British photography in the nineteenth century Book

This book brings together a set of new essays on seventeen fine art photographers working in Britain in the nineteenth century. In every case the photographs they made contained artistic elements that carried them beyond sheer record. The photographers represented worked within various pictorial traditions. Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor, made family group portraits that derive from the eighteenth-century conversation piece; Hill and Adamson drew upon the great traditions of portraiture and genre in Scottish painting; Julia Margaret Cameron made allusion in her portraits to biblical scenes; Roger Fenton's idea of landscape beauty followed precepts laid down by the English watercolor painters; P.H. Emerson's genre studies reflected the practice of the New English Art Club; and Frederick Evans's architectural work was founded on studies of natural forms such as the spiral. Other essays introduce the centuries-long use of drawing-machines prior to the invention of photography, and the nineteenth-century search for a photomechanical process by which to render both the breadth and the detail of the photochemical print.