540
adapt to suit the artistic or creative requirements of the
photograph.
One of the fi rst to put this new approach into prac-
tice—albeit by accident according to her son—was Julia
Margaret Cameron. Writing in her brief biographical
manuscript Annals of My Glass House in 1874—of her
fi rst ‘success’ in photography almost a decade earlier—
she recalled that “when focusing and coming to some-
thing which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped
there instead of screwing on the lens to the more defi nite
focus which all other photographers insist upon.”
The Cuban-born Peter Henry Emerson took matters
yet further, proposing that only the central subject of
the photograph should be in sharp focus, the remainder
being allowed to recede into a softer focus to draw the
viewer to the picture’s central purpose. ‘Naturalistic
Photography,’ as proposed by Emerson, sought to
replicate the manner in which the human eye—and
therefore the photographer himself—saw the scene
while contemplating photographing it. “In this mingled
decision and indecision, this lost and found” he wrote,
“lies all the charm and mystery of nature.”
John Hannavy
See also: Cameron, Julia Margaret; Cundell,
George Smith and Brothers; Emerson, Peter Henry;
Focimeter; Lancaster, James & Sons; and Quinet,
Achille.
Further Reading
Auer, Michael, The Illustrated History of the Camera, Boston:
New York Graphic Society, 1975.
Coe, Brian, Cameras from Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures,
London: Marshall Cavendish, 1978.
Goldberg, Vicki (Ed.), Photography in Print, Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1981.
Spira, S.F., The History of Photography as seen through the Spira
Collection, New York: Aperture, 2001.
FOELSCHE, PAUL HINRICH MATTHAIS
(1831–1914)
Australian police inspector and amateur
photographer
Foelsche was born in Germany on 30 March 1831.
Shortly after migrating to Adelaide in 1854, he enlisted
in the mounted police. In 1869, Foelsche was commis-
sioned to lead a new force at Palmerston (Darwin) where
he developed an enthusiasm for wet-plate photography.
An avid contributor to International exhibitions, his
entries received a number of awards. Foelsche retired
from the police force in 1904, and died in Darwin on
31 January 1914.
Foelsche developed an enthusiasm for wet-plate pho-
tography and scientifi c collecting following his appoint-
ment as the Northern Territory’s fi rst police inspector in- Most active between 1873 and 1896, he produced
over 500 images of the colony and its Aboriginal peoples
initially for International exhibitions, but later in the
making of photographic albums.
His accomplishment and range extended with his
change to the dry-plate process: from buildings and in-
dustry to picturesque scenes of rivers, escarpments and
remote settlements. His portraiture became increasingly
infl uenced by the new science of anthropology and is
comprised of over 300 plates and accompanying records
of Aboriginal people.
Timothy Smith
FONTAYNE, CHARLES H. (1814–1901)
At the Great Exhibition of 1851 at London’s Crystal
Palace, a panorama of the Cincinnati waterfront was
exhibited. Comprising eight separate whole plate da-
guerreotypes, the panorama measured over fi ve and
a half feet in length, and was of a quality so high that
historians have been able to identify every vessel moored
along the banks. The panorama was photographed across
the river from the rooftop of a building in Newport, Ken-
tucky, by Charles H Fontayne and William Southgate
Porter (qv) in September 1848.
The two photographers had resumed a partnership
earlier that year, after Porter had moved from Baltimore
where, from 1844 until 1846, they had operated a suc-
cessful studio at 268 Baltimore Street.
Fontayne, who had fi rst practised photography in
1841, left the Baltimore studio in early 1846, moving
to Cincinnati where he worked on his own until Porter
rejoined him in his studio at 30 West 4th Street.
He was working on his own by 1854, when he offered
a reward in Humphrey’s Journal for the return of stolen
cameras, and in the following year he claimed to have
produced the world’s fi rst life-sized photograph. By
1856 he was at Ryder’s Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio.
In the 1860s he developed equipment for the large-
scale production of prints, and dryers for completing
the process.
Still active in the 1890s, he claimed that in the
1840s, he had been suffering from consumption, until
the chemical fumes apparently cured him. He died in
Clifton New Jersey in 1901, after several years of work-
ing in New York.
John HannavyFORBES, JAMES DAVID (1809–1868)
English physicist and glaciologist
James David Forbes was Professor of Natural Philoso-
phy at the University of Edinburgh from 1833 to 1859