Now that the MOOC has ended and the marks are in…
Miss Helen [Ellen] Murray, albumen print from a wet collodion negative by Dr John Adamson, 1850s T.1942.1.1.162 © National Museums Scotland.
Despite being photographed over 160 years ago, the picture Dr John Adamson produced of Miss Helen Murray appears fresh and contemporary. The importance of Adamson’s research into technical improvements, skill as a practitioner and teacher of the new art sent ripples across Scotland which are still recognised today.
Dr John Adamson (1809-70) of St Andrews was one of the first photographic practitioners in Scotland. Part of Sir David Brewster‘s circle (a correspondent of Fox Talbot) and active in the local Literary and Philosophical Society which promoted learning, Adamson taught the renowned professional photographers Robert Adamson (his brother) and Thomas Rodger. John Adamson is credited with taking the first successful Scottish calotype portrait in May 1841. [1]
“…the earliest photographs tend to be topographical views of town, but refinements, principally developed by John Adamson, allowed for the shorter exposure times that would permit successful portrait studies.”[2]
Although a medical doctor by profession, Adamson’s amateur status allowed him free rein to pursue his hobby and experiment without the constraints of studio fashions. Changing to the wet plate collodion process in 1851[3], he continued to take portraits of his friends, family, and associates. The smiling, natural face of Miss Helen Murray looking right into the camera is one such image, at odds with the stiffly posed formal portraits that others, such as John Moffat of Edinburgh, were producing at the time. Adamson also made delightfully direct and expressive pictures of his mother, David Octavius Hill, and Sir Brewster.
The wet plate process Adamson used was invented by Frederick Scott Archer and involved coating a glass plate with a collodion solution which was then made sensitive to light in a silver nitrate bath. The sensitised plate then had to be exposed and developed before the collodion dried. Rinsing the plate in water stopped the development and the plate could then be fixed and given a final rinse. The negative image formed on the glass plate could then be used to produce a positive contact print on salted paper or albumen paper. The glass plate itself could be given a dark backing to produce an ambrotype; another form of positive image. The glass wet plate process had the advantage of sharpness, detail and speed over the less sensitive, slower paper calotype, while still allowing multiple images to be printed unlike the daguerreotype. Another advantage for the photographer was the lack of patent claims on the process, which made the process cheaper as it was without licensing fees. (Although the calotype was not under patent in Scotland).
Adamson’s importance lies in his connection to the others whom he taught and was inspired by, and through his experiments to capture the spontaneous and natural expressions of his portrait sitters during the pioneering early days of photographic interaction where the fleeting moments of time could now be fixed on glass and paper.
[1] pg6 Hill and Adamson, Sara Stevenson, National Galleries of Scotland, 1981.
[2] pg34 Scottish Photography : A History, Tom Normand, Luath Press, 2007.
[3] http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/imu/imu.php?request=browse&irn=179