HF The History of Photography 600pág

168 The early years of photography
From then onward Hill devoted his life chiefly to painting and to his duties as
secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy. He did not altogether abandon his interest
in photography, for he became a council member of the Photographic Society of
Scotland in 1858, and soon after entered into collaboration for a short while with
another Edinburgh portrait photographer, A. Macglashon. Their joint work, though
ostensibly championing 'the development of fine art in photography', was the worst
kind of Victorian trash, for which Hill alone was responsible since the subjects were
'designed and arranged' by him and photographed by Macglashon (by the collodion
process) . Hill had unfortunately been infected by the misplaced ambition to which
many photographers succumbed in the mid-18 5os-the desire to imitate paintings.
The artistic failure of this short return to photography is perhaps the best proof that
Adamson's role had been not merely that of technician, in spite of the fact that Hill
used to exhibit their joint productions at the Royal Scottish Academy and in photographic
exhibitions as 'Calotype portraits executed by R. Adamson under the artistic
direction of D. 0. Hill'.
The enormous painting of 'The Signing of the Deed of Demission' (11 ft 4 in. x
5 ft) on which Hill lavished all his spare time for twenty-three years was bought on
completion in 1866 by the Free Church, in whose offices it still hangs.22 It depicts
Pl 77 over 4 70 likenesses, including all the leading resigning ministers and prominent
sympathizers and friends, among them Sir David Brewster, Hill's wife and sister,
Adamson with the camera, and Hill himself, significantly, with sketchbook and
pencil. A number of the people in this crowded painting, which has rather the
appearance of a 'photographic mosaic', can be identified by the Hill-Adamson photographs
from which they were in many cas copied.
When Hill died on 17 May 1870 neither newsppers nor art journals referred to his
photographic work. More surprising still, no photographic journal even mentioned
his death. It was not until the 189os that his and Adamson's work was rescued from
oblivion by J. Craig Annan, a leading Scottish photographer of the day, whose father
had been a friend of Hill's, and who was himself a great admirer and champion of his
work.
Today David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson are universally accorded first
place in the annals of photography. The artistic spirit with which their photographs
are imbued has impressed all succeeding generations, and it is indeed astonishing that
in its very first years the new art should have reached its highest peak in the magnificent
achievements of these two Scottish photographers.
OTHER PAPER PROCESSES
Talbot did not publish a manual on his process-presumably fearing this would make
things easier for would-be infringers. The need for one was generally felt despite W.
Raleigh Baxter's brochure The Calotype Familiarly Explained, London 1842. George
S. Cundell's instructions unfortunately remained entombed in the Philosophical
Magazine, May 1844. Strange to say, the first manual on the calotype process appeared
in Germany in 1841 : Lichtbilder (Portraits) auf Papier in ein bis zwei Minuten darzustellen,
von Talbot, Physiker in London.23 Brief manipulatory details were included in
a number of general treatises which appeared in the forties, the very titles of which
tended to add to the bewilderment of the amateur, and were far from conducive to
confidence: e.g. Robert Bingham's Photogenic Manipulation [1848], containing the theory
and plain directions in the art of photography, or the production of pictures through the
agency of light: including Calotype, Fluorotype, Ferrotype, Chromotype [sic], Chrysotype,