George Washington Wilson ~ His Photographs a Century and a Half Later

One of my favorite photographers is George Washington Wilson (1823 – 1893) who described himself as an artist and a photographer, always in that order.  Though this post features no fossils, there is geology (eventually) and natural history (broadly speaking).

At the outset, a note about sources is in order.  Various sources are cited throughout this post, but special attention should be directed to Roger Taylor’s richly detailed and accessible biography titled George Washington Wilson:  Artist & Photographer (1823~1893), published in 1981.  I’ve relied on Taylor’s work for details of Wilson’s life and for an understanding of the photographic processes of the time.  Unless otherwise noted, please assume that Taylor is my source.

I know George Washington Wilson from his incredibly broad portfolio of beautiful stereoviews which he published in the latter half of the 19th century from establishments in Aberdeen, Scotland.  Shown below is an example of one of his stereoviews, featuring side-by-side photographs of a rowboat on the Loch of Park, Aberdeenshire, at sunset.  I believe Wilson photographed this scene sometime in the late 1850s.

A stereoview is a card on which are pasted two printed photographs of the same subject taken from very slightly different perspectives.  When the card is viewed through a stereoscope, a three- dimensional image is created.  Stereoviews are discussed in several posts on this blog, including this one.

The card presented above includes images that I find particularly striking both for their artistic composition, as well as for the technical mastery they reflect.  As to the latter, if one considers the photographic processes and equipment in use at the time (more on those later) and the challenge of capturing clear images of objects that cannot be posed, including, in this instance, the water, the clouds, and the rowboat with its occupants, the photographs are even more amazing.  Photographs of objects in motion, labeled “Instantaneous,” were difficult to obtain and highly prized.

Son of a tenant farmer, Wilson trained as a painter and specialized in portrait miniatures, finding success with his paintings in Aberdeen during the late 1840s and early 1850s.  This was also a time of striking technological developments in photography which led to the creation of a new, burgeoning business category in Europe, Great Britain, the United States, and elsewhere – the professional photographer.  In the 1850s, Wilson expanded his business to include photographic portraits.  Shortly, he fully committed to photography, a move certainly fueled by his success in fulfilling a commission from Prince Albert to photograph the construction of Queen Victoria’s Balmoral Castle.  From his ongoing relationship with the Queen and her family, Wilson would identify himself as Photographer to Her Majesty in Scotland.  Seen below is a photograph by Wilson of the Castle; it was not part of his commissioned construction series.

This image and all others appearing below in this post were selected from stereoviews.

Wilson was also an entrepreneur with a keen eye on the bottom line.  He saw the potential for photographs to generate substantial income.  In 1854, the carte de visite had made its appearance, featuring a posed photographic portrait of one or more individuals mounted on a small (2 ½ x 4 inch) card.  Due to its relatively low cost and ease of exchange, the carte de visite offered a much broader swathe of the general public the opportunity to have and share images of loved ones. Wilson lost no time in focusing on this photographic technique and format, a move which proved financially successful.  But, quite quickly, he felt compelled to push beyond the subject matter and technical limits of the carte de visite, taking his cameras into the wider world to capture landscape images, as he clearly had done in creating the photographs for the stereoview of the Loch of Park presented earlier.

To take photography on the road was no mean feat because Wilson was using the wet-collodion technology to capture his images.  When a scene was to be photographed, the photographer first had to create a light sensitive plate.  Roger Taylor describes the process as follows:

The collodion solution was, for the most part, commercially prepared by dissolved gun cotton in ether.  The photographer then used this viscous mass to coat a glass plate which had been carefully cleaned and degreased.  After an even coating had been applied, the ether present in the solution evaporated, leaving a moist absorbent film adhering to the plate.  This was then made sensitive to light by dipping it into a bath of silver salts which were readily taken up by the collodion film.  After the excess solution was drained off, the still moist plate was secured in a light-tight plate holder so that it could be taken into the light and to the camera for exposure.  (p. 194)

This whole process had to be undertaken in near total darkness.

To develop the image that had been taken up by the film on the glass plate, the photographer carefully followed another series of complex and sensitive steps.  This involved submerging the plate with the captured image in pyrogallic and acetic acid, a step requiring the photographer to judge when the image was correctly developed.  The image was then fixed on the plate using a solution of the highly poisonous hypo or potassium cyanide.  Again, the photographer worked in near darkness.

Wilson outfitted a wagon with the requisite hardware and chemicals and, accompanied by an assistant, undertook journeys throughout Britain taking photographs.  The image below, which features a view of the Pass at Ballater (in Aberdeenshire, near the River Dee, Scotland) may include in the left foreground Wilson’s own horse-drawn wagon, his darkroom on wheels.  The wagon is also an example of how Wilson often included something in his photographs to provide a sense of scale.  On occasion he used a wagon, more often it was one or more people.

The degree to which Wilson found financial triumph as a photographer cannot be overestimated.  His firm also printed photographs in larger, single-image formats.  In due course, Wilson became “the world’s largest publisher of photographs,” and, fulfilling the demand for his images, must have taxed his establishment.  (John Jones, Wonders of the Stereoscope, 1976, p. 54.)  In the 1870s, G.W. Wilson & Company had some 45,000 glass negatives from which it produced photographs for sale.  The average daily production of prints was estimated by Wilson’s son Alexander at 3,000; thus, potentially a million prints were produced annually.  (Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography From 1839 to the Present, 1982, p. 105.)

It was no accident that the success of his enterprise coincided with the explosion of tourism.  Presumably rising incomes coupled with the expansion of rail lines in Great Britain turned travelers into sightseers and tourists.  Tourists, of course, sought mementos of the places visited, and photographs quite nicely satisfied that need.

Regardless of the commercial success Wilson enjoyed, it’s the beauty of the photographs that are the heart of his claim to fame.  He brought an inspired artist’s eye to his work, his photographs reflect careful creative intention.  They are typically tightly composed images that, to my mind, merit the label art.

Though landscapes may have been a predominant subject of his photographs, he also created many stunning images of other subjects.  These included, perhaps most prominently, the interiors and exteriors of cathedrals throughout Britain.  Seen below is one example:  the nave of Gloucester Cathedral in England.

He also photographically explored the ruins of abbeys and other religious structures.  Pictured below is a view of Melrose Abbey in Scotland.

Wilson has been called one of the two “giants among British stereographers” and the one “who had no peer in scenic photography.”  (William C. Darrah, The World of Stereographs, 1997, p 104.)

There are among Wilson’s landscape photographs, a small handful to which I am powerfully drawn, not just for the artistry expressed in the image, but, primarily, for the stories of natural history (interpreting that term broadly) that are told in the images.  Here are three of those.

Fingal’s Cave, Staffa

The first shows the entrance to a geological structure known as Fingal’s Cave on the Isle of Staffa, in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides.

It’s a remarkable photograph of a remarkable geological structure, the enormity of which becomes clear when one spots the two (perhaps three) men standing to the right of the mouth of the cave.  The cave, which acquired its name from the hero of an epic poem by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, has walls that stand about 72 feet tall and the opening extends some 269 feet.  These awe-inspiring hexagonal basalt columns are products of a lava flow some 60 million years ago.  Such geometrically symmetrical columns are relatively common features of basalt structures because, as lava solidifies and cools, the stresses from temperature change and pressure can generate vertical fractures, or columnar joints, at the surface of the basalt.  These then spread into the interior of the basalt.  Those at the surface begin as tetragonal joint networks, developing into hexagonal joints as they journey inward.  (Atilla Aydin and James M. DeGraff, Evolution of Polygonal Fracture Patterns in Lava Flows, Science, January 29, 1988.)

That’s a stab at a scientific explanation for these columns.  Folklore would have it that the cave is one end of a bridge that stretches to the geologically similar Giant’s Causeway in Ireland.  Purportedly, an Irish giant created the bridge in order to travel to Scotland to defeat a rival.  The basalt columns on Staffa are indeed geologically linked to the Giant’s Causeway.

It’s not surprising that Wilson’s portfolio included photographs of the basalt columns on Staffa.  The island became a tourist attraction beginning in the late 18th century, attracting such luminaries as Queen Victoria, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Jules Verne, and Sir Walter Scott.  In addition, the cave has inspired musicians from Felix Mendelssohn to Pink Floyd.  (Jeff Wallenfeldt, Fingal’s Cave, Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Cheesewring

I love this photograph of the “Cheesewring” structure near Liskeard in Cornwall in part because it looks for all the world as though it’s about to fall on the poor person seated at its base.  An example of Wilson’s sense of humor, I suspect.

The Cheesewring (still standing) is a granite tor; a tor is a stack of stone blocks that forms naturally through differential weathering and erosion of rocks.  According to the novelist Wilkie Collins, the name of this tor supposedly comes from its resemblance to a Cornish cheese press, also called a “wring.”  (Rambles Beyond Railways; or Notes in Cornwall, 1851, p. 58.)

The Cheesewring stands amid a landscape punctuated by other standing rock or fallen tors.  Collins described it with some literary flourishes:  “The whole plain appeared like the site of an ancient city of palaces, overthrown and crumbled like atoms by an earthquake.”  (p. 61)  He offered two explanations of the Cheesewring.  Either it was built by Druids or it was the result of geological forces.  He opted for the latter, though his explanation of the way in which those forces conspired to stacks these rocks leaves something to be desired.  (Admittedly, the same criticism applies to the explanation I provided above.  I haven't found a satisfactory one, though, clearly, I, too, opt for one grounded in geology.)

I do really enjoy Collins’ characterization of the Cheesewring itself:  “If a man dreamt of a great pile of stones in a nightmare, he would dream of such a pile as the Cheese-Wring.  All of the heaviest and largest of the seven thick slabs of which it is composed are at the top; all the lightest and smallest at the bottom. . . .  When you first see the Cheese-Wring, you instinctively shrink from walking under it.”  (p. 65)

Stonehenge

There’s a certain logic in moving from Cheesewring to Stonehenge given the association of both in the popular imagination with Druids.  Wilson visited Stonehenge possibly in 1860 and took several pictures of it from different vantage points.  The image below shows the megalithic structure from the East.

Stonehenge was the product of intense labor by neolithic peoples, an effort that stretched over millennia, beginning 5,000 years ago as a circular ditch dug into the dirt.  The area was graced at some later point with wooden posts; said posts were replaced with large stones beginning in roughly 2,600 BCE.  The amount of labor required to quarry the multi-ton stone slabs, move them from the quarry to the site on the Salisbury Plain, and then erect them is almost unfathomable given the technology available at the time.  Current thinking about the purpose of Stonehenge includes two primary hypotheses, one astronomical in nature (functioning as an observatory), the other religious (possibly focused on ancestor worship).  (James Owens, Stonehenge, National Geographic.)

The image above that Wilson took of Stonehenge from the East is curious.  It’s almost as though he wanted to have the viewer first believe that the stones erected on the plain are relatively small.  He took the photograph from such a distance, including a broad expanse of grass, that puts the circle of stones into the deep middle ground.  It’s not until the sheep in the scene, the man leaning against one of the center pillars, and the wagon on the right all come into focus, that the impressive size of the structure comes clear.

I’ll close by observing that, more than 150 years after George Washington Wilson traveled across Great Britain photographing the landscape, his images are still speaking.

Facing War

In which the blogger visits a Civil War display at the Library of Congress and strays very far from fossils and the like, though not from the theme of the connection between past and present.


The Library of Congress hosts through mid-August a modest but moving exhibit of photographic portraits of Civil War soldiers, images collected by the Liljenquist family and donated to the Library.  Titled The Last Full Measure, the exhibit quietly and somberly marks the sesquicentennial anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, but it speaks not only of death and suffering long past, but of the anguish of today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The six display cases of photographs bear a deliberate and striking resemblance to the full-page spreads that periodically appear in the Washington Post (and perhaps other newspapers) showing photographs of U.S. soldiers recently killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Each of the 360 images of Union soldiers represents 1,000 Union dead; each of the 52 Confederate portraits stands for 5,000 dead.  Unlike the newspaper pictures of contemporary U.S. war dead, the faces that stare with remarkable clarity from these 19th century ambrotypes and tintypes include those of soldiers’ wives and families, of women alone, and, most painfully, one or two of solitary children.  Though the soldiers portrayed in this exhibit represent the staggering number of Civil War dead (over 620,000 soldiers died), we don’t know the fate of nearly any of these men and boys (many are hardly out of their teens) because the vast majority remain unidentified.

When the Civil War broke out, the technology of photography, though still in its infancy, was in a state of very creative flux.  New technologies for capturing and fixing images supplanted old technology, only in turn to be elbowed aside by quicker and easier processes.  The daguerreotype had been replaced by the ambrotype and after it the tintype.  Each of these processes produced a unique remarkably clear and detailed image.  The ambrotype bound its image to a piece of glass backed by a dark material and protected in a case, the tintype fixed the image on a piece of lacquered iron, frequently encased as well.  For each of these technologies, the resulting image was a mirror image.  (Though the exhibit contains none of them, a technology and style of photograph emerging in the 1860s produced the carte-de-visite which offered the cheapest and quickest way for a soldier to have his picture taken – positive images on specially treated paper were produced from a glass negative.)

Photographs played a key role in the lives of soldiers.  They often noted in their diaries and letters the trips made to photographers or receipt of photographs from loved ones.  Chandler B. Gillam, a farmer who had joined a unit of New York volunteers, was no exception.  In a letter dated August 28, 1861, to his wife Sarah, he wrote, “. . . I have had my likeness taken and you will find it in this letter.  I gave 2 liveys [sic] [what are these?] for it; you will see that I am not quite as fat as I was when at home.” (Letters of a Civil War Soldier:  Chandler B. Gillam, 28th New York Volunteers, edited by Ellen C. Collier (2005))  Union artilleryman Robert T. McMahan noted in his diary on December 16, 1861, “Afternoon went out on pass to Union gallery, likeness taken – 50 cents, shall send it to Thad.”  (Reluctant Cannoneer:  The Diary of Robert McMahan of the Twenty-fifth Independent Ohio Light Artillery, edited by Michael E. Banasik, (2000))   Infantryman Alexander G. Downing, serving in the Vicksburg Campaign, far from his Iowa home, recorded in his diary for February 7, 1863, “While waiting for orders, I went down to a daguerreotype gallery and had my likeness taken.”  A scant 12 days later, on February 19th, he wrote, “I was off duty today and went to town to have my likeness taken.”  More than a year later, on April 24th, 1864, he “had a couple likenesses taken yesterday and today I am sending them away.”  A month later on May 23rd, he exulted, “I received a letter and likeness from Miss G.”  (Downing’s Civil War Diary, by Sergeant Alexander G. Downing (Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry, Third Brigade, “Crocker’s Brigade,” Sixth Division of the Seventeenth Corps, Army of the Tennessee, August 15, 1861 – July 31, 1865), edited by Olynthus B. Clark (1916))

When I see photographs from even as recently as the mid-20th century, I am used to feeling that there is something about the faces that marks them as distinctly from their particular period and not from mine.  Poses, dress, and hair styles aside, their faces so often just look different.  But very surprisingly, that was not so with many of the 150 year old images on display in this exhibit.  Perhaps the ability of those early photographic technologies to render their images in such rich, precise detail makes so many of the faces in these portraits seem so contemporary.  Many are faces that I see everyday.

The following two photographs of Confederate soldiers are among those that look back at me seemingly from today.  The tinting added to these images does not detract from that feeling.  (These and all other images in this post are from the Library of Congress which has made them available without restriction.  In all instances save one, I have been able to display the clearer digital images of the photographs without their cases.)  The first image below is titled Unidentified soldier in Confederate uniform and forage cap.  The second is titled Unidentified young soldier in Confederate shell jacket, Hardee hat with Mounted Rifles insignia and plume with canteen and cup.

The youth of those fighting this war takes my breath away.  Not surprisingly, drummer boys (the concept repels me) were young as was Samuel W. Doble of Company D, 12th Maine Infantry Regiment.

A war fought by children?  How sad.  More of the very young in uniform:  the first below is titled Unidentified young soldier in Union uniform and Hardee hat sitting with musket, cartridge box, and cap box; the second is Unidentified young soldier in Union uniform and forage cap.

Some of the photographs of soldiers with their wives, or perhaps sisters, and their children, were likely carried by the soldiers into battle.  Nineteenth century Protestant Americans held strongly to the concept of the “good death,” in which the dying person should be surrounded by kin who heard his or her last words of faith and repentance.  To die alone on the field of battle savaged this concept.  Drew Gilpin Faust, in her magnificent book This Republic of Suffering:  Death and the American Civil War (2008), writes,

Soldiers endeavored to provide themselves with surrogates:  proxies for those who might have surrounded their deathbeds at home.  Descriptions of battle’s aftermath often remark on the photographs found alongside soldiers’ corpses.  Just as this new technology was capable of bringing scenes from battlefield to home front, as in Brady’s exhibition of Antietam dead in New York, more often the reverse occurred. . . .  Denied the presence of actual kin, many dying men removed pictures from pockets or knapsacks and spent their last moments communicating with these representations of absent loved ones.  (p. 11)

The African American soldier who sat for a portrait with his family stares confidently into the camera, not so his wife and children.  This is titled Unidentified African American soldier in Union uniform with wife and two daughters.

The following image is titled Unidentified soldier in Union uniform with unidentified woman.  A case protects this tintype.
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As with any modern photograph, those that have come down to us from the Civil War may not be faithful records of what they appear or purport to be.  Some of these Civil War portraits may have been taken after the hostilities ceased.  Which of the props in their hands were really theirs?  The books on which they might be resting their hands would seem most likely to have been provided by the photographer.  What of the weapons?  What about the uniforms?  Consider what Sergeant Alexander Downing (excerpts from his diary were provided above) responded when asked by the editor of his diary why he’d had his photograph taken on two occasions in February, 1863.  Downing reportedly replied that he’d destroyed the first one, not because of some fault with the process but because of what it showed.  The sergeant admitted, “To tell the truth, I had it taken dressed in a major’s uniform, and it wouldn’t have been safe to let it be seen.” (p. 101)

But these are trivial concerns, the tragedies behind these portraits are all too real.  I was struck by the following photograph of Freeman Mason of Company K, 17th Vermont Infantry, shown holding a photograph of his brother Michael who had been killed in Virginia in 1862.

If that were not heartbreak enough, Freeman Mason came achingly close to surviving the war, but died from an accidental gunshot wound in camp at Petersburg, Virginia, on March 12, 1865.  Lee surrendered on April 9.

For me, the most agonizing image of all is that of a young girl, wearing mourning ribbons and staring down all these years directly at us.  She cradles in her arms a photograph of a Union cavalryman, presumably her dead father.