429
and the centre of his intellectual, spiritual and emotional
life. In every sense he was an “Oxford man.”
When Dodgson entered Christ Church, photography
was just emerging from its early and formative period of
the 1840s, to become during the 1850s, widely accepted
as a social accomplishment for those with suffi cient
disposable income and adequate leisure time to invest in
its success. It was Dodgson’s appointment as a lecturer
in mathematics in November 1855 that gave him the fi -
nancial independence to consider photography and with
the encouragement and example of his colleague Regi-
nald Southey, an accomplished photographer himself,
Dodgson began photographing in May 1856. It became
his major preoccupation during the next twenty-fi ve
years, during which time it has been estimated he took
about three thousand negatives, the majority of which
were portraits and all made using the collodion process.
A survey of his photographs reveals that, contrary to
widespread belief, only fi fty percent of these were of
children, the remainder being of adults and families
(30%), Dodgson family photographs (6%) and topogra-
phy (4%), the remainder being miscellaneous studies of
still lives and paintings. Few amateur photographers of
the time can match this output as most gave up after the
space of just a few years when their enthusiasm waned
and fashionable pastimes changed.
In his fi rst fl ush of enthusiasm Dodgson took his
camera with him during the “long Vacation” away from
Christ Church taking the opportunity to photograph
patient relatives and friends both in London and Croft.
Even at this early stage it is clear that Dodgson had mas-
tered the diffi cult techniques of the collodion process,
which were far from straightforward, and understood
how to calculate exposure times by looking at the
light and estimating its power. Both were considerable
technical achievements and not readily achieved, but it
is entirely in keeping with Dodgson’s personality that
he persevered until he achieved perfection. Apart from
Southey, to whom he turned initially for practical advice,
he also studied the work of other photographers at the
annual exhibitions of the Photographic Society of Lon-
don, where he especially admired the works of William
Lake Price and Oscar Rejlander. In later years he also
appreciated and collected the work of Lady Clementina
Hawarden and Julia Margaret Cameron. In his quest to
become an artist he also visited fi ne art exhibitions at
every opportunity where he carefully studied the works
of art in great detail, making notes about the composition
and the arrangement of hands for use in his photogra-
phy. He was painstakingly meticulous in everything he
did and nothing would deter him once committed to a
particular course of action. The apparently contradic-
tory aspects of his personality, artistic and imaginative
on the one hand, and pedantically careful on the other,
became the mainspring of his creative output, both as
Charles Dodgson, the photographer, and as Lewis Car-
roll, children’s author.
The twenty-fi ve years of his photography falls into
three quite distinct phases, the latter two characterised
by his use of a photographic studio. The fi rst phase,
which ran from 1856 until 1862 saw Dodgson at his
most productive, fi red up with the all the enthusiasm of
a beginner in love with his medium. During this period
he added the better part of seven hundred negatives to
his inventory, some of his most memorable photographs
among them. This is also the period that saw Dodgson
working extemporaneously without a permanent studio.
Instead he would rig a temporary backdrop of dark cloth
outdoors to create a suitable environment. Above his
sitters he draped a diffuser of muslin to soften the light.
Even though it would have dramatically shortened his
exposure times he rarely used direct sunlight, preferring
smooth expressive lighting.
From the very start Dodgson concentrated on tak-
ing portraits, an aspect of photography that also sets
him apart from most of his contemporaries who muchDODGSON, CHARLES LUTWIDGE
Carroll, Lewis. Alice Liddell as “The Beggar Maid.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection, Gift of
The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005 (2005.100.20) Image ©
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.