Henry Peach Robinson
Henry Peach Robinson
and the photographic medium
as a fine art tool in a surrogate world
Henry Peach Robinson (9 July 1830, 21 February 1901) was a pioneer of pictorial photography. A promising writer first, portrait painter and then landscape painter later, he discovered the world of photography at fourteen and truly entered it from 1850.
He was nicknamed "the king of photographic image creation" and was certainly one of the greatest photographers of his time.
He was also one of the greatest fighters for the recognition of photography in the world of art. In the dispute whether photography was considered as a "reproduction" of reality or "interpretation" it was seen as a simple means of reproduction, due to the mechanical procedures required for the production of the images.
He was forced by circumstances and the environment in which he lived to interrupt his beloved studies very soon. He used to say that his native town was "a world fifty years behind".
H. P. Robinson felt he loved art more than anything else and his will to be an artist was finally expressed through photography.
"I am strongly of opinion ...... that I was prepared by all my surroundings to become a photographer for years before I first smelt collodion."
(H. P. Robinson, "Autobiographical Sketches")
Why does Robinson, who lived in Linney, Ludlow, a town in Shropshire in the borderland between England and Wales, make this claim? Do his parents have anything to do with this supposed influence on young Henry?
John Robinson was Master of the National School of the Church in England, while Eliza Robinson Peach was, as stated by her son, ".... full of artistic instincts in advance of her time ...".
In fact, Henry, in his youth, seemed to be heading for a bright future as a writer, given his skill and the influence of his native places, where Milton produced "Comus" and Butler wrote "Hudibras".
Robinson, given the financial straits of his family, did not have the opportunity to train in big-name schools and even less did he have the opportunity to travel. He, therefore, did not satisfy, through school training, what he himself defines "..... irresistible impulse .... of artistic expression ....".
Therefore: "..... I took the gifts the Gods provided, and it proved to be photography ..... I found the right niche into which to fit myself. "
Reflection
These words and Robinson's initial story make me think that, in its life cycle, photography was not initially considered in the group of "fine arts" and, indeed, was seen as an economic route to painting and portraiture in particular.
It was not even considered art, but only the result of a mechanical/optical/chemical/graphic process, through which to obtain portraits at a low price, for non-wealthy families.
The theme is even more intriguing if I think that, later on, photography became an extremely expensive artistic niche, for wealthy and highly educated people and, at a still later stage, with the advent of the digital age first and the birth of the smartphone then, photography has truly become "for everyone", to the point where one begins to doubt the future of the specialized photographic medium.
This is a topic on which I have already focused and which arises more and more in the digital age, probably because the link between technology and the artistic value of the outcome is always questioned and never really clarified.
As in Robinson's time, those involved in photography are classified (as long as there is a need) by the nature of the medium; so, statements of the practitioner himself and the consistency of these statements with the resulting works are needed in order to affirm the artistic dimension of the person and his/her work.
It may be true that even a painter, in order to be recognized as such, must demonstrate this, but it is also true that a person using a paintbrush is unlikely to be seen differently by an artist.
Perhaps it is for this reason that some photographers refuse to switch mediums and go digital as if technological progress jeopardizes their essence as artists: therefore they seem to "keep the distance" from all the others, who use the digital camera as a consumer tool for personal use, documentary, journalistic purposes, etc.
Or do they really think that the digital medium is easier to master and that it makes the path to art shorter?
Returning to H. P. Robinson, in 1843, after seven years of private training in a small art school called "Horatio Russell's Academy" in Middleton, he ended his studies at only thirteen.
But his stimulus for study and nostalgia for the school years, which he defined "... the most beautiful years of my life ....", prompted him to continue reading authors like Shakespeare.
Thus it was that he began to photographically illustrate the literary works of the great English author using images from Warwickshire, a land in connection with Shakespeare.
The practice of illustrating literary works through albumen prints became popular in the 1850s and this activity allowed Robinson to earn money as a photographer.
In 1857 he became a full-time professional photographer. At that time the services provided by the photographers consisted not only in making the photographic plates but also in offering the coloring of the hands and face.
The limitations of the photographic tools prompted Robinson to seek innovative tools and methods. Here are the first traces of what will later be a technique that, through the years and the evolution of technology, has reached today. The multiple printing, the superimposition of negatives, are techniques used masterfully by Robinson and are what, today, in the language induced by Photoshop, we call "layers and masks".
Robinson was known for accumulating a stock of negatives of the sky, to be incorporated into his pictures.
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| H. P. Robinson, "Seascape at night", 1870 |
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| Henry Wallis, "The Death of Chatterton", 1856 |
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| Henry Peach Robinson, "Sleep", 1867 |
Robinson is a reference for photomontage techniques: his works are the result of a complex and maniacal manual work on several negatives on a single positive print.
Robinson started from an initial drawing on which he applied, thanks to photomontage, the actual photographic images. Through photomontage, Robinson eliminated the loss of sharpness at the edges due to the lenses of the time (this is even a problem with today lenses).
By photographing the figures centrally and then putting them together by photomontage, he obtained unparalleled sharpness over the entire image area. Then he went on to meticulous finishing work, with paint and brush, to improve the small inaccuracies of the composition.
A good example of Robinson's work can be the work "Bringing home the may, of 1867".
https://resources.culturalheritage.org/pmgtopics/1989-volume-three/03_06_Brown.html (accessed 11/07/2021)
Reflection
During this unit I used photomontage techniques thanks to the tools provided by Photoshop: I found that there is a strong analogy between today's techniques and those used by Robinson.
However, I believe that, beyond the purely technical issue, other reflections also emerge.
When we talk about photography in the classic sense of a single shot within a single time span, there is a close relationship between the photographic image and reality, where reality is made up of space and time.
Photomontage brings together multiple spaces and times and this practice, even if it definitively distances us from the concept of "hic et nunc = here and now", transports us to a different dimension and makes the photographer like a painter in front of a blank canvas.
The composition of the multiple realities that the photographer will decide to insert in the context will determine, like a pictorial work, the new content and the new meaning, as if it were a new reality.
From the discussion according to which the only mission allowed to photography is to reproduce the world authentically, the interest of many critics is stimulated, including Susan Sontag, who reflects on the relationship between photography and reality.
Sontag argues that the image is recognized as an integral part of reality, as a slice of its identity and not as a simple reproduction. Susan Sontag sees photography as an instrument capable of inventing a surrogate world.
With the ever wider and more pervasive diffusion of photographic images, man's inability to distinguish between reality and appearance is determined. The conscience of the individual and of society are filled, then, with these images in constant diffusion, which lead photography to contribute to our representation of the world.
On this controversial issues, I leave the last word to Henry Peach Robinson, who in "Pictorial Effect in Photography" (1867) wrote: "Any dodge, trick and conjuration of any kind is open to the photographer's use .... It is his imperative duty to avoid the mean, the base and the ugly, and to aim to elevate his subject .... and to correct the unpicturesque .... A great deal can be done and very beautiful pictures made, by a mixture of the real and the artificial in a picture. "
Robinson was stressing the need to "see" a picture: "However much a man might love beautiful scenery, his love for it would be greatly enhanced if he looked at it with the eye of an artist, and knew why it was beautiful. A new world is open to him who has learnt to distinguish and feel the effect of the beautiful and subtle harmonies that nature presents in all her varied aspects. Men usually see little of what is before their eyes unless they are trained to use them in a special manner."
And: "I must warn you against a too close study of art to the exclusion of nature and the suppression of original thought.... Art rules should be a guide only to the study of nature, and not a set of fetters to confine the ideas or to depress the faculty of original interpretation in the artist, whether he be painter or photographer.... The object (of rules) is to train his mind so that he may select with ease, and, when he does select, know why one aspect of a subject is better than another."
I believe these reflections are as valid today as they were in Henry Peach Robinson's time.