View along Newhaven Beach

Dateca. 1844-1845

MediumSalted paper print from calotype negative

Credit LineGift of Sarit Rozycki and Robert Cromwell

Dimensions5 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. (14.6 x 20 cm)

Object number2003.067.006

Label TextHill, an established artist, and Adamson, a young engineer who had recently set up shop as a photographer in Edinburgh, began their pioneering collaboration in June 1843. In May of that year the citizens of Edinburgh had witnessed a momentous event when a third of the clergy present at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland had walked out in protest of the system by which appointments to churches were made. Soon after this Hill proposed to commemorate the Disruption, as it was called, in a monumental painting. An acquaintance suggested that he should take advantage of the newly invented technique of photography to make likenesses of the more than four hundred personages to be represented in the painting. Once they had photographed the founders of the Free Church of Scotland, Hill and Adamson went on to make portraits of most of the citizens of Edinburgh and their distinguished visitors. They also created what is considered to be the first social documentary series in their pictures of the inhabitants of the fishing village of Newhaven.

In the course of only three years Hill and Adamson were to make about three thousand photographs using the calotype process, the first photographic technique that, unlike the daguerreotype, used a negative, thus allowing multiple copies of an image to be made. Theirs was a synergistic partnership with Hill the artist arranging the poses and lighting of each shot, while Adamson provided the optical and chemical expertise in wielding the camera and developing the prints. Neither man on his own was able to achieve the same inventiveness and control that was evident in their collaborative work. The collaboration ended only with Adamson's premature death in January 1848.
Exhibition HistoryThe Objective Eye: Photographs from the Rozycki-Cromwell Collection, Michael C. Carlos Museum, August 10, 2005 - January 15, 2006
Modern and Contemporary Masters: Highlights from the Works on Paper Collection, Michael C. Carlos Museum, January 24 - May 17, 2009
Published ReferencesMCCM Newsletter, March - May 2004.
Michael C. Carlos Museum: Highlights of the Collections (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2011), 142.

ProvenanceEx coll. Sarit Rozycki and Robert Cromwell, United States.

Status

Not on view

Collections