Biography

Biography: 19th Century Motion photographer Eadweard Muybridge

Biography: 19th Century Motion photographer Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge (1830 – 1904) was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first name Eadweard as the original Anglo-Saxon form of Edward, and the surname Muybridge believing it to be similarly archaic. Muybridge emigrated to the United States at the age of 20, arriving…
Biography: 19th Century African-American daguerreotypist Augustus Washington

Biography: 19th Century African-American daguerreotypist Augustus Washington

Augustus Washington (1820 – 1875) was an African-American photographer and daguerreotypist, who later in his career emigrated to Liberia. Washington grew up in the Americas of the 1820s, a time when African Americans were denied even the most basic rights. Against all convention, all he wanted to do was study. He struggled to get admission into various educational institutions across…
Biography: Pictorial/Nudes photographer Arthur F. Kales

Biography: Pictorial/Nudes photographer Arthur F. Kales

Arthur F. Kales (1882 – 1936) received a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1903. While living in the Bay Area, he became interested in the burgeoning Pictorialist movement in photography that flourished there, and his images met with immediate success. Kales moved to Los Angeles to work in advertising but returned to San Francisco in…
Biography: 19th Century Daguerreotype Studio – Southworth & Hawes

Biography: 19th Century Daguerreotype Studio – Southworth & Hawes

Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901) operated a daguerreotype studio together in Boston, MA. They are considered the finest American portrait photographers of the nineteenth century. Southworth & Hawes worked almost exclusively in the daguerreotype process. Working in the 8 ½ x 6 ½ inch whole plate format, their images are brilliant, mirror-like, and finely detailed. Writing…
Biography: Photographer of Nudes – Alfred Cheney Johnston

Biography: Photographer of Nudes – Alfred Cheney Johnston

Alfred Cheney Johnston (1885–1971) was born in New York City, and at the age of 18 he enrolled at The Art Students League of New York, later transferring to the National Academy of Design in New York City where he studied to be an illustrator. The required drawing and painting classes from the Academy’s rigorous training program would prove to…
Biography: 19th Century photographic duo Hill & Adamson

Biography: 19th Century photographic duo Hill & Adamson

In 1843 painter David Octavius Hill joined engineer Robert Adamson to form Scotland’s first photographic studio. During their brief partnership that ended with Adamson’s untimely death, Hill & Adamson produced “the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography.” Their collaboration, with Hill providing skill in composition and lighting, and Adamson considerable sensitivity and…
Biography: 19th Century Portrait photographer Alberto Henschel

Biography: 19th Century Portrait photographer Alberto Henschel

Alberto Henschel (1827 – 1882) was a German-Brazilian photographer born in Berlin. Considered the hardest-working photographer and businessman in 19th-century Brazil, with offices in Pernambuco, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo. Henschel was considered the hardest-working photographer and businessman in 19th-century Brazil. He always remained up-to-date with the latest techniques on the photography market. By the time the aesthetic…
Biography: Portrait photographer Spencer Digby

Biography: Portrait photographer Spencer Digby

Spencer Digby (1901 – 1995) was a New Zealand photographer. He ran a well-known and prestigious Wellington studio from 1936 to 1960. Ron Woolf purchased the business in 1960 and later gifted all the approximately 40,000 negatives to Te Papa. After leaving school he worked for a time as a clerk with the meat company Vestey’s. He then became an…
Biography: 19th Century British India photographer Fred Bremner

Biography: 19th Century British India photographer Fred Bremner

Fred Bremner (1863-1941) was a Scottish photographer. His portraiture work in British India, spanning 1882 to 1922, preserves a record of life in the period. In 1882, Bremner accepted an offer of work from his brother-in-law G. W. Lawrie, who ran a successful photography business in Lucknow, and he was assigned work throughout northern India (modern India and Pakistan). In…
Biography: photographer John Watt Beattie

Biography: photographer John Watt Beattie

John Watt Beattie (1859 – 1930) was an Australian photographer. Beattie was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1890. He was appointed Photographer to the Government of Tasmania on 21 December 1896. He did extensive photography around Tasmania, as well as in the Central Highlands and on the West…
Biography: 19th Century photographer James Craig Annan

Biography: 19th Century photographer James Craig Annan

James Craig Annan (1864 – 1946) was a pioneering Scottish-born photographer and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. The second son of photographer Thomas Annan, James Craig Annan was born at Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, on 8 March 1864. He was educated at Hamilton Academy before studying chemistry and natural philosophy at Anderson’s College, Glasgow (later to merge to…
Biography: City Life photographer Roman Vishniac

Biography: City Life photographer Roman Vishniac

Roman Vishniac (1897 – 1990) was a Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Beginning in 1914, Vishniac spent six years at Shanyavsky Institute (now University) in Moscow. While enrolled there, he served in the Tsarist, Kerensky and Soviet armies. He earned a Ph.D. in zoology and became an…
Biography: 19th Century photographer Adolphe Braun

Biography: 19th Century photographer Adolphe Braun

Adolphe Braun (1812 – 1877) was a French photographer, best known for his floral still lifes, Parisian street scenes, and grand Alpine landscapes. Braun was born in Besançon in 1812, the eldest child of Samuel Braun, a police officer, and Antoinette Regard. When he was about 10, his family relocated to Mulhouse, a textile manufacturing center in the Alsace region…
Biography: Broadway photographer Joseph Byron

Biography: Broadway photographer Joseph Byron

Joseph Byron (January 1847 – May 28, 1923) was an English photographer who founded the Byron Company in Manhattan. He was born in England. His father, grandfather, and greatgrandfather were photographers. He received a commission from the British government to photograph the conditions in English coal mines. He emigrated to the United States in 1888 with his children, Percy Claude…
Biography: photographer Ilse Bing

Biography: photographer Ilse Bing

Ilse Bing (1899 – 1998) was a German avant-garde and commercial photographer who produced pioneering monochrome images during the inter-war era. Ilse Bing was born into a comfortable Jewish family in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, in 1899. As a child, her education was rich in music and art and her intellectual development was encouraged. In 1920 she enrolled at the University of…
Biography: 19th Century photographic duo Bisson Frères

Biography: 19th Century photographic duo Bisson Frères

Known collectively as the Bisson Frères, the two brothers Louis-Auguste and August-Rosalie Bisson captured Europe’s attention with their striking, large-scale photographs of French churches and historic monuments across Europe. Their breathtaking alpine views shot on an expedition led by Napoleon III to celebrate the return of Savoy to France were widely celebrated, enhancing their reputation for a wide range of…
Biography: Early XX Century Portrait photographer William Berry

Biography: Early XX Century Portrait photographer William Berry

William Berry was a studio photographer from the 1890s to about 1930. William Berry Collection contains around 3,000 glass plate negatives. In the 1990s, these were found in a cupboard by one of the tenants of 147 Cuba Street, Wellington. This was the former premises of Berry & Co, well-known Wellington portrait photographers, established in 1897 by William Berry. Amongst…
Biography: 19th Century Paris photographer Bruno Braquehais

Biography: 19th Century Paris photographer Bruno Braquehais

Bruno Braquehais (1823 – 1875) was a French photographer active primarily in Paris in the mid-19th century. Braquehais’s early photographs consist primarily of portraits and female nudes, many of which were colored by his wife, Laure. Art critics have pointed out that many of Braquehais’s photographs of female nudes are cluttered with distracting objects (e.g., the Venus de Milo), giving…
Biography: 19th Century Berlin photographer Leopold Ahrendts

Biography: 19th Century Berlin photographer Leopold Ahrendts

Leopold Ahrendts (1825 – 1870) was a photographer in Berlin. He worked as a painter and lithographer. By the mid 1850’s, Leopold Ahrendts had already achieved a prominent reputation as an urban and architectural photographer. His work was well received by the Prussian court, as well as in the Berlin art world and the public sphere. Art magazines praised his…