431
to support these unfortunate claims. More dependable
are his diary entries, which reveal that he made nude
photographs on eight occassions over the course of thir-
teen years and these involved the willing participation
of both children and parents of just six families. This
is not the record of a habitual voyeur, pornographer, or
pedophile, but the response of an overtly sentimental
bachelor with artistic inclinations to the innocent beauty
and grace of childhood. To Dodgson children were
magical, a gift from God that gave meaning and purpose
to his life as a reverend gentleman, children’s author
and photographer. Throughout his life their company
reaffi rmed his sense of humanity and fuelled the vital
spark of creativity that informed both his writing and
photography. He was a polymath of remarkable talent
whose legacy still enriches our lives today.
Roger Taylor
See also: Photographic Society London; Price,
William Lake; Rejlander, Oscar Gustav; and
Cameron, Julia Margaret.
Further Reading
Cohen, Morten N, Lewis Carroll, London, Macmillan.
Taylor, Roger & Edward Wakeling, Lewis Carroll, Photographer,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Wakeling, Edward, Lewis Carroll’s , Vol. 1–6, Hertfordshire:
Lewis Carroll Society, 1993–2001.
DOMESTIC AND FAMILY
PHOTOGRAPHY
Domestic photography during the nineteenth century was
defi ned by two distinct, though inter-related practices.
The fi rst and by far the most important of these was a
demand for imagery on the part of middle class house-
holds, a demand that began with a multi-faceted use of
portraiture and, after mid-century, came to include an
unprecedented acquisition of mass produced images.
Compared to this acquisition of images, the actual taking
of family photographs was, until the 1880s, more impor-
tant as an ideal than as a practice. Yet when a practical
technology for home photography fi nally became avail-
able, it yielded not only a second wave of photography’s
industrial development but also the beginnings of a
redefi nition of the role of domestic iconography.
Gisèle Freund, in her early writing on the sociology
of photography, argued that a desire for cheap portrai-
ture on the part of the rising middle classes provided
a major impetus for the medium’s invention. Freund’s
assertion is given credence by the rapid appearance of
portrait studios in major cities of Europe, the United
States and, to a lesser extent, Asia and Latin America,
between 1840 and 1845. Portraits became yet more
common in the decades that followed with the opening
of studios in smaller communities as well as the work
of itinerant photographers.
From the early years of the medium, the social status
of the photographic portrait was assured by the willing-
ness of the rich and powerful to have their photographs
taken and circulated. This meant that for the middle and
working classes, the photograph represented not simply
an inexpensive portrait but rather a democratization of
the once exclusive realm of portraiture itself. Moreover,
in the mid-nineteenth century home, portraits became
essential components of the family’s rites of passage.
Wedding pictures of the bride, groom and the clergyman
who married them were often incorporated in marriage
certifi cates. Graduation photographs of both individu-
als and classes date from at least 1853. Post-mortem
portraiture was commonplace, especially for children,
the newly deceased being posed by photographers who
specialized in the practice. In some instances, already
interned bodies were exhumed because no post-mortem
photograph had been taken. By the 1850s, specially
coated portraits of the deceased in life or death begin
appearing on tombstones.
In other areas as well, the placement of photographs
was an essential element in their domestic use. The
necessity of shielding daguerreotypes and ambrotypes
as well as the small size in which these portraits were
usually produced, led to their being kept as keepsakes
in ever more elaborate cases and lockets. “Stanhopes,”
extremely small albumen or collodion transparencies,
were embedded in jewelry and viewed through magnify-
ing lenses. Other processes allowed photographs to be
transferred onto cloth or ceramics, integrating images of
family members into the household’s daily life.
From 1854, with André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri’s
invention of the carte-de-visite, the domestic placement
of the photograph lent itself to a more complex social
narrative. The cartes, originally images of illustrious
fi gures, were not simply bought and displayed but col-
lected in the albums that, beginning in 1858, Disdéri
created for the purpose. When the middle class began
sitting for its own cartes-de-visite (or tintypes) it was
up to the keeper of the album, usually the woman of
the house, to integrate family portraits with the images
of the fi gures and institutions to which the family felt
an affi liation. Placing royalty, presidents, clergy and
the places or monuments associated with them at the
front of family albums continued after the mid-1860s
with the cabinet cards and the albums designed to hold
them. Through the remainder of the nineteenth century,
the increasingly ornate designs of family albums made
them, in Elizabeth McCauley’s description, “the new,
positivist Bible...in which all that was admired or held
sacred by the family could be preserved and exhibited
to friends and visitors.”
As was the case with portraiture, the esteem accruing