Hannavy_RT72353_C000v1.indd

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187


See Also: Robinson, Henry Peach; and Annan, James
Craig.


Further Reading


Greenough, Sarah, “Of Charming Glens, Graceful Glades, and
Frowning Cliffs’: The Economic Incentives, Social Induce-
ments, and Aesthetic Issues of American Pictorial Photog-
raphy, 1880–1902,” in Photography in Nineteenth-Century
America, ed. Martha A. Sandweiss, (Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon
Carter Musem, 1991).
Handy, Ellen. Pictorial Effect Naturalistic Vision: The Photo-
graphs and Theories of Henry Peach Robinson and Peter
Henry Emerson. Norfolk, Virg.: Chrysler Museum, 1994.
Harker, Margaret. The Linked Ring: The Secession Movement in
Photography in Britain, 1892–1910. London: Heinemann; A
Royal Photographic Society Publication, 1979.
Keller, Ulrich F. “The Myth of Art Photography: A Sociologi-
cal Analysis,” History of Photography, vol. 8, no. 4 (Oct.-
Dec.1984), 249–272.
La Photographie d’art vers 1900. Brussels: Crédit Cunnunal de
Belgique, 1983.
Le Pictorialisme en France. Paris: Editions Hoëbeke/Bibliothèque
nationale, 1992.
Le Salon de photographie: Les écoles pictorialistes en Europe et
aux Etats-Unis vers 1900. Paris: Musée Rodin, 1993.
Sternberger, Paul Spencer. Between Amateur and Aesthete: The
Legitimization of Photography as Art in America, 1880–1900.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.


BOOKS ILLUSTRATED WITH


PHOTOGRAPHS: 1840s
In October 1844, William Henry Fox Talbot and Nikolas
Henneman, travelled to Scotland to undertake a proj-
ect which would have an enduring effect on the future
direction of photography. With support from Lady
Elizabeth Fielding, Talbot had determined to publish
a photographically illustrated book, Sun Pictures in
Scotland, which would draw its inspiration from the
life and works of Sir Walter Scott who had died twelve
years earlier.
In publishing this volume, he not only gave the world
its fi rst themed photographically illustrated book, but
also provided the inspiration for a publishing direction
which endures and grows to this day—the travel book.
It can be argued, however, that is not a book, but a port-
folio, as it has no text, simply picture captions.
Sun Pictures in Scotland was published in an edition
of one thousand copies, all subscribed for in advance,
and required the production of twenty three thousand
hand made salted paper prints from calotype negatives.
Each print was pasted in by hand.
While the book can undoubtedly be recognised as
the fi rst photographically illustrated book published in
a signifi cant edition, it was not the fi rst photographically
illustrated publication.
There remains some debate over what constitutes
a publication, and what distinguishes a book from an


album. Claims have been made for L.L. Boscawen
Ibbotson’s Le Premier Livre Imprimé par le Soleil from
1839 to be accepted as the fi rst photographically illus-
trated publication, but this was no more than an album
of contact prints of grasses, fl owers and ferns, circulated
in a small edition. It was exhibited at the 1851 Great
Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London as being ‘the
fi rst book published by the sun’.
Hill and Adamson’s A Series of calotype Views of St
Andrews, Published by D.O. Hill and R. Adamson at
their Calotype Studio, Calton Stairs, Edinburgh in 1844
also falls into this category.
Similarly, Anna Aktins’ meticulous volumes of
contact prints of fl owers, algae and ferns, illustrations
and texts printed by the cyanotype process, cannot be
seen as ‘books’ in the modern sense of commercial
publications.
The case for identifying the privately published
Record of the Death-Bed of C. M. W. privately (printed
in January 1844 with a text by John Walker Jnr, and il-
lustrated by a calotype by Nikolas Henneman of a bust
of the deceased) as the fi rst photographically illustrated
publication, is problematic. It conforms to the modern
conventions of publication—printed text accompanied
by a photograph—but was not published in any real
sense.
Photography’s first illustrated publication was
Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature, published in six parts
between 29th June 1844 and 23rd April 1846. It was
also the world’s fi rst partwork.
Also in 1846, the German publisher Hermann Johann
Kessler produced Gedenblätter an Goethe, the fi rst
photographically illustrated book outside the United
Kingdom.
Perhaps more signifi cantly in terms of scale and
impact, the journal The Art Union illustrated its June
1846 issue with a salt print from one of Talbot’s calo-
type negative. Seven thousand copies were produced,
making it the largest photographically illustrated edition
of the decade.
Talbot went on to produce sixty six calotype illustra-
tions for a fourth volume to augment William Stirling’s
three-volume Annals of the Artists of Spain in 1848.
John Hannavy

See Also: Talbot, William Henry Fox; Henneman,
Nikolas; Calotype and Talbotype; and Hill, David
Octavius and Robert Adamson.

Further Reading
Gernsheim, Helmut, The Incunabula of British Photographic
Literature, 1839–1875. London and Berkeley: Scholar Press,
1984.
Henisch Heinz K., and Henisch, Bridget A., The Photographic
Experience 1839–1914. University Park: The Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1994.

BOOKS ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS: 1840s
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