Paul Martin: Victorian Photographer

Description: Yesterday's Muse, Inc. presents ... Paul Martin: Victorian Photographer ISBN:0292764367 Author:Flukinger, Roy; Schaaf, Larry; Meacham, Standish Publisher:University of Texas Press Release Date:1977 Seller Category:-- Qty Available:1 Condition:Collectible: Very Good Sku: 2344451 Notes: First edition. Jacket edges rubbed with minor tears, jacket lightly stained. 1977 Large Hardcover. x, 221 pp. Paul Martin (April 16, 1864– July 7, 1944) was a French-born British photographer who pioneered both street and night photography. Martin's strong talent in drawing brought him work in Fleet Street as a wood engraver where much of his work would have involved copying photographs, wood engraving being then the means of reproducing them in newspapers. He had first experimented in photography when he was ten years old, but he was nineteen before he purchased his first dry-plate camera in 1884 and joined camera clubs to learn as much as he could about the medium. The camera Martin used, the Fallowfield Facile detective camera, became available in 1889 and was considered a ‘hand camera’. Constructed of mahogany with a simple reflex viewfinder on the top, rendering a waist-level view, it weighed only 1.8 kg, and was camouflaged in brown paper to resemble a parcel. Plates were stored in an internal rack and flipped down once exposed. His camera presents us with a waist-level view, a child’s perspective on the scene in effect, and equally inquisitive. Though modest and shy, during his lunch hours Martin started photographing on the surrounding streets of London, as a means of improving and testing his technique; “It is impossible to describe the thrill which taking the first snaps without being noticed gave one,” he said. The people he photographed were workers and craftspeople, working class subjects less confronting than the gentry who would have felt entitled to challenge him. Though his imagery of the less privileged is sympathetic, it not motivated by any urge for reform which inspired the later work of Jacob Riis, for example. Martin was awarded the Royal Photographic Society’s Royal Medal in 1896, not for his lantern slides but for his series of pictures shot at night during the winter of 1895-6; London by Gaslight, one of the first serious attempts at night photography that attracted the admiration of Alfred Steiglitz, who produced his own series on Manhattan at night (1898), and prompted the formation of the amateur Society of Night Photographers. In an article for The Photogram, Martin described his experiments; his photographs on isochromatic plates required exposures of ten to fifteen minutes. Given that his was the first photography of the city at night, his unfamiliar activities with a camera in the dark aroused the curiosity of passers-by and he was often followed by the police. From 1893 to 1909, Martin was an active member of The Linked Ring group of art photographers. However, in 1899 he set up a photographic firm in partnership with Harry Gordon Dorrett as Dorrett & Martin at 16 Bellevue Road, Wandsworth Common, after which he no longer had time to make street photographs. His most lucrative business was portraiture and a sideline in producing button badges containing portraits of popular military figures during WW1. He also photographed historic events such as the funeral of Queen Victoria (1901), the great frost of 1895, and the coronation of Edward VII (1902). Though he sold such pictures to the press, few were published. He continued to photograph for recreation in the Cornwall, Brittany and Swiss landscapes. He closed his studio in 1926, and when his street photography started to attract the interest of collectors including Helmut Gernsheim, he gladly and cheaply sold them his remaining negatives. The producer of a number of inventions that improved the medium, his estate amounted to little more than £4000 when he died in Hosack Road, Balham, in July 1944. Don't forget to check out other great deals in our eBay Store!!

Price: 25 USD

Location: Webster, New York

End Time: 2024-09-26T19:30:14.000Z

Shipping Cost: 7.13 USD