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- Jun 23, 2022
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- 293
This coming Saturday is officially 'Alice Day' here in Oxford so I am thinking about one of my favourite Victorian photographers - Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
He began making photographs in 1856 and is better know by his pen name of Lewis Carroll, author of the 'Alice' books. He was a successful portrait photographer. Around 1,000 of his images are known to exist.
His studio was just up the road from mine and his famous boat trips with the Liddell sisters and their governess started from just outside our windows. I have recently learned that he used an Ottewill folding field camera. I would love to see one, having read it's description many years back in the hilarious 'Hiawatha's Photographing'. The camera predates the introduction of bellows to make field cameras more portable, and pictures show it folding together in fascinating ways.
From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;
But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.
Here, for your enjoyment, is a link to the full poem. You will surely recognise many of the aggravations that still beset LF photographers. https://classic-literature.co.uk/lewis-carroll-hiawathas-photographing-poem/
Dodgson's boxes of wet-plate equipment were clearly a constant trial. He travelled around the county with them by train. His own chemical box is in the Oxford History of Science museum and was perhaps a source of pride. I have read that he stopped making photographs very abruptly when dry plates became available. His view was that photography was no longer worth his time because it had become so easy that anyone could do it!
He began making photographs in 1856 and is better know by his pen name of Lewis Carroll, author of the 'Alice' books. He was a successful portrait photographer. Around 1,000 of his images are known to exist.
His studio was just up the road from mine and his famous boat trips with the Liddell sisters and their governess started from just outside our windows. I have recently learned that he used an Ottewill folding field camera. I would love to see one, having read it's description many years back in the hilarious 'Hiawatha's Photographing'. The camera predates the introduction of bellows to make field cameras more portable, and pictures show it folding together in fascinating ways.
From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;
But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.
Here, for your enjoyment, is a link to the full poem. You will surely recognise many of the aggravations that still beset LF photographers. https://classic-literature.co.uk/lewis-carroll-hiawathas-photographing-poem/
Dodgson's boxes of wet-plate equipment were clearly a constant trial. He travelled around the county with them by train. His own chemical box is in the Oxford History of Science museum and was perhaps a source of pride. I have read that he stopped making photographs very abruptly when dry plates became available. His view was that photography was no longer worth his time because it had become so easy that anyone could do it!
