A look at an Edwardian formal photographic studio portrait

'Aunt' flow photographed at 45 George Street, Hastings Old Town. Date unknown, but the closer proximity of the photographer to his sitter probably places the photo in the Edwardian period

Note: I've written an analysis of the composition of this photograph below. Please click on the photo to help in the elucidation of what I have to say 

I am very fortunate, in that my mother has kept all of our family photographs. Furthermore, most of these are in black and white – so that the tonal values form a greater coherency across the image. (Colour complicates to an extraordinary degree, and  much contemporary formal photography is still taken in black and white – or in a much restricted colour range.) Our ‘family collection’ dates from the late nineteenth century until the 1950s. Some of these I have commented on in previous essays, but it seems worthwhile to look at one of the (formal) photographs that I have not illustrated before. As with the publicly ‘staged’ photographs that I discussed in my last essay, there is an inevitable degree of artifice to these studio portraits: everyone is dressed in their Sunday best, and set off by the photographer’s props and backdrops. Even so, such elaboration can tell us much about social attitudes.   

It may be thought that 19th nineteenth century history hardly impacts upon later decades, and that every trace of that momentous century must have all but disappeared by the late 1930s. Nothing could be further from the truth. The social and political ideas formed – and forged – in the Industrial Revolution, rolled through the twentieth century like a vast tidal wave, and was not even checked by the cataclysm of the Second World War. (Technology has far outstripped the evolutionary development of us as human beings. So it is that we make the same disastrous mistakes – but with different weapons – and Afghanistan could hardly present a better case in point). Further, life in the 1940s and 1950s was not so different from that of earlier decades.The rich excluded, interiors tended to be very bare: the walls distempered, the furniture plain, and the ornaments few. I remember that the choice of decorating materials was very limited, and decoration not a (post–war) priority. Further, the idea of buying matching furniture never occurred to us: things were purchased as and when available and affordable; and the contemporary desire to own a sofa – as an essential key to happiness in life – was entirely absent from our minds. We even utilised a wooden egg–box crate with a cushion placed on top (and if it’s thought that this is history, even worse conditions obtain in countless sink estates to this day).

Moreover, ‘Aunt’ Jess – who fostered my mother – remained an embodiment of the era she grew up in. She had moderate means – probably from her father’s business – and for some time ran a wool shop in Queens Road, Hastings, with a sister who died before I was born. Yet she remained frugal: if she found a handkerchief that had been dropped in the street she would take it home and boil it; and for soap ends there was a device for compressing them into a new cake.

The studio portrait of Flo – one of Jess’ sisters – is the most perfectly preserved that I have, and it must have been kept well out of the light for over a century. It was taken at W. A. Thomas, one of several flourishing photographers in Hastings. There are several striking things about this portrait: one of which is the rattan chair (from India), which might have dominated the composition but for the immediate attention drawn to Flo’s face, the flowers she is wearing, her hands, and the card she is holding. I think that the photographer had a remarkably good eye, and played the closest attention to every aspect of his sitter’s pose. I would not be at all surprised, for example, if he had not deliberately arranged for the three ornamental chair ‘rings’ to contrast with the right side of Flo’s dress. These small reflections of the body of the ornamental chair prevent the dress from being absorbed by the dark floor, and also echo the curve of Flo’s left arm; while the delightfully sinuous curve(s) of the wing of the chair form a perfect ‘intervening’ contrast to what would otherwise be a distracting continuous line, from shoulder to near floor level. (Look at the photo upside–down, and you will see this more clearly.) Another interesting line – hardly immediately noticeable – is that from the neck to the flowers, which in turn directs our attention to the hands, and to the ‘bevelled’ rectangle formed by the card being held in the left hand. This card remains a mystery: is Flo in mourning dress, and is the small boy pictured on the card a member of Flo’s family who had died? It seems to me unlikely, given that such cards – held in just such a position – are a feature of other formal family photographs in which the sitters are most certainly not in mourning.

The painted backdrop is a ubiquitous prop of the Victorian and Edwardian studio photographers. And the painting of such scenes was a very considerable trade, as evidenced by these extracts from The Photographic Studios of Europe by H. Baden Pritchard, F.C.S., (Piper & Carter, London, 1882):

Elliott & Fry, London – more than twenty-six backdrops were used in one studio. Highly selective in purchasing backdrops, as they rejected more than two for each one kept. All painted in tempera. 

Sarony Studio, Scarborough – employed backdrops purchased from Seavey’s of New York, which were pulled upward from the floor of his studio using ropes and pulleys. 

A notable aspect of these backdrops is that they are in no sense coherent compositions: they are fantasies, which include elements of complete inconsequentiality, the like of which never to be found beyond the world of the studio. The backdrop behind Flo’s portrait is a curious hybrid of styles that may well defy unravelling.

It may seem curious that there is a certain poverty and bareness of background in these studio portraits, despite the props. I do not think that  this would have been apparent at the time:  the photograph, left, illustrates how bare interiors were even in 1939. Taken on Whit Monday, 1939. From right, my paternal grandfather, Joe, his sister Lily, and his wife, also Lily. The drabness of the interior is typical of its time, and is still mirrored in a great many pensioners' houses in the UK today.