1499
identical cameras set up around six inches apart. There
is evidence that this arrangement was used earlier, at
the Crystal Palace in 1854, whether or not by Williams
himself is unclear. The main reason was to produce two
pairs of negatives of the same scene. William’s strange
arrangement made some sense; it allowed him to make
two negatives, in case one became spoilt in processing
or broken, also, it would also be possible to provide two
different publishers with a negative each for printing.
May argues that Williams found the ‘sequential’ effect
of one image varying slightly from the other improved
the three dimensional stereo effect.
Of course Williams might have used this unusual
arrangement before; to produce both a glass stereo
negative and a daguerreotype at the same time, in fact
Williams is probably unique in offering photographs
on metal and card of the same scene. This method of
working was not necessary with still-lives or scenes
with no fi gures, as Williams would have plenty of time
to expose two or more plates. However, with the posed
‘Village’ scenes it was paramount to make the exposures
quickly. The ‘Village’ series were taken with collodion
on glass and there are a few known as glass positive
transparencies, as well as conventional card-mounted
examples.
Following this series of stereo views Williams con-
centrated on portraiture at his Regent Street studio, pro-
ducing good quality cartes-de-visite and larger portraits.
By the end of his career he was being assisted by his
son Alfred, who was 18 at the time of his father’s death
in 1871.Williams was at one time in partnership with
William Mayland, who appears to have taken over the
Regent Street studio on Williams’ death. Mayland went
on to produce good-quality seascapes in carbon, in the
style of Col. Stuart Wortley (1832–1890).
Williams died aged 46 on April 5, 1871 at his north
London home from the effects of diabetes, which was
at that time untreatable.
Ian Sumner
Biography
T.R. Williams was a London commercial photographer
mainly known for his stereographic work, often in the
style of his mentor Claudet. He made an extensive series
of photographs of the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1854,
patronised by Queen Victoria. Williams produced ‘news’
photographs of the exhibition’s opening ceremony and
operated a successful studio and photographed many
well-known personalities.
See also: Cartes-de-Visite; Stereoscopy;
Daguerreotype; Wet Collodion Negative; Beard,
Richard; Claudet, Antoine-François-Jean; Great
Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations,
Crystal Palace, Hyde Park (1851); Victoria, Queen
and Albert, Prince Consort; and London Stereoscopic
Company.Further Reading
May, Brian, Stereo World, vol. 30, no. 1 (2004) and vol. 31, no.
4 (2006), National Stereoscopic Association, Inc.
Steel, Jonathan. The Photographic Collector, vol. 3, no. 1 (1982),
Bishopsgate Press. London.WILLIS, WILLIAM (1841–1923)
British inventor
His name is synonymous with the invention of plati-
notype—the fi nest process in the entire repertoire of
19th century photographic printing. Born in 1841 at
St. Austell, Cornwall, the elder son of William Willis
senior, engraver and inventor of the ‘aniline’ process,
William junior was trained and employed in engineer-
ing and banking before devoting himself to tackling
the problem of photographic impermanence. His prime
choice of platinum as image substance achieved slight
success in 1873, followed by many years of persevering
research and development in his private laboratory at
Bromley, Kent, which yielded fi ve British patents and
brought the process fi nally to perfection and universal
acclaim by 1892. To market his invention, Willis had
launched his Platinotype Company in 1879, and he
remained continually responsive to public taste and
commercial demand by inventing new variations: sepia
platinotype, ‘japine’ paper, palladiotype, and ‘satista’
paper. He travelled widely, including the United States,
and business interests notwithstanding, delivered in-
structive lecture-demonstrations to the Camera Club and
the Royal Photographic Society, which awarded him its
Progress Medal in 1881, and elected him to Honorary
Fellowship in 1905. Willis’s dedicated lifetime of re-
search has endowed photographic history with a legacy
of the most permanent and beautiful images. He died a
bachelor, at Brasted Chart, Kent, in 1923.
Mike WareWILSON, EDWARD LIVINGSTON
(1838–1903)
Publisher, advocate, teacherA tireless advocate for professional photographers’
rights and a prolifi c author, Edward Livingston Wilson
was born in Flemington, New Jersey, on March 4, 1838.
He began his photographic career working in the stu-
dio of Philadelphia photographer Frederick Gutekunst
in the early 1860s. In 1864 he established the fi rst
photographic magazine in America, the Philadelphia
Photographer, later known as Wilson’s Magazine, and