1266
In exhibitions between 1852 and 1859 Sherlock
showed almost 200 rustic studies, many entered by the
print seller J.Hogarth. His work has also been confused
with that of the French master Humbert de Molard and
much of his work is in the French style. He gave up his
profession as an attorney and became a full-time pho-
tographer in the late 1850s and moved from London to
South Devon, where he lived until his death in 1889.
Ian Sumner
SHEW, WILLIAM (1820–1903)
William Shew fi rst made his mark as a daguerreian
artist and case maker in Boston before moving to
California, where he took photographs for more than
50 years.
Born near Watertown, New York, he began making
daguerreotypes there in 1841 with his three brothers after
learning the process directly from Samuel F. B. Morse.
The four brothers moved from Watertown to Ogdens-
burgh to Rochester and to Geneva, New York, establishing
galleries in each city, before settling in New York City.
From 1841 to 1844, Shew managed John Plumbe,
Jr.’s Boston gallery. Around 1844, he began making
miniature cases and continued in that line of work for
several years. From 1849 to around 1851, he resumed
taking daguerreotypes in Boston.
Shew arrived in San Francisco by ship around 1851
and established a portable gallery that he operated until
moving into more permanent quarters on Clay Street.
He was burned out of this location and moved to another
on Montgomery Street, where he remained for 20 years.
He was also active in local politics and served on the
local Board of Education. In 1901, more than 50 years
after settling in San Francisco, Shew was still operating
a photo gallery on Kearny Street.
Bob Zeller
SHIMOOKA RENJØ (1823–1914)
Japanese photographer
Shimooka Renjø is generally thought of as one of the
“two fathers of Japanese photography,” along with Ueno
Hikoma. Shimooka was born as Sakurada Hisanosuke
in Shimoda in 1823. His father was an offi cial ship-
ping agent for the Tokugawa military rulers. Shimooka
moved to Tokyo at the age of thirteen to seek training as
an artist. He later served an apprenticeship with a master
of the traditional Kanø painting school, Kanø Tøsen. He
may have fi rst seen foreign daguerreotypes while serving
as a guard at the Shimoda artillery battery in the 1850s.
He was so impressed by their realism and detail that
he decided to learn photography. Shimooka acquired
his fi rst formal training in the medium around 1860
from an American photographer in Yokohama named
John Wilson. When he left Yokohama in 1861 or 1862,
Wilson also gave Shimooka his fi rst camera in exchange
for a painting. In 1862 Shimooka opened a studio in
Yokohama, one of the fi rst Japanese-run photography
businesses. He produced studio portraits primarily for
foreign tourists, as well as staged photographs of locals
that also appealed to foreign tastes. He later managed
a number of studios in both Yokohama and Tokyo, and
trained many of Japan’s early photographers. By 1877,
Shimooka no longer worked as a photographer, though
he continued to paint photographic backdrops and pan-
oramas. He died in 1914.
Karen FraserSIDEBOTHAM, JOSEPH (1824–1885)
Calico printer, botanist and entomologist, pioneer
photographer
He was involved with several early experiments in the
search for stable dyestuffs for textile printing and had
an enduring interest in microscopy. Sidebotham was
a prime mover in the establishment a ‘microscopical
section’ in the Manchester Literary & Philosophical
Society in the late 1850s (becoming its Vice-President),
and a photographic section in the 1860s. Through the
‘Lit & Phil,’ he became acquainted with John Benjamin
Dancer (qv)—from whom he purchased microscopes
and developed an interest in micro-photographs—James
Mudd (qv), Alfred Brothers (qv) and many other early
photographers. He was a long-serving member of the
Manchester Photographic Society, and a regular speaker
at the society’s meetings. One of the earliest demonstra-
tions of the workings of a rotary camera shutter was that
given by Sidebotham in 1856. He served as the society’s
Vice-President from 1861 until 1865. With James Mudd,
he experimented with variants on the waxed paper pro-
cess in the 1850s.
Sidebotham lectured and wrote extensively on pho-
tography and his essays on the collodio-albumen pro-
cess, and on contemporary printing processes published
in Recreative Science: A Record and Remembrance of
Intellectual Observation, Vol. II. (Groombridge and
Sons, London, 1861), were considered important contri-
butions to the published account of photography.
John HannavySILVESTER, ALFRED (UNKNOWN)
Alfred Silvester’s blindstamp can be found on some
of the most elaborate and beautifully tinted genre ste-
reocards of the 1850s and 1860s, yet the only record
of his studio at 118 New Bond Street, London is from
an 1864 trade directory. No personal details have yet
been located.