Edinburgh in Calotype

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson were a pair of Scottish photographers working in the 1840s. They are best known for their wonderful portraits, but over the course of their sadly short partnership (Adamson died only five years in, aged 27) they also created quite a few city views. This blog has previously featured a selection of their photographs of St. Andrews, Adamson's hometown; today is Edinburgh, the city in which they worked. At a time when most photographers worked with daguerreotypes, Hill and Adamson used the negative-positive process, creating negatives on paper (calotypes) which could then be printed on salted paper. The Special Collections at the University of Glasgow holds large numbers of their original negatives, and their online collection provides digitally reversed positive images. 

The photographs are wonderful not only as some of the earliest views of a beautiful city, but for the aesthetic of the early paper negative. Even with skill level like Hill and Adamson's, the process was still highly unpredictable. The photographs are imperfect--which, I feel, is ultimately a testament to the incredible fact of their existence. 

University of Glasgow Special Collections

View of the Mound, 1843. Inverted negative--the writing in the sky is a watermark in the paper, made visible by the process of negative scanning. Source

University of Glasgow Special Collections

A view of the Old Town. Source

University of Glasgow Special Collections

Edinburgh Castle and the Grassmarket. Source

St. Andrews in the 1840s

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. 

University of Glasgow

St. Andrews Cathedral and St. Rule's Tower. From negative. Source

University of Glasgow

The cathedral and tower, original salted paper print. Source

University of Glasgow

South Street, from negative. Source

People of the 1840s

Amazing portraits from the photographic team of David Octavious Hill and Robert Adamson, working in Edinburgh in the 1840s. Adamson set up the first photographic studio in Scotland in 1843, using the calotype process [as opposed to daguerreotype, the other main process of early photography]; Hill was a painter. Their experimentation and creativity led to some of the most striking photographs of the era, before coming to a sad end when Adamson died suddenly aged 27. [source]

Photographs from 1843-1847.

Sir John Steell, sculptor. Source

Charlotte Lockhart, granddaughter of Sir Walter Scott. Source

James Drummond, painter and curator of the National Gallery of Scotland. Source

George Coombe, phrenologist. Source

Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, writer. Source

Isabella Burns, youngest sister of Robert Burns. Source

Mr. Laing (or Laine). Source

James Nasmyth, inventor of the steam hammer. Source

Mohun Lal. Source

Harriet Farnie, Miss Farnie, and sleeping puppy Brownie. Source

Sir George Harvey, painter. Source

Sandy (or James) Linton with his boat and children. Source

George Troup and William Gibson. Source

Thomas Duncan, artist. Source

Hugh Miller, geologist and author. Source

Willie Liston, fisherman. Source

Sophia Finlay and Harriet Farnie. Source

James Ballantine, Dr. George Bell and photographer David Octavius Hill have a drink and a laugh. Source

Anne Chalmers. Source

Finlay, deerstalker. Source

Alexander Rutherford, William Ramsay, and John Liston. Source

A Newhaven [ship's] pilot. Source

Photographer David Octavius Hill with his daughter Charlotte. Source

Old Edinburgh

Edinburgh is a truly wonderful city, not least for the constant sense of history you get walking its streets. The Old Town, built over a hill, still holds its medieval street plan of alleys and twisting streets, towered over by 17th and 18th century tenement buildings, spotted with medieval churches and overlooked by a sprawling castle. Across a stretch of gardens the planned New Town is an evocation of both Georgian architecture and Georgian ideals of progress. If you're ever fortunate enough to see Edinburgh in the mist, it feels at any moment you could step right through into an earlier era. 

Thus, I find these very old photographs of the city especially fascinating. It looks almost exactly the same today, which to me brings these photographs very close. It's as if a modern photographer took a photo yesterday, and the past showed through the negatives! The long exposures create many 'ghosts' of horses, carts, and people moving past, which does nothing to dissipate the illusion. 

And-- my goodness, what tremendous atmosphere these have! A real time capsule. 

Edinburgh from the Castle, c.1850. Source

A view up Prince's Street, with the Scott Monument and a distant, misty Carlton Hill. 1858. Source

Street (the Cowgate) in Old Edinburgh, 1868. So atmospheric, isn't it? Source

The Grassmarket, Old Town, c.1860. Source

The George IV Bridge crossing the Cowgate, Old Town, 1860. Source

St. Cuthbert's Church on Lothian Road, with the Castle behind. 1882. Source

The Scott Monument under construction... 1843! Source

The finished Scott Monument, 1845. Source

And, the opposite of the first photograph-- Edinburgh from Carlton hill, looking towards the Castle. The New Town is in the foreground and the Old Town on the hill. 1870s. Source