1382
TAYLOR, JOHN TRAILL (c. 1827–1895)
John Traill Taylor, born in Scotland’s Orkney Islands,
and the son of a watchmaker, went on to become one of
the most infl uential fi gures in the emerging photographic
press in Great Britain.
Moving to Edinburgh c.1845, initially working as an
optician and watchmaker, he is believed to have written
for several daily newspapers, and to have contributed to
a number of scientifi c and optical journals.
In 1856 he founded a manuscript journal entitled The
Photographer and three years later began his long as-
sociation with The Photographic Journal, formerly the
Liverpool & Manchester Photographic Journal. This
became The British Journal of Photography (BJP) in
1860 and which he edited from 1864 until 1879, and
again from 1886 until his death in 1895, also editing
The British Journal of Photography Almanac during
that latter period.
Taylor’s interest in the practice of photography had
started with the daguerreotype in the 1840s and contin-
ued throughout his life. He regularly communicated with
William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1860s both on scientifi c
issues, and in preparing an account of Talbot’s life and
work for the BJP. He resigned his editorship in 1879
intending to take up photography professionally, but by
1880 he had moved to the United States where he spent
fi ve years as Editor of The Photographic Times.
His infl uential writings on photography were re-
printed in several journals in both Britain and America.
Having purchased land in Florida planning to live there
in his retirement, he died there suddenly in November
1895.
John Hannavy
TENISON, CAPTAIN EDWARD KING
(1805–1878)
Irish
Tenison was a wealthy Irish landowner who was an
early pioneer of the calotype and waxed-paper nega-
tive. He married the eldest daughter of the 1st Earl of
Lichfi eld, Lady Louisa Anson, in 1838 and lived at
Kilronan Castle, Roscommon. Tenison and his wife
travelled to France and Spain in the early 1850s and in
her 1853 journal In Castile and Andalucia Lady Louisa
gives a humorous account of the interest her husband’s
suspicious ‘Talbotype Apparatus’ aroused amongst the
locals.
Tenison exhibited various studies at the 1853 Dub-
lin exhibition and joined the newly formed Dublin
Photographic Society the following year. He showed
four Spanish architectural studies from waxed-paper
negatives in the 1854 Photographic Society’s London
exhibition and in 1855 ten views of chateaux, priories
and churches in Normandy. His large Spanish pictures
were generally well received at the Dublin exhibition,
the Photography Section Report jurors remarking on
the prints’ unusual warm-yellow and violet tints (from
gold-toning), however it was suggested that they had too
much contrast and could perhaps be improved by print-
ing with the Blanquart-Evrard process. Tenison seems
to have taken this advice on board and many of his later
French views were produced by the French process.
Ian Sumner
TERRIS, ADOLPHE (1820–1900)
French photographer
Adolphe Terris is best known for his photographs of the
large-scale public construction projects that occurred in
and around Marseilles, France in the early 1860s. Ter-
ris was born in 1820 in Aix-en-Provence to a family of
craftsmen. Terris’ fi rst known commercial venture was a
book store, which he opened in Marseilles in 1845. His
interest soon turned to photography, however, and by
1856 he was working in a local photography studio in the
port city. Terris was a founding member of the Société
Marseillaise de Photographie in 1860, and in 1861 he
had organized a photographic exhibition in his studio.
In 1861 Terris also received his fi rst commission to pho-
tograph the large civil engineering projects underway in
and around Marseilles, on this occasion his subject was
the extensive renovation of the Rue l’Imperiale. Between
1861 and 1875 the city commissioned Terris to docu-
ment other aspects of their construction and moderniza-
tion program, including the rehabilitation of the public
roads and buildings, the harbor and waterfront. Terris’
photographs serve as an important historical record of
the transformation of the city of Marseilles. Several of
his photographs were included in Les Travaux Publics
de la France, which was published through the French
Ministry of Public Works. Terris died in 1900.
Maxim Weintraub
TEYNARD, FÉLIX (1817–1892)
French, active in Egypt 1851–1852, photographer,
civil engineer
Félix Teynard, a provincial civil engineer, completed
an extensive photographic survey of Egypt during the
course of a Nile voyage beginning in late 1851 and
concluding in 1852. Working with the calotype process,
Teynard made more than 160 paper negatives along the
Nile from Cairo to the level of the Second Cataract. He
completed what to date was the most thorough documen-
tation of the recently cleared site of Abu Simbel, as well
as extensive and systematic records of Karnak, Luxor,
and Philae. Publication of Teynard’s work began in 1853