ABSTRACT
Photography is the common possession of men and women of the nineteenth century—a Victorian invention in the full meaning of a phrase which often, and justly, connotes the ingenious application of science to the uses of the daily world. For many reasons the Victorian photographer appears as a representative figure, to be associated with that period and no other: typically discovered sunk down on one knee on drawing-room carpet, head concealed beneath black cloth as he consults. The viewing-glass, hand upflung in an appeal for—fixing the image, as it were, with his gesture—the photographer expresses both the scientific capacity of the age and the restricted rigidities of its vision. The impact of photography was the greater by reason of the absoluteness of its command. Only with great difficulty and through many trials was a workable photographic process realised—once achieved, its products could be fully photographic.
