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these women. So too could Friederike Wilhelmine
Von Wunsch, a German artist who in 1839 claimed to
have discovered a method for producing photographic
portraits. Women also formed a substantial part of the
growing middle-class clientele who commissioned
silhouettes, miniatures and camera lucida drawings in
the decades before 1839 thereby creating a demand for
the production of likenesses which the photograph was
to satisfy.
The earliest women amateurs who used the Calotype
process belonged to the upper strata of society as only
they were privy to the expertise and know- how required
to master this diffi cult process. In England, they included
the relatives and friends of the physicist William Henry
Fox Talbot, who announced his positive/negative pro-
cess in 1839. His wife, Constance Talbot, printed her
husband’s Calotype or Talbotype negatives whilst oc-
casionally making her own exposures and prints. Her
engagement with photography alongside that of Talbot’s
Welsh relations Emma and Mary Llewelyn typifi es the
elitist circle of friends who used the calotype process.
In Ireland, Louisa Tenison and her husband of Kilronan
Castle, County Roscommon and Mary, Countess of
Rosse, Birr Castle, County Offaly, were amongst the
fi rst women to use the process. Due to the complicated
nature of taking calotypes and printing negatives those
who used the medium often worked with partners. For
women, the societal emphasis upon the work of their
spouses often meant that their role was unacknowledged.
For example, Harriet Tytler worked with her husband
to record the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny of 1858.
Yet their work using large paper negatives has been at-
tributed solely to her husband.
Debates concerning the nature of photography took
place in journals throughout the nineteenth century. One
of the earliest and most important commentators was
Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (1809–1893) whose husband
Sir Charles was the fi rst president of the Royal Photo-
graphic Society. Among other aspects of photography,
she explored its relationship with the fi ne arts. A piece
by her which was published in the London Quarterly
Review in 1857 revealed an astute understanding of the
photographic medium. Eastlake decided that photogra-
phy could not be considered as a true art, however, she
astutely points to some of its possible uses.
She (photography) is made for the present age, in which
the desire for art resides in a small minority, but craving,
or rather the necessity for cheap, prompt, and correct facts
in the public at large. Photography is purveyor of such
knowledge to the world. (Eastlake 1857, 93)Frederick Scott Archer’s invention of the wet collodi-
on process in 1848 and Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard’s
introduction of the albumen print in 1850 resulted in an
increased number of women taking up photography on
an amateur basis. Women amateurs were still chiefl y
drawn from aristocratic or well-to-do backgrounds and
the wet plate process was far from straightforward. This
was particularly so for outdoor work as the glass plates
had to be coated and developed immediately. These lady
amateurs added photography to other female hobbies
such as sketching and needlework. That photography
was considered a suitable pursuit for such genteel ladies
is perhaps incongruous given the fact that they had to
mix their own chemicals. They gained access to techni-
cal information through informal networks of friends
and family or from the many technical manuals which
were available by the 1850s.
The subject matter chosen by most women amateurs
refl ected their leisured lifestyles and confi nement within
the domestic sphere. They used photography as a form
of personal biography and tended to make straightfor-
ward formal portraits of their children and family within
domestic settings. Their domestic imagery provides a
direct link to later women’s snapshot photography. That
they recorded their environment in a selective way is
evidenced in the exclusion of the staff, who facilitated
their lifestyles, from most photographs. Many were
aware of their families special position within society
and asserted their relationship with the land through
photographs of the family home and its surrounding
parkland. Their photographs were mostly destined for
albums which were produced and circulated in a private
environment. These albums had origins in the earlier
keepsake or sentiment albums which contained poems,
pressed fl owers and water-colours. They were often
intricately decorated and were shown to an audience of
family and friends. Examples of this genre include the
early work of Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822–1865),
at Dundrum, County Tipperary, Ireland; Augusta Crof-
ton Dillon at Clonbrock House, Ahascragh, County
Galway, Ireland and the photographs taken by the sisters
Lady Augusta Mostyn and Lady Caroline Nevill. They
were also part of the Amateur Photographic Associa-
tion whose members exhibited their work in London
and also sold and exchanged prints. The work of Mary
Paraskeva at Baranovka in the Crimea covered similar
country house subjects.
The albums created by Lady Frances Jocelyn in the
1850s, and Charlotte Milles and Lady Mary Georgiana
Filmer (1838–1903) in the 1860s, demonstrate the cre-
ative energy and inventiveness that could be invested in
the production of photographic albums. These women
produced photographic collages, a process which in-
volved the cutting up of photographs and their insertion
among painted backgrounds. The placing of images of
different sizes and the use of different mediums such as
watercolours subverted the realistic nature of photog-
raphy. As careful consideration was given to the order
and sequence of images within such personal albums,