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Archiver > UK-PHOTOGRAPHERS > 2005-04 > 1112814847


From: Michael Hargreave Mawson <>
Subject: Re: "Mayall, published by Marion & Co."?
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 20:14:07 +0100
References: <1c7.25f304db.2f858ac3@aol.com>
In-Reply-To: <1c7.25f304db.2f858ac3@aol.com>


On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, at around 14:56:03 local time,
wrote:
>It was common for photographers to have their work published by photographic
>publishers, particularly if the photographer was primarily an 'artist'. By
>that I mean to distinguish from the photographer with a high street studio,
>primarily engaged in portraits of people. In the early days, photography was
>often seen as an aid to the artist or painter (and probably sculptors etc),
>rather than as a discipline in its own right.

Dear Alyson,

Thank you very much for your response, but this is exactly what Mayall
wasn't. He was probably the pre-eminent photographic portraitist in
the country. He invented the concept of mass-producing CDVs, and is
said to have produced up to half-a-million a year for retail sale. I
have several of his portraits of army officers in my collection, and
this is the first one I have seen with a "publisher's" stamp on the
verso.
>
> A photographer would probably have sold the licence to use a photograph (or
>of course, sell it outright) much as one would use a photo library today.
>For example, Francis Frith's company was known at the end of the 19thc
>primarily for the postcard and souvenir photographs taken by Frith
>himself, or by the
>team of photographers trained by him. However, they published work by other
>well-known photographers as well, eg Roger Fenton,, often in the form of
>lavish illustrated books which we would probably today call "coffee
>table books".

I've just spent a little while searching on Google, and have found this
page: http://www.cartes.freeuk.com/dated/marion.htm - which shows that
Marion & Co. were prominent wholesale printers of the card mounts for
CDVs! Now I'm even more confused...

ATB
--
Mike
Michael Hargreave Mawson, author of "Eyewitness in the Crimea"
http://www.greenhillbooks.com/booksheets/eyewitness_in_the_crimea.html

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