Page 17 - Expanded Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 17/146
(Previous page) Gustave Dore: Elaine engraving for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. 1859
Dore’s envisioning of Elaine – The Lady of Shallott – arranged in her byre-boat floating down to Camelot. Dore was the master illustrator-engraver of this time. His dark, misty gothic, illustrations for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King are tremendously atmospheric. His work probably marks the pin- nacle in the art of the engraving. He died age 51 after a lifetime of prolific activity, illustrating dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and masterminding his signature documentary London- A Spectacle (1872). This was the quality of imaging and reproduction that Julia Margaret Cameron aspired to, when planning her photographic illustrations for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Like all photographers, she wanted the images to be a good black (or solid sepia), and a pure white, with a great range of tones in between - and with consummate skill Dore engineered this in his prints. These early expansions of photography into publishing were just a taster of what was to come when photo-mechanical, automatic, means were invented to reproduce the continuous-tone (‘con- tone’) of the photograph in a medium (the half-tone plate) that could be reproduced alongside let- terpress typesetting - images and text printed together in one pass of the press. In the meantime (up until the 1880s that is), photographs were made in the dark-room, and photo-prints were glued into the already printed books (as in Talbot’s Pencil of Nature). We’ll see the problems that photo- graphers faced as they found themselves the slave of the hand-engraver - a craftsman who could trace the photograph-print onto a copper-plate, then using fine graving tools, cut the image into the plate - using cross-hatching and other shading techniques to reproduce the fine contone of the photographic image. As Julia Margaret Cameron discovered in 1974, engraved images were often very unsatisfactory - especially for art-photographers like her.
Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographic illustrations for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King 1874.
Julia was very disappointed with these engraved versions of her carefully prepared photographs.
In 1874 Julia was asked to contribute illustrations for another edition of Tennysons Idylls of the King. Julia Margaret Cameron: Elaine – The Lily Maid of Astolat 1874. Cameron is striving for the mystery with which the master illustrator-engraver Gustave Dore had endowed his drawings
for Idylls of the King (1856). In contrast, this is how Julia’s work appeared in the frontispiece to the 1874 version. She was terribly disappointed. May Prinsep is the model for the ‘Lady of Astolat’
photograph (above right).
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/tennysons-idylls-of-the-king-photographically-illustrated-by-julia-margaret- cameron#:~:text=In%201874%20Alfred%2C%20Lord%20Tennyson,the%20legend%20of%20King%20Arthur.
You can see why she was terribly disappointed with the published result. The engraver just had not been able to successfully interpret Julia’s photograph, with its finely nuanced continuous tones into the black-and-white ‘line’ medium of engraving. So disappointed with the 1874 edition was she, that Julia, with Tennyson’s encouragement, decided to publish her own illustrated edition of The Idylls of the King, but this time to include ‘tipped-in’ (mounted photographic prints) - real photo- graphs instead of relying on expensive and uncertain engravings.