Page 28 - Studio-International-January-1974

A VICTORIAN RADICAL considered as second-rate painters. But the energy and enthusiasm, he examined not only
nature of photography as an independent the science and existing traditions of
PHOTOGRAPHER medium had not been forgotten; in 1886 the photography but also the history of art, seeking
inbred, clique-ridden photographic community a reasoned platform for his already unorthodox
PETER HENRY EVERSON was shattered by the introduction of radical and attitudes, based on an admiration for the
1856-1936 far-reaching concepts by a doctor of medicine `naturalistic' school of painting and a growing
and passionate amateur, Peter Henry Emerson, feeling that photography had a unique potential
who had taken it upon himself to champion a for recording truth.
During the 188os the photographic scene in new aesthetic and fight for the recognition of His researches led him to believe that
England was confused — the unique qualities of photography as a medium of expression in its current photographic thinking, based largely
the medium had been forgotten as Victorian own right. on the writings of one man, Henry Peach
photographers took up the role of 'artist' and Emerson had become interested in Robinson, demanded that true expression
emulated genre painters with large composite photography during the latter years of his should be replaced by sentimentality and that
prints telling moral tales, oil-daubed and medical studies and in 1882 he exhibited his its foundation lay in the appreciation and
manipulated images that tried to disguise their work for the first time at a Photographic Society mimicry of an art that was merely decorative.
mechanical origins and stage-directed 'scenes of Great Britain exhibition in Bond Street. From Some years earlier, in 1866, Robinson had
from life'. When the discovery of photography this he gained sufficient encouragement to produced a book 'Pictorial Effect in
was first announced in 1839, observers provide the impetus for a deeper involvement in Photography' laying down rigid rules on
predicted the death of painting: 4o years later the medium, and for the following three years composition and the constitution of
prominent photographers were asking to be he studied and photographed. A man of great photography as an art form (derived in the main

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(Top and right) photographs by Emerson
(Above) Bow Net 1886
by T. F. Goodall
Oil on canvas, 33 x 5o in.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

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