Spent a very pleasant couple of hours on Thursday last at the Camille Silvy Exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery in central London. Camille Silvy was a French photographer who was worked in London 1857 - 1867 and the exhibition covers this period.
Included are several prints made up from more than one negative - for example "River Scene, France" (there are 3 versions on display) and "Twilight", one of the Studies in Light. A figure in "Twilight" (1859) is thought to be the earliest use of using blur to suggest movement. Very easy to do these days with Photoshop and computers, but in the late 1850's there was only a wet collodion process and large format glass negatives.
Much of Camille's work was commercial carte-de-visite, he employed 40 or so workers in a "photographic factory". An 1863 self protrait is duplicated 4 times on one print, almost foreshadowing Warhol. My visit included an hour long tour of the exhibition with it's curator, which made the exhibition come to life - for the pictures are 150 years old from the early days of photography, and having a commentary on them and why they were choosen was fascinating.
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