This makes me think of the early photograph of an old lady, Mrs Bertram of Edinburgh. (As readers of Claimed From Stationers Hall blog and the EAERN project blog will realise, I think it highly likely that it’s “our” school proprietress, Jane Bertram.) I’m intrigued that so much can be found out about the subjects of early photographs. Hopefully I’ll be able to reach out to the authors of Glasgow University Library’s blogpost to see if they’ve ever encountered her!
Guest blog post by Roddy Simpson, photographer and writer on the history of photography, author of ‘The Photography of Victorian Scotland’ (2012).
Elizabeth Johnston Hall by Hill and Adamson. Carbon print by Jessie Bertram 1916. University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections Dougan Add. 40
Elizabeth Johnston Hall (1822-1901) is one of the most famous photographed Scottish women because of the superb image of her produced in the mid-1840s, at the very beginnings of photography, by the pioneering Scottish partnership of David Octavius Hill (1802-70) and Robert Adamson (1821-48). She is clearly identified because ‘her name had been written by D O Hill under the photograph’ (see footnote 1).
The beautifully composed and lit image of this Newhaven fishwife has appeared in countless exhibitions around the world, been enlarged to poster size and also appeared on the sides of buses and trams. She has been written about by academics and art…
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Karen McAulay, Musicologist 