36 24 August 2019 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
GETTY’S HULTON ARCHIVE
catch fire, published in Picture
Post alongside the article, 10
Seconds Can Mar A Life, 1953.
Opening the boxes and peeling
back the beaten wrappers of
parcels, I realise everything I
thought contemporary has been
done deep in photography’s past.
There’s macro photography of
insect tongues; erotic photography
featuring tongues, and food
photography to make your mouth
water. There are drawers full
of political cartoons and maps
charting new territories a
century before Google. Some 5%
of the Hulton Archive is estimated
to be non-photographic: etchings,
lithographs, postcards, letters
and Valentine’s Day cards
among others.
The Vintage Room
History is democratic: boxes of
prints of comedian and actor Benny
Hill alphabetically align alongside
those of Adolf Hitler. History is also
fluid, a tide. No one’s place in it is
guaranteed. There are gatekeepers,
authors, editors and curators who
prioritise what’s important and
champion some photographers over
others. Melanie understands and
welcomes that the findings and
decisions of the team of ‘Hultonites’
at the London facility (including five
editors, four in scanning and an
on-site conservator whose job
is to stabilise and repair) can be
challenged or changed as new, old
archives are opened and verified.
The doyens of photography at
Hulton Archive are resident in
Melanie’s favourite room, the
Vintage Room. One of only five
people with access, she fobs us into
the windowless space, the walls
lined with Brassaï, Bill Brandt and
Lewis Carroll. She delivers to the
viewing table the book: Alfred
Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and
Other Poems Illustrated by Julia
Margaret Cameron, one of only
eight known copies in the world.
Other lifted lids reveal hermetically
sealed stereo daguerreotypes
(a photograph taken by an early
photographic process employing an
iodine-sensitised silvered plate and
mercury vapour), ambrotypes
(a positive photograph on glass
made by a variant of the wet-plate
collodion process) and calotypes
(an early photographic process
introduced in 1841 by William
Henry Fox Talbot, using paper
coated with silver iodide). There’s an
order of service from Ronald Kray’s
funeral; a 1738 letter from Louis XVof France (the most beloved Louis);
a 3D stereoscopic of the moon
and another marking the 200th
anniversary of the birth of Queen
Victoria, the latter being one of the
latest discoveries from the archive
files. Believed to be the earliest
image of any British monarch by a
woman photographer, the portrait
was captured by Frances Sally Day
(c1816-92), possibly on 26 July 1859,‘I realised every thing I
thought contemporary
had been done deep in
photography’s past’
This photograph
by early English
pioneer Julia
Margaret Cameron
was taken to
illustrate one of
the poems of her
friend, Alfred,
Lord TennysonBY JULIA MARGARET CAMERON © HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION / CORBIS / GETT Y IMAGES