Henry Peach Robinson

Title: Fading Away
Artist: Henry Peach Robinson
Medium: N/A
Year: 1858

Give a brief description of the movement, photographer, or term you researched. How are they significant to the history of photography (50-75 words)? Henry Peach Robinson was an English Pictorialist who furthered Oscar Gustave Rejilander. At that time photography had major limits imposed on it by technology and equipment. To create an accurate portrayal of the subject Robinson focused most of his time on combination printing. Here multiple negatives would be spliced together to create a more realistic picture. This is most evident in his work when he includes both a sky and subject into one picture.



Write a short personal reaction to the movement, photographer or term you researched. What is interesting or not interesting about the work (50 – 75 words). Robinson's most famous work, Fading Away, was a combination of five different negatives. Various critics chastised his work stating that photography, unlike painting, was not an art. Emerson, one of his critics, stated that his work was "inane, flat, and vapid." During his lifetime Robinson pushed for the acceptance of photography as an art form. He was a supporter of the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom and president of the Royal Photographic Society. He stated in an article that "any dodge, trick, and conjuration of any kind is open to the photographers's use." Additionally he added, "A great deal can be done and very beautiful picots made, by a mixture of the real and artificial in a picture."




Name (please only include if it is ok to publish on blog): Blaine Wm. Anderson