Early developments of photography as art.

Photographic societies—made up of both professionals and amateurs enticed by the popularity of the collodion process—began to form in the mid-19th century, giving rise to the consideration of photography as an aesthetic medium.

In 1853 the Photographic Society, parent of the present Royal Photographic Society, was formed in London, and in the following year the Société Française de Photographie was founded in Paris.

Toward the end of the 19th century, similar societies appeared in German-speaking countries, eastern Europe, and India. Some were designed to promote photography generally, while others emphasized only artistic expression. Along with these organizations, journals promoting photography as art also appeared.

At the first meeting of the Photographic Society, the president, Sir Charles Eastlake (who was then also president of the Royal Academy), invited the miniature painter Sir William Newton to read the paper “Upon Photography in an Artistic View” (Journal of the Photographic Society, 1853). Newton’s argument was that photographs could be useful so long as they were taken “in accordance [as far as it is possible] with the acknowledged principles of Fine Art.”

Newton recommended liberal retouching and softer focus among other photographic tricks. (Eastlake’s wife, Lady Eastlake, née Elizabeth Rigby, was one of the first to write lucidly about the artistic problems of collodion/albumen photography.)
In response to this desire to create photographs that would fit an established conception of what “art” should be, several photographers began to combine several negatives to make one print....or combination printing as it became known
These consisted of compositions that were considered too complicated to be photographed in a straightforward manner and thus pushed photography beyond its so-called mechanical capabilities. A famous example of this style was by O.G. Rejlander, a Swede who had studied art in Rome and was practicing photography in England.

He joined 30 negatives to produce a 31-by-16-inch (79-by-41-cm) print entitled The Two Ways of Life (1857), an allegory showing the way of the blessed led through good works and the way of the damned through vice.

Rejlander, who described the technique in detail in photographic journals, stated that his purpose was to prove to artists the aesthetic possibilities of photography, which they had generally denied. The photograph was shown in the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 and was purchased by Queen Victoria for Prince Albert.

Rejlander’s technique stimulated Henry Peach Robinson, a professional photographer who had been trained as an artist, to produce similar combination prints. Perhaps the most famous of his pictures is Fading Away (1858), a composition of five negatives, in which he depicts a girl dying of consumption (which we know as tuberculosis), and the despair of the other members of the family.

This was a controversial photograph, and some felt that the subject was not suitable for photography.

One critic said that Robinson had cashed in on "the most painful sentiments which it is the lot of human beings to experience."

It would seem that it was perfectly in order for painters to paint pictures on such themes, but not for photographers to do so. However, the picture captured the imagination of Prince Albert, who bought a copy and issued an order for every composite portrait Robinson produced subsequently.

Fading Away is a composition of five negatives. If one examines a large copy of a print closely one can see the "joins", particularly the triangle of gray with no detail in it. One has to remember, of course, that these were contact prints - there were no means of enlarging at that time.

This is a perfect example of photography attempting to establish itself and yet still be relating to other arts but somehow not being respected. This was an attempt to mimic a painting aesthetic, but it was too real even though it was fake.

Already at this period there were shades of the conflict between the art and science of photography. The Secretary of the Society and Editor of the Journal, Sir William Crookes, is quoted in Robinson's autobiography: "The secretary at that time was an unsympathetic chemist and all he could see in the picture in what he thought was a ''join,' an imaginary enormity which afforded a text on which he waxed eloquent."

It is clear that many who admired "Fading Away" had no idea that it was a combination print and when, in 1860, Robinson outlined his methods at a meeting of the Photographic Society of Scotland, he was greeted with howls of protest from people who seemed to feel that they had been deceived. There was much discussion about what one correspondent referred to as "Patchwork", rather than composition, and Robinson began to conclude that perhaps it might be better in future not to divulge the secrets of his craft, but leave people to enjoy the finished product!

However, in "Pictorial Effect in Photography" (1867), a major literary work, Robinson wrote:

"Any dodge, trick and conjuration of any kind is open to the photographer's use.... It is his imperative duty to avoid the mean, the base and the ugly, and to aim to elevate his subject.... and to correct the unpicturesque....A great deal can be done and very beautiful pictures made, by a mixture of the real and the artificial in a picture."
Robinson was also stressing the need to "see" a picture - advice which still holds good today:

"However much a man might love beautiful scenery, his love for it would be greatly enhanced if he looked at it with the eye of an artist, and knew why it was beautiful. A new world is open to him who has learned to distinguish and feel the effect of the beautiful and subtle harmonies that nature presents in all her varied aspects. Men usually see little of what is before their eyes unless they are trained to use them in a special manner."

Some of his observations make sound advice today. Here is a comment on "rules" of composition:

"I must warn you against a too close study of art to the exclusion of nature and the suppression of original thought.... Art rules should be a guide only to the study of nature, and not a set of fetters to confine the ideas or to depress the faculty of original interpretation in the artist, whether he be painter or photographer.... The object (of rules) is to train his mind so that he may select with ease, and, when he does select, know why one aspect of a subject is better than another."
Robinson became an articulate member of the Photographic Society, and his teaching was even more influential than his photography. In 1869 the first of many editions and translations of his book, Pictorial Effect in Photography, was published. Robinson borrowed compositional formulas from a handbook on painting, claiming that use of them would bring artistic success. He stressed the importance of balance and the opposition of light against dark. At the core of his argument was the assumption that rules set up for one art form could be applied to another.

So long as photographers maintained that the way to photography as art was the emulation of painting, art critics were reluctant to admit the new medium to an independent aesthetic position. Portraits, when done as sensitively and as directly as those produced by Hill and Adamson, Nadar, and Cameron, won praise. But sentimental genre scenes, posed and arranged for the camera and lacking the truthfulness thought to be characteristic of photography, were the subject of considerable controversy. This debate would reach a crescendo at the end of the century.

Perhaps the most famous is "When Day's Work is done." The gentleman in the picture had appeared one day for a carte-de-visite, and Robinson earmarked him for this project. He then searched for a suitable old lady. Both were photographed in his studio separately and at different times, and then assembled. The print itself, which measures 20" by 24"(50cm. by 61cm.) is made up from five negatives.

One of his most bitter critics was Emerson, who despised contrived photography, of which "Red Riding Hood" would be a typical example. There was a fairly heated series of interchanges between Robinson and Emerson. Reviewing in "Amateur Photographer"

Robinson's print entitled "Merry Fisher Maidens" , Emerson wrote: This is an inane, flat, vapid piece of work, bigger and more worthless than ever. Its composition is childish and its sentiment puerile." Robinson, reviewing Emerson's controversial book "Natural Photography for Students" was equally caustic: "...we cannot help feeling that his system is pernicious, and excusing bad photography by calling it art... we feel it to be the imperative duty of a journal like our own to produce a disinfectant, and stop the disorder..."

In 1862 Robinson was elected to serve on the Council of the Photographic Society, and continued to serve on that body until 1891 when, frustrated by the failure of the Society to recognize the artistic dimensions of photography, he resigned (whilst still its Vice-President) and formed the Linked Ring, a brotherhood that was to be very influential in photographic circles for the next twenty years

Purely as a light incidental comment, Robinson married in 1859, his wife recalling in later years that when they were married, she had been told in no unequivocal terms that it must be "photography first, wife afterwards", so she may have the distinction of being the first recorded photographic widow!