Photographs of St. Andrews, Scotland, a town that is dear to my heart. Not only that, but photographs from the 1840s, essentially the first decade of photography. You may remember Hill and Adamson for their portraits of the 1840s; if not, have a look, they are amazing.
Notes on the images: Hill and Adamson were using Talbot's calotype process, creating paper negatives (calotypes) and making prints from them (salt paper prints). Some of the images in this postare original salted paper prints; these have experienced noticeably more deterioration with colour shift and fading and losing detail and other fun stuff that happens when photos deteriorate. The others come from images of the negatives themselves, digitally transferred into positive images by the University of Glasgow Library (let us pause and thank them). Paper negatives are more stable than salt prints, and much of the original detail and contrast is preserved. Originally, the salted paper prints would have looked more like the digitally altered images. So, I thought I'd use both.
There are many more things to say, but enough with the text, let's look at the pictures!
From the special collections of the University of Glasgow.
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| University of Glasgow |
St. Andrews Cathedral and St. Rule's Tower. From negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
The cathedral and tower, original salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
South Street, from negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
St. Andrews Castle, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
St. Andrews Castle. From negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
Men in the Pends. From negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
The Pends, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
St. Andrews Cathedral, from negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
The cathedral and graveyard, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
South Street, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
Blackfriar's Chapel, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
Castle, from negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
Castle from the sea at low tide, from negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
Same view, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
Castle from the sea, from negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
St. Andrews Harbour, with cathedral in background, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
Cathedral, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
The abbey wall, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
St. Salvatore's Chapel, salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
St. Andrews from the beach, from negative. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
And salted paper print. Source
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| University of Glasgow |
St. Andrews Castle, from negative. Source
3 comments:
What mystery lies behind each and every one of these pictures!
What? No photos of the golf course? Sham! (Just kidding - great early photos. Amazing!)
I studied at St. Andrews from 1999 to 2004 and know all of these views well! Fascinating to see them literally through the lens of a different time (and very curious about the photo of South Street - possibly being re-cobbled?)
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