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REJLANDER, OSCAR GUSTAV
(c. 1813–1875)
Oscar Gustav Rejlander was born in Sweden. Little is
known about his early years, but as a young man he
studied painting on the continent, where he became
familiar with the work of the old Masters, whose infl u-
ence is apparent in some of his best known photographs.
His career as a photographer began when he was thirty-
nine, and was centered in Wolverhampton and London.
Rejlander was an ingenious photographer who produced
a highly diverse body of work that included portraits,
genre scenes, fi gure studies, allegories and literary il-
lustrations. His versatility is a refl ection in part of the
diffi culties he and other photographers of the period
encountered as they tried to earn a living from this
fl edgling medium.
Rejlander is most often remembered for inventing
combination printing, a process in which different
plates are painstakingly combined into a single, in-
tegrated image. Beyond making good exposures and
prints, issues of scale and consistent lighting (and
shadows) were essential in creating convincing fi nal
prints. Rejlander’s successful combination prints are
remarkable considering the complexity of the wet plate
process, long exposure times, and fl eeting lighting
conditions. Combination printing required careful con-
ceptual work of the fi nal image, along with a good deal
of skill and patience in its execution, and Rejlander’s
background as a painter no doubt were helpful in both
regards.
Rejlander’s best-known photograph, The Two Ways
of Life (1857), was a combination print painstakinglyREJLANDER, OSCAR GUSTAV
Rejlander, Oscar Gustave. The
Madonna and Child with St. John the
Baptist.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The J. Paul Getty Museum.