Photography and the 1851 Great Exhibition

Photography and the 1851 Great Exhibition aims to provide the first comprehensive study of the role of photography at the Exhibition of the Work of Industry of All Nations held at Hyde Park in 1851 and the impact this event had on the burgeoning medium. Given the frequency with which photographic research collides with the ‘Great Exhibition’ – as it became known – or its many key players, both famous and obscure, this book certainly is a worthwhile endeavour. It gathers together twenty years of research by the author, whose previous book, ‘A Higher Branch of the Art’: Photographing the Fine Arts in England 1839–1880, has proved to be a foundational text for researching photography in museums. In this new volume Hamber succeeds in providing the researcher with a thorough guide to the photographs and photographic equipment exhibited at the exhibition, providing insight into how they were selected and by whom. The seminal photographically illustrated Exhibition of the Work of Industry of All Nations, 1851: Reports by the Juries – specially commissioned volumes which comprise the official photographic record of the exhibition and document prize-winning or notable exhibits – are systematically illustrated, analysed and explained for the first time. New research also details where each extant copy is now. This section on such reports is perhaps destined to be one of the most widely used parts of the publication, as it identifies and discusses the exhibited objects portrayed in each image – ranging from sculpture to paintings, machinery and products – as well as the photographers involved and the methods they used, thereby bringing together different disciplines and supporting wider scholarship beyond the photographic. Anyone studying material histories of photography, histories of display and exhibition, and histories of industry will therefore also find much to interest them in this work. This volume adds to the significant body of research on the exhibition of photographs in nineteenth-century Britain, such as the online databases Photographs Exhibited in Britain 1839–1865 and Exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society 1870–1915. However, what this book brings is narrative, analysis and illustrations to the available data. The interest Hamber demonstrates in photographic equipment shown at the exhibition supports a deeper understanding of the business of photography. His knowledge of the practicalities and technicalities in turn furnishes a more grounded and accurate analysis of the photographic negatives and prints. In bringing this technical understanding to bear on the photographs in the Reports by the Juries, Hamber helps us determine which aesthetic effects were deliberately chosen and which were by-products of the many practical or technical compromising circumstances with which the photographers had to contend. Chapters setting the scene in the photographic milieu of the time and introducing the key players are meticulously researched and offer extensive detail. Photographers are described alongside firms making cameras, opticians making lenses and chemists selling chemicals for the photographic industry, which allows the reader to explore closely connected threads between the practitioners and the trade. Although there was a section of the Great Exhibition dedicated to photography, photographs and photographic equipment were spread among many different ‘classes’ within the building. The work Hamber has done to consolidate everything photographic together for this volume has been considerable and makes this book a definitive reference resource. The chapter that discusses illustrations and reproductions of the Exhibition helpfully guides the reader through the myriad different techniques at play in visually representing and disseminating the event. This chapter reminds us how deeply entangled photography was with engraving and chromolithography during this period. It consequently contributes to the study of printmaking history as well as providing valuable context for the place of photography in 1851. This book is at its best when discussing the Reports by the Juries, the four-volume, photographically illustrated catalogues of the exhibits compiled for a select group of VIPs and dignitaries. This has clearly been a labour of love for the author to research, and it is easy for us to share in his excitement as he discovers new information by comparing across