: About Me

If there is one word that sums up Victorian portrait photography, it is "solemn". Whether the subjects are sitting, standing or posed across a table playing chess or cards, they all appear serious - or even grim. Interestingly, this demeanour can be in marked contrast to the photographers' props. The furniture used by photographic studios during the last decade of the 19th century, and the early years of the 20th, was often made of fancifully-decorated, light-coloured wicker. The presence of such chairs, benches, tables, and plant stands in the photographs is deliberate. Many of them, part...