WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS IN THE 1800s

A studio camera of the 1850s







Today, all we have to do to take pictures is whip out our digital camera. Then to see the
results, we plug it in to the nearest computer. It's instant gratification and something
many women enjoy. But think of what was involved in photography over 150 years ago
and we might wonder why women ever wanted to have a career in that field.

Allie Caine, my fictional character in Images In Scarlet, soon to be released to Kindle,
learned to take pictures from her father and worked with him during and after the Civil
War. In researching this subject, I found that women in those days who wanted to be a
photographer almost always worked with a man, usually a relative.

It's a fact that few women are cited in the most popular books on the history of
photography. But there are several reasons for that. One is that sometimes incorrect
history is often repeated and in turn quoted, with the result that it becomes the
established lore even when the story may have left out some of the facts. Actually,
women were very active in this field and deserve far greater prominence than history
has given to them.

Early photography was quite an ordeal, and it's understandable that women might not
have been interested in taking up such a pastime. As soon as a glass plate was
exposed it was necessary to develop the picture with smelly chemicals. Plenty of water
had to be available. If working outside a studio, the equipment was heavy and awkward
to carry.  One of the chemicals, Collodion,  was first formulated in 1846. It was then,
and still is, used as a medical dressing. Made from cotton or cellulose, soaked in nitric
and sulphuric acids --- which explains the unpleasant odor --- the cotton is thoroughly
washed and dried and then dissolved in ether and alcohol. And add to that how hit and
miss the entire process was. Sometimes after all that work, no picture resulted. Despite
this,  in the 1850s around 10,000 women were actrively involved in what was then
known as picture-making.

There is  evidence that women did not receive the acknowledgement due to them. Most
played a supportive role to their husbands and were then content to accept that he
would receive all the credit. Well, at least if some weren't content, most didn't have
much choice. Early on, many of those who participated in picture making would be
relatives of a man who worked in the field. Fox Talbot had a number of female relatives
who were active alongside him. His wife Constance,  took pictures and developed and
printed them. Emma Llwelyn printed for her husband, John Llwelyn. Robert Tytler
photographed the ruins following the Indian Mutiny of 1858; his wife Harriet
accompanied him, and though the work received much acclaim, the records only
mention the husband's name. Elizabeth, wife of Disderi, famous for his carte-de-visites -
-- the small oval personal photos often carried in a pocket or reticule --- was in
partnership with her husband, and continued to operate in Paris after his death, until
her own death in 1878. It says much of the times that her death certificate cites "without
profession, 61 years old."

Allie Caine heads west armed with a camera and a Navy Colt. Driving the “what’s-it”
wagon, specially adapted for use as a studio, she leaves bloody Missouri behind. The
Civil War is over; her mother and brother murdered by bushwhackers, her father dead
of a stroke. Fleeing the only life she’s ever known, she’s determined to reach Santa Fe
where she hopes to set up a studio. Making pictures of people in the wagon train she
will join up with will pay her way west.

She never expects to find a man sleeping in the middle of the road, a man with no
memories who wanders the land in search of his home, his family.  Snatches of his life
are all he can summon from his fragmented past, swirling images of sheets scarlet with
blood and a woman lying still as death. Deep in his heart he knows he is not the killer
his flashbacks suggest. All he has to do is prove it. Should she fear this man or love
him?

Read Images In Scarlet, soon available on Kindle.

A Giroux camera from the 1850s


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