In the early twentieth century notable photographic work in Scotland included that of visiting artists, such as Alvin Langdon Coburn and Paul Strand. There was also the record of the Gorbals in Glasgow made by Bert Hardy, Joseph MacKenzie and Oscar Marzaroli. Having pioneered photography in the late nineteenth century, the artistic attainment of native photographers was not high in the early twentieth century. In the late twentieth century, photography in Scotland enjoyed a renaissance, encouraged by figures including Richard Hough and Murray Johnston. More recent exponents who have received acclaim include Pradip Malde, Maud Sulter and Owen Logan.
Scotland lacks a national gallery of photography, but there are the dedicated Stills and Portfolio galleries in Edinburgh and space dedicated to photography at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Street Level Gallery in Glasgow. Photography is taught at degree and further education level in Scotland and the history of photography is usually taught within the context of art history.
In the early nineteenth century Scottish scientists David Brewster (1781–1868) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) played a major part in the development of the techniques of photography.[1] Brewster was an expert on optics and had refined the microscope and invented the kaleidoscope. He collaborated with a number of figures, including Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77), who had developed the calotype photographic process.[2] Maxwell was among the first scientists to investigate colour and produced the first colour photograph in 1861, displayed by using three magic lantern projectors with different colour filters.[3]
Artistic development
According to photo historian David Burn "there is a good case to be made for the proposition that the greatest contribution that Scotland has made to the visual arts, possibly to the arts as a whole, is in the art of photography".[1] A circle of scientists and artists gathered around Brewster in Edinburgh with the objective of refining the science and art of photography. In 1839 of the five examples of the daguerrotype and twenty "Photogenic Drawings" by Talbot were shown at the Exhibition of Arts, Manufacturers and Practical Sciences at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh. In 1841 four more daguerreotypes were displayed at the annual exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy. By 1843 the Edinburgh Calotype Club had been formed, probably the world's first photographic club. The club dissolved in the mid-1850s as new processes appeared, such as the albumen print and wet collodion process. The Glasgow Photographic Society was founded in 1855, The Photographic Society of Scotland formed in 1856 and the Edinburgh Photographic Society in 1861.[4]
Members of the Edinburgh Calotype Club included chemist Robert Adamson (1821–48) and artist David Octavius Hill (1821–70), who as Hill & Adamson formed the first photographic studio in Scotland at Rock House in Edinburgh in 1843. They originally worked together with the aim of recording the members of the Disruption Assembly, which saw the division of the Church of Scotland in 1843, for a large composite painting, but soon the photographs themselves became a major medium. Their output of around 3,000 calotype images in four years are considered some of the first and finest artistic uses of photography.[1] They produced images influenced by genre art included their Edinburgh Ale (1843–46), where the poses of three drinking companions are based on scenes from Dutch art.[5] Hill and Adamson also pioneered the recording of rural life as a suitable subject for photography, recording the fisher folk of Newhaven, near Edinburgh.[6] Adamson trained Thomas Roger (1833–88) of St. Andrews, who was one of the first commercial photographers and beside commercial portraits, produced many genre style compositions.[7]
Other pioneers included Thomas Annan (1829–87), who took portraits and landscapes, and whose photographs of the Glasgow slums were among the first to use the medium as a social record.[1] Annan also pioneered the recording of industrial change, photographing the pumping stations and canals of the new waterways to Glasgow in the 1850s.[8] The theme of industrial development was taken up by Evelyn Carey (1858–1932), who recorded step-by-step the building of the Forth Railway Bridge.[8] Also interested in urban landscapes was Archibald Burns, who occupied part of the Rock House studio and whose The Horse Wynd and The Cowgate (both 1871) emphasised the picturesque aspects of Edinburgh's urban landscape.[9] John Thomson (1852–90) undertook a similar documentary study of London street life between 1876 and 1877.[10]
Other important figures included Thomas Keith (1827–95), one of the first architectural photographers.[11]George Washington Wilson (1823–93) pioneered instant photography[1] and landscape photography, becoming "photographer to the Queen" and his Aberdeen company was the largest producer of topographical prints by 1880.[12][1]Clementina Hawarden (1822–65) produced posed portraits that were among the first in a tradition of female photography.[13] In the 1850s amateur photographer Mary Jane Matherson took her camera outside to create compositions that can be described as genre art, including A Picnic in the Glen and An Angler at Rest.[14]
Documentary war photography was pioneered by Scottish surgeon James MacCosh (1805–85), who produced photographs of the Second Sikh War (1848–49) and the Second Burmese War (1852–53). Scottish photographer James Robertson (1813–88) worked in the Crimean War (1853–56), producing a record of the Siege of Sevastopol in 1855[15] and then being employed by the British army in India.[16] The émigré Scot Alexander Graham played a major role in photographing the American Civil War, taking iconic images of President Lincoln on the Battlefield of Antietam (1862) and Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter (1863).[17] Other Scots that made there reputation as photographers abroad, often being the first to exploit the medium there include William Carrick (1827–78) in Russia, William Notman (1826–91) and Alexander Henderson (1831–1913) in Canada, James MacDonald In Israel, John Thompson in Asia, Robert MacPherson (1811–72) in Italy and George Valentine (1852–90) in New Zealand.[1]
Annan's son James Craig Annan (1864–1946) popularised the work of Hill & Adamson in the US and worked with American photographic advocate Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946). Annan and Stieglitz pioneered the more stable photogravure process.[18] The younger Annan also joined the Linked Ring, which broke away from the Royal Photographic Society in 1892 with a manifesto that saw photography as much as an art as a science and that it should be treated as the equal of conventional visual art. He championed the "artistic" framing and hanging of photographic exhibitions.[19]
Twentieth century to the Present
A number of Scots acted as photographers in the First World War (1914–18), including dispatch rider and ambulance driver Mairi Chisholm (1896–1981) who used a lightweight Vest Pocket Kodak camera, that allowed her to capture an image during a bombardment, in her Chishom and Knocker Under Fire at Pervyse (1917), which can be seen as the first "action shots" of war.[20]
Having pioneered photography in the late nineteenth century, the artistic attainment of native photographers was not high in the early twentieth century.[1] Notable photographic work in Scotland included that of visiting artists, such as Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), who produced illustrations for the work of Robert Louis Stevenson and Paul Strand (1890–1976), who produced atmospheric depictions of Hebridean landscapes. There was also the record of the Gorbals in Glasgow made by figures such as Bert Hardy (1913–95), Joseph MacKenzie (b. 1929) and Oscar Marzaroli (1933–88),[1] and by Wolfgang Suschitzky (b. 1912) in Glasgow and Dundee.[21]
In the late twentieth century, photography in Scotland enjoyed a renaissance, encouraged by figures including Richard Hough (1945–85), who founded the Stills Gallery for photography in Edinburgh in 1977, and Murray Johnston (1949–90), who was its director (1982–86).[22] The 1986 Constructed Narratives exhibition at the Stills Gallery signalled the renaissance, showcasing the work of Calum Colvin (b. 1961) and Ron O'Donnell (b. 1952), both of whom produced intensely coloured and constructed photographic works.[23] Important practitioners in Scotland included the American Thomas Joshua Cooper (b. 1946).[1] More recent exponents who have received acclaim include Pradip Malde (b. 1957), Maud Sulter (1960–2008) and Owen Logan (b. 1963). The range of contemporary talent was showcased by the 1994 Light in the Dark Room exhibition in 1995.[1]
Galleries
Scotland lacks a national gallery of photography, but there are the dedicated Stills and Portfolio galleries in Edinburgh.[1] There is also space dedicated to photography at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Street Level Gallery in Glasgow. Traditional art galleries also increasingly accept exhibitions of photographic art.[1]
↑ S. Stevenson, A. Morrison-Low, A. Simpson, J. Lawson, R. Mackenzie, R. Gillanders and J. Lawson, Light from the Dark Room: A Celebration of Scottish Photography (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1995), ISBN 0903598582, pp. 16–17.
↑ S. Stevenson, A. Morrison-Low, A. Simpson, J. Lawson, R. Mackenzie, R. Gillanders and J. Lawson, Light from the Dark Room: A Celebration of Scottish Photography (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1995), ISBN 0903598582, pp. 20–1.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, pp. 26–7.
↑ J. Hannavy, ed., Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography (London: Routledge, 2013), ISBN 1135873275, p. 575.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, p. 112.
↑ R. Simpson, The Photography of Victorian Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 074865464X, p. 77.
1 2 T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, p. 107.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, p. 99.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, p. 100.
↑ H. Gernsheim, Creative Photography: Aesthetic Trends, 1839–1960 (Courier Dover, 1962), ISBN 0486267504, p. 239.
↑ O. Checkland and S. G. Checkland, Industry and Ethos: Scotland, 1832–1914 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989), ISBN 0-7486-0102-3, p. 143.
↑ G. Clarke, Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), ISBN 0192842005, pp. 51–2.
↑ R. Simpson, The Photography of Victorian Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 074865464X, p. 65.
↑ Annand, A. McK. (June 1959). "Sevastopol After Its Capture, 1855". Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 37 (150): 82–85. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, p. 93.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, pp. 93–4.
↑ M. MacDonald, Scottish Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), ISBN 0500203334, pp. 146–7.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, pp. 27–8.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, p. 95.
↑ T. Normand, Scottish Photography: a History (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2007), ISBN 1906307075, p. 103.
Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limit the ability of this early process to record low contrast details and textures. The term calotype comes from the Ancient Greek καλός, "beautiful", and τύπος, "impression".
William Henry Fox Talbot FRS FRSE FRAS was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. His work in the 1840s on photomechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. He was the holder of a controversial patent that affected the early development of commercial photography in Britain. He was also a noted photographer who contributed to the development of photography as an artistic medium. He published The Pencil of Nature (1844–1846), which was illustrated with original salted paper prints from his calotype negatives and made some important early photographs of Oxford, Paris, Reading, and York.
David Octavius Hill was a Scottish painter, photographer and arts activist. He formed Hill & Adamson studio with the engineer and photographer Robert Adamson between 1843 and 1847 to pioneer many aspects of photography in Scotland.
Robert Adamson was a Scottish chemist and pioneer photographer at Hill & Adamson. He is best known for his pioneering photographic work with David Octavius Hill and producing some 2500 calotypes, mostly portraits, within 5 years after being hired by Hill in 1843.
Alexander Boyd FRSA is a Scottish artist and photographer.
Scottish art is the body of visual art made in what is now Scotland, or about Scottish subjects, since prehistoric times. It forms a distinctive tradition within European art, but the political union with England has led its partial subsumation in British art.
Thomas Annan (1829–1887) was a Scottish photographer, notable for being the first to record the bad housing conditions of the poor.
The Edinburgh Calotype Club of Scotland was the first photographic club in the world. Its members consisted of pioneering photographers primarily from Edinburgh and St Andrews. The efforts of the Club's members resulted in the production of two of the world's earliest assembled photographic albums, consisting of more than 300 images.
Thomas Keith FRCSEd was a Victorian surgeon and amateur photographer from Scotland. He developed and improved the wax paper process and his photographs are recognised for their composition and use of shade. He was an early practitioner of the operation of ovariotomy where his published results were amongst the best in the world.
James Craig Annan was a pioneering Scottish-born photographer and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
Hill & Adamson was the first photography studio in Scotland, set up by painter David Octavius Hill and engineer Robert Adamson in 1843. During their brief partnership that ended with Adamson's untimely death, Hill & Adamson produced "the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography." Watercolorist John Harden, on first seeing Hill & Adamson's calotypes in November 1843, wrote, "The pictures produced are as Rembrandt's but improved, so like his style & the oldest & finest masters that doubtless a great progress in Portrait painting & effect must be the consequence."
John Adamson was a Scottish physician, pioneer photographer, physicist, lecturer and museum curator. He was a highly respected figure in St Andrews, and was responsible for producing the first calotype portrait in Scotland in 1841. He taught the process to his brother, the famous pioneering photographer Robert Adamson. He was curator of the Literary and Philosophical Society Museum at St Andrews from 1838 until his death.
Thomas Rodger was an early Scottish photographer. He studied at the University of St Andrews and was a protégé of Dr. John Adamson who also persuaded him to become a photographer. At age 14, he was apprenticed to Dr. James, a local chemist and druggist, whilst studying at Madras College. Adamson later taught him the calotype process which he had earlier taught his famous brother, Robert Adamson. Adamson persuaded him to assist Lord Kinnaird in his calotype studio at Rossie Priory. Rodger enrolled at the Andersonian College of Glasgow to study medicine, but Adamson persuaded him to set up a professional business in calotyping in St Andrews.
John Muir Wood, was a Scottish musician, piano maker, music publisher and an early amateur photographer.
Scottish art in the nineteenth century is the body of visual art made in Scotland, by Scots, or about Scottish subjects. This period saw the increasing professionalisation and organisation of art in Scotland. Major institutions founded in this period included the Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy of Art, the National Gallery of Scotland, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Glasgow Institute. Art education in Edinburgh focused on the Trustees Drawing Academy of Edinburgh. Glasgow School of Art was founded in 1845 and Grays School of Art in Aberdeen in 1885.
Art in modern Scotland includes all aspects of the visual arts in the country since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the art scene was dominated by the work of the members of the Glasgow School known as the Four, led Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who gained an international reputation for their combination of Celtic revival, Art and Crafts and Art Nouveau. They were followed by the Scottish Colourists and the Edinburgh School. There was a growing interest in forms of Modernism, with William Johnstone helping to develop the concept of a Scottish Renaissance. In the post-war period, major artists, including John Bellany and Alexander Moffat, pursued a strand of "Scottish realism". Moffat's influence can be seen in the work of the "new Glasgow Boys" from the late twentieth century. In the twenty-first century Scotland has continued to produce influential artists such as Douglas Gordon and Susan Philipsz.
Scottish genre art is the depiction of everyday life in Scotland, or by Scottish artists, emulating the genre art of Netherlands painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Common themes included markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes.
John McCosh or John MacCosh or James McCosh was a Scottish army surgeon who made documentary photographs whilst serving in India and Burma. His photographs during the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848–1849) of people and places associated with the British rule in India, and of the Second Burmese War (1852–1853), count as sufficient grounds, some historians maintain, to recognise him as the first war photographer known by name. McCosh wrote a number of books on medicine and photography, as well as books of poetry.
Archibald Burns (1831–1880) was a Scottish photographer based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and active from 1858 to 1880. He documented the city through various publications and recorded the historic buildings in a section of the city that was cleared for improvements in the 1860s.
Janet Mann(Jessie) (20 January 1805 – 21 April 1867) was the studio assistant of the pioneering Scottish photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. She is "a strong candidate as the first Scottish woman photographer" and one of the first women anywhere to be involved in photography.
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