1179
Maori portraits, as the photographs were identifi ed
under the studio name it is diffi cult to assign whether
the photographer was George, Elizabeth, or Frederick
Pulman. However due to their fl attering and sympa-
thetic style of portraiture that allowed the personality
and individuality of the sitter to come through, it ap-
pears that they were commissioned by a large number
of Maori clients. To emphasise the Maori identity of
individuals the studio owned and used cloaks, hei tikis
(pendants), meres (clubs), taiahas (spears), and huia
feathers so that they could enhance the ‘Maoriness’ of
those portrayed. The Pulman Studio was sold shortly
before Elizabeth Pulman’s death in 1900, including a
selection of landscape negatives that were purchased
and subsequently reprinted by the New Zealand Gov-
ernment Tourism Department.
Jocelyne Dudding
PUMPHREY, WILLIAM (1817–1905)
English photographer
Born on February 4, 1817 in Worcester, the son of
a Quaker glove-maker, William Pumphrey held the
daguerreotype licence for York from 1849—only the
second photographer to operate in the city—having
acquired the photographic interests of Samuel Walker
the licensee since 1844.
Before taking up the new profession of photography,
Pumphrey had trained as a science teacher, and taken
up a teaching position in York in 1845. When William
Henry Fox Talbot relaxed his calotype licensing terms in
1852, Pumphrey started to exploit the process producing
and publishing portfolios of views of the architectural
heritage of York and its environs. The earliest dated
examples of this aspect of his work date from October
of that year.
Throughout 1853, he published a sixty-image part
work of these views, but by the following year he is
believed to have sold his studio and taken up a position
as superintendent of an asylum.
Thereafter his enduring interest in photography ap-
pears to have been as an amateur. In 1866 he organised
an exhibition of art and industry in York, including a
number of his own stereoscopic views. A second exhibi-
tion in 1879 was also successful.
He retired to Bath in 1881, and moved to Bristol in
1895 where he died ten years later on 28th March.
John HannavyPUYO, ÉMILE JOACHIM CONSTANT
(1857–1931)
French photographer
Émile Joachim Constant Puyo was born in Morlaix in
1857 and died in 1931. He was a French Army offi cer,
serving fi rst in artillery, being after promoted to com-
mander (Commandant was sometimes used as his nick-
name). He served in Algeria them returned to Paris to
the commanding offi ce. He practiced photography from
1887 and ended leaving the army in 1902 to pursuit a
photographic career.
Entered the Photo-Club de Paris in the mid 1890’s.
This association published the Revue Française de
Photographie were he published many photographs as
well as technical articles. In these texts he promoted
pictorialism, as an aesthetic, was well as a technically
based movement. In 1896 Puyo wrote Notes sur la
Photographie Artistique, the fi rst of many articles and
books on equipment and processes that he would publish
throughout his career.
Along with Robert Demachy he was one of the best
known French pictorialist photographers photograph-
ing folk types, landscapes and mostly the female fi gure.
He was a pioneer of several painterly processes, mostly
bromoil, used by their ability to create an unrealistic
rendering, closer to painting than to photography. He
used soft-focus lens in order to achieve the same goal.
His work was widely successful and he was published
in many countries outside of France including Alfred
Stieglitz’s Camera Work. He participated in many
exhibitions, including a group show promoted by
Stieglitz in 1906 and a 1931 Paris retrospective with
Demachy.
He continued to practice pictorialist photography
after World War I, after his friend Demachy abandoned
photography and the Photo-Secession in New York
ended.
His work is now present in many collections, in-
cluding 160 images in the French Médiathèque de
l’architecture et du patrimoine.
Nuno Pinheiro