7
process to Brewster and, since Talbot’s patent did not
extend to Scotland, Brewster shared the information
with his St Andrews colleagues. Adamson immediately
embarked on learning the process.
Although he had already taken photographs with the
rival daguerreotype process, for the fi rst few months
neither Adamson nor his colleagues had much suc-
cess with calotypy, despite numerous experiments. By
autumn, Adamson had produced several negatives but
still encountered diffi culties in making durable positive
prints. Nonetheless, Brewster found Adamson’s work
promising enough to send several examples to Talbot
in November.
It was not until May 1842 that Adamson executed
a satisfactory calotype print, which was not only the
fi rst such photograph made in Scotland, but also one of
the earliest accomplished by anyone other than Talbot.
A very faint half-length portrait of his sister Melville,
Adamson noted it required a two-minute exposure in
“bright sunshine [... with a] temporary camera obscura
made with a common small lens or burning glass”
(Michaelson, 34).
The breakthrough encouraged Adamson to undertake
further experiments and in his enthusiasm he taught the
process to his brother, Robert, an engineering student
who soon envisioned becoming a professional photogra-
pher. The pair collaborated closely on many experiments
and photographic excursions throughout the summer
of 1842 and into the beginning of 1843, by which time
Robert felt skilled enough in the process to move to
Edinburgh and open a commercial studio.
Unlike Robert’s eventual business partnership with
Hill, the Adamson brothers’ collaboration was an
amateur effort as concerned with resolving the techni-
cal shortcomings of Talbot’s fl edgling process as with
producing visually stimulating compositions. The coop-
eration between the two brothers during this short, but
intense period, resulted in crucial improvements to the
process that served as the means to Robert’s stunningly
rich prints as a professional.
Adamson sent a small presentation album of his
and his brother’s best work to Talbot in November,
1842, perhaps to gain the inventor’s approbation for his
brother’s professional aspirations. Another album (in
the collection of the National Museums of Scotland) is
organized like a working notebook and clearly illustrates
the technical and aesthetic evolution of their pioneering
achievement. Amidst considerable discrepancies in print
quality, Adamson’s accompanying notes document the
constant chemical and procedural improvisations that
marked their efforts.
The Adamson brothers made family portraits, archi-
tecture studies and even some scenes of local fi shermen
that acknowledged the older Adamson’s medical con-
cern with sanitation reform among fi shing communities.
These possibly served as the source for Robert’s later
series with Hill on the fi shing families of Newhaven.
Many of the photographs, like “The Priory and the West
Gable of the Cathedral” (c.1842), exhibit a fl attened
perspective and awkward framing that suggest they were
made primarily to work out photo-processing problems,
but the more inventive framing found in images like “A
Farm House” (c.1842)—with its elevated and angled
view—attests to the brothers’ growing awareness of
compositional issues.
Even after Robert’s partnership with Hill was well-
established, Adamson continued making calotypes and
may have had more than a passing relationship with the
Edinburgh studio, perhaps even aiding the partners on
occasion. As it were, even after two years of working
with Robert, Hill still saw the brothers as a formidable
pair when he conjectured that “both from [Robert] and
his brother [John] much new improvements may yet be
expected” (Stevenson, 54).
Upon Robert’s untimely death in 1848, Hill briefl y
may have hoped to engage the older Adamson brother as
successor. Despite an enduring interest in the medium,
Adamson never considered it as a full-time profession
and was not willing to sacrifi ce his established medi-
cal practice for the uncertainties of running a studio.
Nonetheless, he remained on good terms with Hill and
pursued portrait photography on a more modest scale,
both individually and in conjunction with his former
student and photography assistant, Thomas Rodger, who
owned a studio in St. Andrews.
Adamson’s photograph of a bare-chested athlete
(c.1850) demonstrates an artistic talent that he perhaps
too often ignored in pursuit of his scientifi c inquiries.
The subject’s determined stride and fl exed muscles
project a classical strength verging on the heroic.
Though such striking images were the exception in his
work, even as late as 1867 he was producing personal
portraits of his family for a commemorative album for
his nephew, in perhaps his last project before his death
in St. Andrews in 1870.
While Adamson’s contributions to photography were
signifi cant, especially in its technical development, his
amateur status and public diffi dence left him relatively
neglected in subsequent histories of the medium. It is
only since the early 1980s that his work has received
greater consideration, not only in its importance to the
achievements of his brother and others, but on its own
terms.
Stephen MonteiroBiography
John Adamson was born in Fife, Scotland in 1809 and
studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, St.
Andrews University and in Paris (1826–early1830s).