[Three Gentlemen]
Photography Studio Hill and Adamson British, Scottish
David Octavius Hill British, Scottish
Robert Adamson British, Scottish
Not on view
At the same time that the daguerre was invented, the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot devised a negative/positive photographic process that allowed multiple prints to be made from a single negative-the procedural basis of nearly all subsequent photography. The painter-chemist team of Hill and Adamson, among the first photographers to be recognized as artists in the new medium, exploited the paper negative's tendency to soften details and to exaggerate light and shadow in dramatic chiarascuro effects, imparting a Rembrandtesque quality to compositions that was much admired.
