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created powerful and dynamic images. At a time when
the chemical and technical manipulation of processes
occupied the minds of early photographers, Keith was
concerned with controlling and exploiting the lighting
conditions he found in mid-Victorian Scotland. In a
paper presented to the Photographic Society of Scotland
in 1856, he said
If you were to ask me to what circumstance more than
another I attribute my success, I should say, not to any pe-
culiarity whatever in my manipulation, or to any particular
strength of the solutions I employ, but entirely to this, that
I never expose my papers unless the light is fi rst-rate. This
I have now made a rule, and nothing ever induces me
from it; and I may safely say that since I attended to this I
have never had a failure. (Keith, “Dr. Keith’s Paper on the
Waxed Paper Process” in Photographic Notes vol. 1 no.
8, 17, July 1856, 101–104)
His family had several early associations with pho-
tography. As a founder member of the Free Church of
Scotland, his father, the Reverend Alexander Keith, had
been photographed by David Octavius Hill and Robert
Adamson for inclusion in Hill’s painting “The Signing
of the Deed of Demission at Tanfi eld.” Thomas’s brother
Alexander, also a clergyman, was also photographed
by Hill and Adamson. His older brother George Skene
Keith, an amateur daguerreotypist, travelled to the Holy
Land in 1844 and 1845 and produced daguerreotype
views from which engravings were made for the 1848
edition of his father’s book Evidence of the Truth of the
Christian Religion.
Keith’s practical engagement with photography
spanned no more than fi ve years. His earliest dated
images were taken in 1854, his last in 1856. As some
unspecifi ed examples of his salted paper prints were
reportedly exhibited in Aberdeen in 1853, it can be
assumed that he had fi rst experimented with photog-
raphy no later than the summer of 1852. He intimated
his decision to give up photography in 1857, almost
certainly due to increasing pressures on his time as a
medical practitioner. There is no evidence that he took
any photographs in that year. He did, however, continue
to exhibit his work for several years after.
Keith’s medium of choice was Gustave le Gray’s
Waxed Paper Process, a process ideally suited to the
constraints placed on his photography by the demands
of his profession.
For the practice of photography to be possible, he
needed a process which permitted him to prepare his
negative materials in advance, and process them some
time after exposure. Despite the ascendancy of the Wet
Collodion process, Waxed Paper was ideally suited to
the time-constrained amateur. With it, Keith pre-waxed
and prepared his paper negative materials at least a day
in advance, and developed them overnight. Thus freed
from collodion’s requirements of location processing,
Keith could operate with lightweight and easily trans-
portable equipment, and respond quickly to lighting
conditions. His reasons for selecting the Waxed Paper
Process are all contained and clearly expressed within
the text of his 1856 lecture.
That lecture, to the Photographic Society of Scotland
on 10th June 1856, is one of the most signifi cant explica-
tions of the Waxed Paper Process. In it he underlines the
importance of the quality of the prevailing light—the
feature which marks Keith’s photography out as excep-
tional. Turning necessity to his advantage, he learned
how to exploit the soft long shadows of early morning
and late afternoon.I am almost always sure of clear mornings soon after
sunrise, and most of my negatives have been taken
before 7 in the morning or after 4 in the afternoon. The
light then is much softer, the shadows are larger and the
halftints in your pictures are more perfect, and the lights
more agreeable. (Keith, “Dr. Keith’s Paper on the Waxed
Paper Process” in Photographic Notes vol. 1 no. 8, 17
July 1856, 101–104)By the time of his invitation to deliver that key lec-
ture, Keith’s reputation as a photographer was already
considerable. The images he displayed at the meeting
were “greatly admired, and were considered by the
Society to be the fi nest yet produced.”
He was an early member of the Society, serving on
its Council from 1856 until 1858, although he seldom
attended meetings. He did, however, exhibit regularly,
and images of Iona Abbey, taken in early September
1856, were hung in the Society’s fi rst Exhibition in
1857, to considerable acclaim. He exhibited in both
1858 and 1859, his last contribution being to an exhibi-
tion in Aberdeen where his work was shown alongside
photographs by his friend John Forbes White with whom
he had collaborated on several of his photographic
expeditions.
Since their creation, Keith’s photographs have had
many admirers, including Alvin Langdon Coburn,
who made prints from selected original negatives and
exhibited them at the Royal Photographic Society in
1914, almost sixty years after they had been taken.
Coburn included Keith as one of the “Old Masters of
Photography,” describing his work as being “as good as
Hill’s.” He arranged for a selection of prints to be shown
in New York’s Ehrich Gallery, and again in Buffalo in
the following year. He eventually acquired some of the
negatives, later bequeathing them to George Eastman
House. Miller and art collector, John Forbes White was
also included as one of Coburn’s “Old Masters.”
Keith’s reputation was further embedded by Helmut
Gernsheim’s inclusion of his work in the 1951 exhibition
Masterpieces of Victorian Photography at the Victoria
and Albert Museum in London.