744
portrait—which is the most memorable, more memo-
rable than the huge ship herself. The juxtaposition of the
engineer and the massive anchor chains of the monster
he has created produced a unique combination of man
and machine, emphasising the apparently limitless scale
of man’s visionx—that one small man could envisage
and then realise something so large.
As the century progressed, and photography’s ca-
pability advanced, industrial photographers were able
to take their cameras into ever aspect of manufacture
and construction. With advances in transportation, the
progress of huge bridge projects was captured on glass
plates, and some remarkable photographers came to the
fore as a result. One such, Evelyn Carey (1858–1932),
had the advantage of having been trained as an engineer,
and epitomises a new breed of industrial photogra-
pher—one for whom engineering held little mystery.
While many of the earliest photographers to turn their
attention to industry had come from an art background,
the emergence of the engineer-photographer gave the
genre a greater sense of purpose.
Carey was an assistant engineer on the Forth Bridge
project in Scotland, and was appointed in 1883, to record
and chronicle every step in the construction of what
was destined at the time to be the longest bridge in the
world. Carey’s understanding of engineering, married
to his innate compositional skills, produced a body of
work which is, in the annals of industrial photography,
unrivalled to this day. Working with large format cam-
eras and glass plates, often from the most precarious of
camera positions either on girders high above the river
or on caissons well below the water level, his stunning
pictures still evoke a sense of awe. His use of workmen,
as tiny ant-like fi gures seen in silhouette on the huge
metal structure, initiated an approach to industrial and
construction photography which would dominate the
twentieth century. Like Delamotte decades before him,
Carey had the task of recording every aspect of the
project from start to fi nish. Like Delamotte before him,
and generations of photographers after him, he created
a body of industrial imagery that signifi cantly enhances
our understanding of our past.
Nuno Pinheiro
See also: Bourne, John Cooke; Fenton, Roger;
Gardner, Alexander; Great Exhibition, Reports of
the Juries; Howlett, Robert; Langenheim, William
and Frederick; Mudd, James; and Vignoles, Charles
Blacker.
Further Reading
Gernsheim, Helmut, The Rise of Photography 1850–1880, Lon-
don: Thames & Hudson, 1988.
Hannavy, John, ‘John Cooke Bourne, Charles Blacker Vignoles
and the Dneiper Suspension Bridge at Kyiv’ in History of
Photography Vol. 28 No. 4, London: Taylor & Francis,
2004.
Macauley, Elizabeth Anne, Industrial Madness—Commercial
Photography in Paris 1848–1871, New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1994.
Mackay, Sheila The Forth Bridge—A Picture History, Edinburgh:
Moubray House Publishing, 1990.
Taft, Robert, Photography and the American Scene, New York:
Dover Publications, 1864.
INHA, INTO KONDRAD (1865–1930)
Finnish photographer, writer, and reporter
When K E Ståhlberg opened his photographic studio
in Helsinki, Finland, in February 1889, he identifi ed a
potential market for selling pictures and engaged a few
people to photograph the landscapes of Finland. The
scheme was successful and one of his photographers,
Into Kondrad Inha, not only contributed the best images
but subsequently earned an international reputation
because of his pictorial abilities.
Whilst working as a journalist, Inha had studied
photography in Germany and Austria for a year, where
he excelled in producing landscapes of the mountains
and the rivers. When he returned to Finland in 1890,
he had already decided to apply his new-found skills
to his native country and a commission from Ståhlberg
suited his aspirations perfectly. Inha consciously avoided
adopting a sentimental approach to his work, and soon
established an independent identity of his own—“He
saw with his own eyes, in his personal way.”
Inha was committed to capturing the technically per-
fect picture and would go to endless trouble. Although
he was able to travel by train to some destinations, he
frequently used his bicycle. To reach other locations, he
paddled on the rivers and sailed the lakes; depending on
the season, he would use skis, or simply walk through
the forests with his photographic equipment.
To Inha, photography was an important means of
expressing his feelings for Finland and he would search
out the best composition, and then wait for the appropri-
ate lighting. His writing abilities aided his photography
by stimulating ideas for the way he could interpret and
record a scene. It was important to document the land-
scape so that it fulfi lled the commercial requirement but,
in addition, Inha was anxious to capture the essence of
a contemporary movement of national pride known as
“Finnish-ness.”
By careful composition, he found he could portray
the vast landscapes, which are typical of the country. In
the summer, he had long days with hours of sunshine,
but the available daylight was reduced in winter and
he had no guarantee of sunshine or weather that was
suitable for pictorial photography. This was a charac-
teristic of Finland, but Inha always made the most of
the circumstances.
INDUSTRIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
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