736736
ICELAND
photographers had to travel around the rural areas of
the country or to other villages in order to come into
contact with suffi cient customers. Two kinds of portrayal
other than the traditional portrait rapidly became fi rm
favourites in Icelandic photography: pictures of people
in front of their farmhouses, and pictures of people
on horseback. Photographs taken by overseas visitors
may have started this trend, since the foreigners were
intrigued by the fact that, until well into the 20th century,
farmhouses were usually turf houses and horses were the
main method of transportation in Iceland. As very few
photographs from Iceland dating from the 19th century
have been preserved, the photographs taken by foreign
travellers have great historical value.
The fi rst publication of Icelandic photographs was
produced for the Tourist Board of Iceland in 1896 and
was intended for foreign visitors. The photographs
showed the main tourist attractions of the country such
as Gullfoss and Geysir (still the most frequently visited
sites in Iceland) and most of the scenes were photo-
graphed by Sigfús Eymundsson. Ever since, landscape
photography has been the dominant branch, apart from
portraiture, in Icelandic photography, and its key mission
has been to promote Iceland internationally and also to
preserve Icelandic national identity.
Inga Lára Baldvinsdóttir
See also: Daguerreotype.Further Reading
Árnason, Þorvarður, Sigfús Eymundsson 1837–1911. Icelan-
dic Landscape Photography, History of Photography, 23/1
(Spring 1999).
Baldvinsdóttir, Inga Lára, Daguerreótýpur á Íslandi og fyrstu
ljósmyndararnir, (Daguerreotypes in Iceland and the fi rst
photographers), Reykjavík: Árbók hins íslenzka fornleifafé-
lags 1982, 141–153.
Baldvinsdóttir, Inga Lára, Ljósmyndarar á Íslandi 1845–1945:
Photographers of Iceland 1845– 1945 , Reykjavík: jpv-útgáfa
og Þjóðminjasafn Íslands, 2001.
Ljósmyndir Sigfúsar Eymundssonar, Reykjavík: Almenna bóka-
félagið, 1976.
Sigurjónsdóttir, Æsa, Ísland í sjónmáli: franskir ljósmyndarar á
Íslandi 1845–1900: Islande en vue: photographes français
en Islande, Reykjavík: jpv-forlag og Þjóðminjasafn Íslands,
2000.ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS
Publication
The Illustrated London News, which commenced
publication on 14 May 1842, was the fi rst newspaper
to regularly illustrate its topical news stories with
woodcuts, drawings and photographs. This popular
weekly was a forerunner of similar publications such as
L’Illustration and Harper’s Weekly. Its founder Herbert
Ingram was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, England on27 May 1811. Whilst working in the London printing
industry he noticed that newspapers sold more copies
when they contained woodcut illustrations. This encour-
aged him to launch the Illustrated London News, with
Mark Lemon, the editor of Punch, as his chief adviser.
Ingram hired skilled engravers and illustrators and the
fi rst edition sold over 26,000 copies and within a few
months was selling 65,000 copies per week.
He recognised that photography could be used to
enhance the publication. He hired the renowned por-
trait photographer Antoine François Jean Claudet to
photograph a panoramic view from the top of the Duke
of York’s Column, Pall Mall, London. Claudet used a
specially designed camera for the commission. An artist,
C.F. Sargent drew the details of Claudet’s daguerreo-
types onto sixty wood blocks. The engraving was then
undertaken by the fi rm of Ebenezer Landell. The result-
ing print was circulated to subscribers and proved to be a
hugely successful boost to sales. Until the development
of Scott Archer’s collodion process, daguerreotypes had
to be traced and stencilled onto wood blocks. In 1857,
George N. Barnard invented a process whereby the col-
lodion negative could be printed directly onto the block.
This method was used until the advent of the halftone
and line processes in the 1880s which allowed for the
rapid production of illustrations.
The newspaper’s images were often accompanied
by fi rst-hand accounts of notable events. In response
to negative reports in the London Times, Roger Fenton
was commissioned to photograph the Crimean War in- He travelled with a horse-drawn photographic
van and used the newly developed wet collodion plate.
Fenton returned with over three hundred war scenes
and military portraits, some of which were reproduced
by the Illustrated London News. James Robertson also
reported from the Crimea and engravings based on his
photographs appeared in the newspaper. Other major
events which were featured by the Illustrated London
News include the Irish Famine in 1847; the Great
Exhibition of 1851 and the outbreak of the American
Civil War in 1861. Over 150,000 copies were sold of
the edition that reported the funeral of the Duke of
Wellington.
Ingram was a staunch Liberal who favoured social
reform and this is refl ected to a certain extent within
the Illustrated London News, for example, he used the
paper to further his campaign against child labour. Yet
the newspaper generally refl ected the interests and pre-
occupations of its middle-class readership and the con-
cerns of the British Empire. Ingram was to die tragically
when the steamship Lady Elgin sank on Lake Michigan
in 1860. His widow Anne continued to run the business
with the assistance of Mason Jackson, the paper’s Art
Editor. The newspaper’s success continued into the
twentieth century when it hired some of England’s top
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