

The debate over whether photography was an art or a science - or a bit of both -continued.  At the very end of the era which the Barnes exhibition covers, a British photographer, Peter Henry Emerson, sparked a controversy over the status of photography which gained attention around the world. Ironically, it is Emerson's 1885 photo, Gathering Water Lilies, which appears in a near life-size print at the entrance of the exhibition.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019), The entrance to the From Today, Painting is Dead exhibition. The wall-illustration shows Peter Henry Emerson's Gathering Water Lilies.

This superbly composed image was part of a series of photographs which Emerson took of rural people living in the marshes of eastern England known as the Norfolk Broads. Emerson documented the folk ways of this region as social changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution began reaching this remote region. Gathering water lilies was no Sunday-afternoon activity but a matter of necessity. The people of the Norfolk Broads used the water lilies in fish traps, an activity Emerson wanted to record for posterity.

Emerson, like Robert Adamson, had a background in science. He published a book collection of his photos in 1888, Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, and the following year he authored a major treatise, Naturalistic Photography for the Students of the Art. With these books and his impressive body of photographs, Emerson was poised to become a major force in the cultural world such as Alfred Stieglitz was shortly to do in the United States.

A year later, Emerson made a complete "about-face". He declared "Photography not Art"  and published a pamphlet entitled The Death of Naturalistic Photography. Emerson was much influenced by Darwin's theories of evolution and the many and conflicting schools of psychology. Trying to incorporate all that mass of scientific data into an all-embracing philosophy of art was too much even for a brilliant man like Emerson.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) 

   Detail of Peter Henry Emerson's Gathering Water Lilies, 1885.

Emerson would have been better advised to follow his own earlier advice by devoting himself to what he could do and do it well - in short to focus and take great pictures. Let the photos speak for themselves!

Fortunately for us, Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg, are extremely accomplished at the art of focusing and collecting great photographs. This superb exhibition of masterpieces of early photography at the Barnes Foundation is a testament to their dedication as collectors and for allowing the "voice" of these wonderful photographs to be heard.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                                                           
Images courtesy of the Barnes Foundation and the Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg Collection.  Gallery photos courtesy of Anne Lloyd.

Introductory Image: 
Peter Henry Emerson (British, 1856-1936) Gathering Water Lilies, 1885. Platinum print.    7 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) Gallery view of the From Today, Painting is Dead exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. The photo shows a display of Daguerreotypes.

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877). Articles of China, 1844. Salt print from calotype negative. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg

Anonymous. Young Frenchman with Gilt Background, 1847. Sixth-plate French daguerreotype. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg. 

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) Gallery view of the From Today, Painting is Dead exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. The photos shown here are works by Gustave Le Gray. 

Gustave Le Gray (French,1820-1884). The Great Wave, Sète, 1857. Albumen print from two collodion-on-glass negatives. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg

D.O. Hill (British, 1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (British, 1826-1848). Sandy Linton, his Boat and his Bairns, New Haven, 1845, Salt print from a calotype negative, 7 5/8 x 5 3/4 inches. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg.


Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879). King David and Bathsheba (Henry Taylor and Mary Hillier), 1869. Albumen print from collodion-on-glass negative. Collection of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) Gallery view of the From Today, Painting is Dead exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. The photos shown here are (clockwise from top-left) Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, 1864; Dora as Bride. (Annie Chinery Cameron), 1869; The Dream, 1869; Summer Days (May Prinsep, Mary Ryan, Freddy Gould & Elizabeth Keown), c. 1866.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) Photo of the entrance to the From Today, Painting is Dead exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. The wall-illustration shows Peter Henry Emerson's photo, Gathering Water Lilies, 1885.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2019) Detail of Peter Henry Emerson's Gathering Water Lilies, 1885.

Salt and Silver, Early Photography, 1840-1860 at the Yale Center for British Art

Salt and Silver, Early Photography,1840-1860

The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven CT.

June 28, 2018 to September 17, 2018

Reviewed by Ed Voves

In art, as in the rest of life, timing is everything.

The Yale Center for British Art is currently presenting an exhibition on the birth of photography during the years following 1839. In that year, two distinct forms of "fixing an image" were created. The timing of these startling innovations was impeccable, just in time to record the Victorian age!

The Yale exhibition, Salt and Silver, Early Photography, 1840-1860, showcases rare early photos from the collection of the Wilson Center of Photography in London. The exhibit focuses on the photographic innovations of the English aristocrat, William Fox Talbot (1800-1877) and notable successors including Robert Adamson and Roger Fenton. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2018), Gallery view of the Salt and Silver exhibit

 at the Yale Center for British Art.

During the 1830's, as we will comment upon in some detail, Talbot experimented with creating or "fixing" an image. Talbot initially called his endeavor "photogenic drawing." 
Using a small, crude box camera, Talbot focused the lens to project an image on to a piece of paper, placed inside. The paper had been soaked in salt water and then brushed with a solution of silver nitrate. This recipe rendered the paper photo-sensitive - thus giving the Yale exhibit its unusual name.

Talbot was a true polymath, what we would call a Renaissance man. He was expert in solving mathematical equations and the study of ancient cuneiform writing. For good measure, Talbot was elected to Parliament in 1832.

As a result of his wide-ranging interests and duties,Talbot devoted only a portion of his time to experiments with "photogenic drawing." He only went public with his discoveries after the French artist, Louis Daguerre, introduced his method of "fixing" an image on silver-plated sheets of copper. 

Daguerre was something of an opportunist, but to be fair, he had been at work on finding a photographic process longer than Talbot. Beginning in the mid-1820's, Daguerre collaborated with a brilliant French scientist, Nicéphore Niépce. A "light painting," the world's first experimental photograph, was made by Niépce in 1827 but he died in 1833. Daguerre carried on with the research and in January 1839, he demonstrated his photographic technique.

Talbot was rather chagrined to be bested in a competition that he had not realized even existed. Moreover, his salt-based images compared unfavorably with the clarity of Daguerre's photos. Talbot introduced a more light-sensitive paper and, at the suggestion of Britain's leading scientist, Sir John Herschel, he used hyposulfite of soda as a "fixer" for his images. The September 1840 experiment was a complete success. “Hypo" is still used today in the process of keeping black-and-white prints from fading.

Talbot called his new and improved process, calotypes, from the Greek word for beautiful, kalos. Calotypes, also called "Talbotypes," marked the introduction of the negative-based version of photography. Many prints of a photo could be produced from a negative rather than just one, as was the case with Daguerreotypes.

Despite these improvements, calotypes remained vulnerable to fading. Talbot was vigilant with quality control and actually convened a group of experts called the "Fading Committee" to deal with the problem. He also spent much of his later years developing the photogravure process which enabled photos to be reproduced and printed as illustrations in books and magazines. 

With the massed production methods of the Industrial Revolution now underway, William Fox Talbot’s techniques were unveiled at the most propitious moment that could be imagined. He was a true scientific revolutionary, while remaining emotionally rooted in the Romantic-era mindset of his personal hero, Sir Walter Scott.

William Fox Talbot, The Photographer’s Daughter, Ela Theresa Talbot, 1843–44

Talbot's calotypes, like the 1843 portrait of his daughter, Ela Theresa, combine startling realism with an otherworldly nuance. When you focus on little Ela's well-delineated hands, you can almost sense the feel of the fabric of her dress on her hands. Yet her face, with its deep-set eyes, belongs in a different dimension of reality.

These comments are based on a subjective interpretation of the circumstances of the "fixing" of this image. Ela Theresa was eight years old when this photo was taken. It must have been an excruciating ordeal to hold her pose long enough for her father to "fix" her image. Likewise, the fact that Talbot used salted paper accounts for its hazy, ghost-like aspect.

It has to be admitted, however, that all photos are "ghosts" of the image they fix. Regardless of the technique or materials used, photographs are but faint traces of what was.To achieve that effect motivated Talbot to set about trying to discover a way to "cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper."

In 1833, Talbot endeavored to use a camera lucida, a draftsman's tool which projected an image on a sketchbook so that it could be more readily drawn.This experiment was not a success. Talbot was grieved that he could never fully capture “the inimitable beauty of the pictures of nature’s painting which the glass lens of the Camera throws upon the paper in its focus — fairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as rapidly to fade away.”  

William Fox Talbot, Scene in a Paris Street, 1843

Talbot's calotypes retained an element of "fairy pictures" even as he increasingly found ways to make these images more durable. Yet, he was a man of science and he set about "fixing" all manner of images from the construction of the column honoring Lord Nelson in London's Trafalgar Square to Paris street sciences to botanical specimens and classical busts in the British Museum. 

William Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature,1844–46

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art - Not on view in Salt & Silver exhibit

Talbot may have come in second to Daguerre but he was the first to publish a book illustrated with photos. Published as a series between 1844 and 1846, The Pencil of Nature, is recognized today as the "Gutenberg Bible" of photography.

The decade of Talbot's great achievements was not a time for relaxed, ivory-tower research. The "Hungry 40's" were marked by deadly cholera epidemics, the Irish Potato Famine and the beginning of organized labor centering on the Chartist petition to Parliament. The ideal of "the People" was making itself felt.

Talbot's calotype methods was used by two Scotsmen, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, to document the lives of Scotland's "people."  A colleague of Talbot, Sir David Brewster, taught the calotype process to Adamson, barely into his twenties and looking to make his mark. Hill, a veteran painter, was more dubious. But Adamson convinced him to use photo portraits of Scottish clergymen as source material for painting a group portrait. In short order, Hill embraced photography with the "faith of the converted."

The painting, when it was completed years later, was a "dud." But the calotype portraits were hailed as an immediate triumph.

“The pictures produced are as Rembrandt’s but improved,” declared the  watercolorist John Harden after seeing Hill and Adamson’s calotypes. He was only slightly exaggerating.

David Octavius Hill & Robert Adamson, Newhaven Fisherman, ca. 1845

Hill and Adamson next focused their attention on the fishing village of Newhaven, home to some of Scotland's most rugged seamen and their redoubtable wives. This extraordinary documentation of the nobility and humanity of everyday people - the "laboring classes" - has never been surpassed, even by the WPA photographers during America's Great Depression almost a century later.

David Octavius Hill & Robert Adamson, Mrs. Elizabeth (Johnstone) Hall, ca. 1843-45

The possibilities and potential of photography were being explored and tested in ways that were strikingly modern and democratic. In a few short years, the dynamic team of Hill and Adamson made over three thousand photographs. 

Then tragedy struck. Adamson died in 1848, aged twenty-six. One of the great artistic partnerships of all time was cut-short in its first flowering.

In 1855, at the suggestion of Prince Albert, Roger Fenton was sent to record the military campaign against Russia in the Crimean War. For the first time, an authentic view of the insanity of war was made possible.

Roger Fenton, Captain Lord Balgonie, Grenadier Guards,1855

That is exactly what we see on the beleaguered face of Lord Balgonie of the Grenadier Guards. Much of the Crimean War was fought in trenches similar to World War I, with bone-numbing cold adding to the horror. Lord Balgonie looks out at us with what modern psychologists call the "thousand-yard stare." He died shortly after the war from his wounds.

The sharpness of Fenton's images was the result of a new innovation in photography. Glass plates were used as negatives, despite their bulk and fragility. Amazingly, a British officer in India, Linnaeus Tripe, used glass plate negatives under very difficult conditions for his topographical study of the ancient temples and buildings of India and Burma. 

Linnaeus Tripe, Puthu Mundapum, View of the Nave.Trimul Naik’s choultry, 1858

Tripe also used waxed-paper negatives, another in the proliferating innovations of photography. By 1860, the point at which the Yale exhibit ends, Talbot's calotypes were seldom used. In 1858, John Wheeley Gough Gutch "fixed" the image of the ruins of Tintern Abbey, using a glass plate negative. It was very much in the spirit of Talbot's work, modern in technique, romantic in spirit.

John Wheeley Gough Gutch, Abbey Ruins [Tintern Abbey], ca. 1858

In later life, as we have seen, William Fox Talbot devoted most of his available time and energy developing the photogravure process. Considering the flood of images which now engulfs the modern world, Talbot's accomplishments in the realm of printing are almost as important as his innovations in photography.

The curators of Salt and Silver wisely refrained from prolonged study of the development of photogravure. The exhibit also does not examine the way that Victorian painters used photography as an inspiration for their work. A recent Tate Britain exhibition, Painting with Light, covered that topic with a comparative display of Victorian paintings and photos in 2016.

Because of their sensitivity to light, calotypes can rarely be shown. We therefore have a lot to be grateful for to the Yale Center for British Art for presenting this wonderful display of the founding works of photography.

Salt and Silver is a magical exhibition devoted to a truly "magic" moment in the history of art.The birth of photography occurred just as the modern world made its presence felt in the shape of the Industrial Revolution. Photography was there, at the ready, to make a record. 

William Fox Talbot opened our eyes just in the nick of time.

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Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved  
                                                                      
Introductory Image:                                                                                               
William Henry Fox Talbot (British:1800–1877), Nelson’s Column Under Construction, Trafalgar Square, April 1844. Salted paper print from paper negative, courtesy of Wilson Centre for Photography

Ed Voves, Photo (2018), Gallery view of the Salt and Silver: Early Photography, 1840–1860 exhibit at the Yale Center for British Art.

William Henry Fox Talbot (British:1800–1877), The Photographer’s Daughter, Ela Theresa Talbot, 1843–44. Salted paper print from paper negative. Courtesy of the Wilson Centre for Photography

William Henry Fox Talbot (British:1800–1877), Scene in a Paris Street, 1843. Salted paper print from paper negative. Courtesy of the Wilson Centre for Photography

William Henry Fox Talbot (British:1800–1877), The Pencil of Nature,1844–46. Subscription book issued in separate fascicles. Illustrated with salted paper prints from paper negatives. 15.2 x 20.3 cm (6 x 8 in.) Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Jean Horblit, in memory of Harrison D. Horblit, 1994. #1994.197.1–.6

David Octavius Hill (British:1802-1870) & Robert Adamson (British:1821-1848) Newhaven Fisherman (Alexander Rutherford, William Ramsay & John Liston), ca.1845. Salted paper print from paper negative, Courtesy of the Wilson Centre for Photography

David Octavius Hill (British: 1802-1870) & Robert Adamson (British:1821-1848) Mrs. Elizabeth (Johnstone) Hall, Newhaven Fishwife, ca. 1843-45. Salted paper print from paper negative. Courtesy of the Wilson Center of Photography

Roger Fenton (British: 1819–1869), Captain Lord Balgonie, Grenadier Guards,1855. Salted paper print from glass plate negative. Courtesy of the Wilson Centre for Photography

Linnaeus Tripe (British: 1822–1902), Puthu Mundapum, View of the Nave.Trimul Naik’s choultry, 1858. Salted paper print from glass plate negative. Courtesy of the Wilson Centre for Photography

John Wheeley Gough Gutch (British: 1809–1862), Abbey Ruins [Tintern Abbey], ca. 1858. Salted paper print from glass plate negative. Courtesy of the Wilson Centre for Photography