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Henry Peach Robinson (English, 1830-1901)
Figures in Landscape, Gelligynan Series
Albumen Print from two or more negatives, circa 1880, 11 x 14 inches
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Henry
Peach Robinson was one of the
originators of photomontage, a
technique he called "combination
printing." Trained as a painter,
he exhibited his most famous
photograph, "Fading Away," in
1858. This was a deathbed scene
of a young woman, made from
combining five separate
negatives. Robinson published
eleven books on photography and
numerous magazine articles. The
journal Photo Era
memorialized him by saying "In
England and on the continent, for
nearly half a century (1857 to
1900) no single influence has
been greater than his in shaping
the progress of pictorial
work..." In a more recent
appraisal, the photographic
historian Robert A. Sobieszek
called Robinson "perhaps the most
influential voice in nineteenth
century photography. No other
photographer so consistently
produced major works of art, was
bestowed with so many
commendations and medals, and was
so much a proselytizer of a
coherent theory of photographic
art."
There
were technical reasons for
producing images from multiple
negatives; the materials in use
during most of the nineteenth
century could not record detail
in the sky of a landscape without
underexposing the rest of the
picture, and it could be
difficult to keep all parts of a
large image such as the one shown
in focus at the same time. For
figures in a landscape, a subject
favored by Robinson, there were
other advantages to photographing
models in the studio: "The light
is more unmanageable out of
doors," he wrote, "and the
difficulty arising from the
effect of wind on the dress is
very serious."
But
Robinson's influential book
Pictorial Effect in
Photography (1869) contained
only eight pages of instructions
on combination printing -- the
rest of its 199 pages is filled
with lessons on composition and
lighting, mostly based on the
works of well-known painters.
Even in the few pages devoted to
technical instructions, Robinson
issues a stern aesthetic warning:
It
is true that combination
printing, allowing, as it
does, much greater liberty to
the photographer, and much
greater facilities for
representing the truth of
nature, also admits, from
these very facts, of a wide
latitude for abuse; but the
photographer must accept the
conditions at his own peril.
If he find that he is not
suffficiently advanced in his
knowledge of art, and has not
sufficient reverence for
nature, to allow him to make
use of these liberties, let
him put on his fetters again,
and confine himself to one
plate. It is certain (and this
I will put in italics, to
impress it more strongly on
the memory) that a
photograph produced by
combination printing must be
deeply studied in every
particular, so that no
departure from the truth of
nature shall be discovered by
the closest scrutiny. No
two things must occur in one
picture that cannot happen in
nature at the same time.
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