The old photographs

A Sea of Steps (1903, in Wells Cathedral)
by Frederick Evans, platinum  print

In 1839 John Herschel described those newfangled phenomena called photographs as "miraculous. Certainly they surpass anything I could have conceived as within the bounds of reasonable expectation. Every gradation of light and shade is given with a softness and fidelity which sets all painting at an immeasurable distance."

At Canada's National Gallery, an exhibition of 19th Century British Photographs (although one or two of them appear to originate from the 20th century) is coming to an end tomorrow. I found time to visit it yesterday and am glad I did. What struck me forcibly was that, according to those black and white pictures, of scenes of farmyards with haystacks, orchards and tumbledown sheds, or of urban backstreets or grander buildings did not look all that different from what I remember of Britain in my childhood (a century later).

The early photographers, for obvious reasons, preferred static subjects, by no means confining themselves to their home country, however. There were documentary shots of buildings in Burma, in India, of a military encampment at "Sebastopol," and a panorama of "Constantinople" taken from a high tower up which the photographers had lugged all their heavy equipment. Other exhibits had been more lighthearted in intent, such as a shot of the "Lorna Doone" waterfall at Badgworthy in Devon and one taken in N.E. Yorkshire (where I once used to go hiking) of two little girls in Victorian dresses, one of them posing playfully in the branches of a tree, the photographer's daughters. His name was Herbert Sutcliffe (a Yorkshire name, like that of the famous cricketer). Other photos by this artist (surely they all thought of themselves as artists) were of the Danby Castle ruins and Hart Hall in Glaisdale.

At the end of the exhibition was the famous shot, shown above, of the steps to the Chapter House in Wells Cathedral "worn here and there by the tread of many feet, like fallen leaves" as a critic of its day poetically described it. The photographer himself had noticed that the steps were "worn into a semblance of broken waves  ... the curve of the steps ... is for all the world like the surge of a great wave ..."

(Speaking of Wells Cathedral, my mother has just told me on the 'phone that she'll be the guest of honour at a concert there, on July 30th)