 |
| Sir James Dunlop Temple of Neptune, Paestum ca. 1847-48 salt print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| Sir James Dunlop Trevi Fountain, Rome ca. 1847-48 salt print National Galleries of Scotland |
Parable at a Roman Fountain
How can the statues not touch each other,
Hands, breasts, thighs, slickened by water,
Flesh perfected from the flesh that dies as grass?
Change here is only eternal, like white
Noise, stone trance guarded in a cage of glass
Parabolas, barring the Roman night;
It seems light in a watery medium
Has baptised them free of motion and time.
We stand at the rim in rapt attitudes,
Admiring the secular prisoners
From the vantage point assigned to lovers;
And think we detect old glimmers of grief
And envy in a marble eye – the cold nudes
Tempted, for love, to dress themselves in life.
– Alfred Corn (1975)
 |
| Robert Macpherson and Sir James Dunlop Arch of Titus, Rome before 1849 salt print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| Robert Macpherson and Sir James Dunlop Interior of the Colosseum, Rome before 1849 salt print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| Robert Macpherson and Sir James Dunlop Temple of Venus, Rome before 1849 salt print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| Robert Macpherson Roman Forum ca. 1850-60 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| Robert Macpherson Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome ca. 1850-60 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| Anonymous photographer Sculpture of Achilles by Innocenzo Fraccaroli on display at the Great Exhibition, London 1851 salted paper print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
 |
| Anonymous photographer Sculpture of Dancing Faun by Eugène Louis Lequesne on display at the Great Exhibition, London 1851 salted paper print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
 |
| A Giraudon Éditeur (Paris) Carved capital from Laon Cathedral ca. 1860-80 albumen print Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
 |
| David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson Abbey Wall, St Andrews ca. 1843-47 calotype print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson Sculpted bust of Charlotte, Duchess of Buccleuch ca. 1843-47 calotype print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson Mr Mitchel ca. 1843-47 calotype print National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson Mrs Kinloch ca, 1843-47 calotype print National Galleries of Scotland |
"The real victim of photography, however, was not landscape painting but the portrait miniature. Things developed so rapidly that by 1840 most of the innumerable miniaturists had already become professional photographers, at first only as a sideline, but before long exclusively. Here the experience of their original livelihood stood them in good stead, and it is not their artistic background so much as their training as craftsmen that we have to thank for the high level of their photographic achievement. This transitional generation disappeared very gradually; indeed, there seems to have been a kind of biblical blessing on those first photographers: the Nadars, Stelzners, Piersons, Bayards all lived well into their eighties and nineties. In the end, though, businessmen invaded professional photography from every side; and when, later on, the retouched negative, which was the bad painter's revenge on photography, became ubiquitous, a sharp decline in taste set in."
– Walter Benjamin, from Little History of Photography (1931), translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (1999)