899
MARTIN, JOSIAH (1843–1916)
English-born author and publisher
Josiah Martin (1843–1916) commands high respect and
a special position in the history of development of new
Zealand photography. A Londoner by birth he came
to New Zealand in the 1870s to establish a College of
Education in Auckland. For various reasons he gave
this up and turned to photography. Eventually Martin
became heavily involved with an area in the middle of
the North Island called the Hot Lakes District. Over a
short period of time, he wrote, illustrated and published
several pamphlets, papers and booklets which sang the
praises of the districts tourist potential. In 1889 his work
in this direction was rewarded with him being elected as
the president of the Auckland Institute and Museum. An-
other great achievement saw him appointed to the post
of editor for Sharland1s New Zealand Photographer,
a journal which he edited for many years. During his
tenure in this position, he advocated vociferously for the
injustices that were being dealt to photographers when it
came to taxes and government inaction on matters that
threatened their copyright over their images. He was
also one of the fi rst photographers to make extensive and
tours of some of the Pacifi c Islands with his camera. The
results of these excursions were turned into illustrated
lectures with the use of a magic lantern.
William Main
MARTIN, PAUL AUGUSTUS (1864–1944)
French photographer and wood engraver, resident
of Great Britain
Growing up in an era of political, technological and
cultural change, Paul Augustus Martin holds a pivotal
position in the evolution and growth of modern photog-
raphy. Although a Frenchman by birth and by choice
(he retained his natural-born citizenship throughout
his life), Martin emigrated to London, England, in his
youth and became a permanent resident of that city for
the remainder of his life. The majority of his education,
the home of his family, and the basis of his commercial
and artistic life would all emanate from and resound
throughout Great Britain.
Martin was born in the village of Herbeuville, France,
on April 16, 1864, but at the age of fi ve he moved with
his family to Paris. The timing could not have been
worse as the city endured the joint horrors of the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870 and the misadventure of the Paris
Commune in 1871. The family, including young Paul,
faced tragedy (the loss of his younger sister) and near
death on numerous occasions and immigrated to London
by 1872. There the family was able to make a permanent
home and Paul prospered as a student, fascinated with
sports and excelling in mathematics and drawing. Fol-
lowing a brief period of attending preparatory school
in France, he completed his private school education in
London and passed his exams in 1880.
Deciding to pursue his drawing talents, Paul ap-
prenticed himself to a wood engraver in 1880, became a
professional in 1883, and excelled in the heyday of this
art throughout that decade—wood engraving enjoying a
popular period of growth in the illustrated press of the
day. It was also during this same decade that Martin
became fascinated with amateur photography, learning
the technology of dry plate processing on his own and
purchasing his fi rst camera, a quarter-plate Le Meritoire,
in 1884. For the next four years he continued to work
in the circles of his wood-engraver friends, employing
the camera on a very limited basis for holiday outings,
camping trips and vacations. Despite the limitations his
amateur album of this period displays a fi ne technologi-
cal skill and a careful professional eye, probably derived
from his artistic education and experience.
By 1888, however, things began to change rapidly.
Martin discovered the ever-burgeoning amateur pho-
tography movement in England with its proliferation of
photographic journals and its explosion of photographic
salons and camera clubs with their interesting speakers,
debates and competitions. It was a dynamic period in
photography’s history with its established pictorialists
and “old-school” photographers facing the dramatic
aesthetic and cultural changes being wrought by the
myriad new camera and processing technologies of
the era. Not of the class or the wealth to engage in the
Pictorialist traditions of the masters of the age, Martin
applied himself to newer aesthetics that the dry-plate
(and later the roll-fi lm) cameras were establishing.
By 1889, when he won his fi rst amateur photographic
competition, he was hooked.
The decade of the 1890s would mark the time of his
greatest proliferation as well as personal change. Martin
still worked as a wood engraver, but he took his cameras
everywhere—and the resultant imagery refl ects both
his excitement and mastery of the new medium and a
growing understanding about the vast potential of an
era of massive photographic change. During this mature
amateur period he became an active fi gure throughout
the London camera clubs and salon exhibitions—always
coming up with new original imagery and trying new
techniques. His purchase in 1890 of a Facile camera (a
dry-plate instrument that could be concealed in a nonde-
script bag and could handle up to 12 exposures) led him
out into the streets of London where he captured candid
photographs of “London street types” which had not
been seen before. The work, while fi tting somewhat into
the earlier documentary traditions of photography, was
clearly innovative, aesthetically mature and defi nitely
unlike any such imagery that had come before. The street
types—often manipulated with hand-drawn bases and