Character Commentary:
Our studio has received much more welcomes due to the coming of spring. Our photography has been getting more recognition that everything seems to be in a ruckus. With our busy schedule, the studio is getting much more difficult to maintain and our space has become so messy. There is always rubbish that lingers till the next day and Fanny is having trouble keeping up with the housework. However, the spring cleaning needed to be done.The other day we were setting up the cameras and our equipment in the morning when I heard a great crash. Oh, how I thought it woke everyone on Upper Baker Street! My sisters and I all looked over to where the sound came from. We saw Fanny positioned right in front of one of our cameras that was now shattered on the ground.
What had happened was while she was cleaning, she accidentally knocked over one of our cameras. Although we were shocked, I guess it also was time to change out our apparatus. We were already convinced that the key to elevating our craft lay in acquiring a new camera. After just passing some time with having one less camera, my steadfast sisters and I had poured over photography journals and advertisements. I found myself looking at this page in the paper for some time longer than all of the others: "Eastman's New Kodak Camera". I'm not sure of how our spending was looking for this year, but I thought that I would show it to my sisters. After all, it was Gerty and Lucy that were the ones to really make the decisions.
Editorial Commentary:
Of the many innovations from the 19th century, the advancements to photography was seen as one of the most influential to society. It was seen as a new medium of communication and status. For the first time, photography in the Victorian Era showed real time "crime victims and crime scenes" to the public (Deslandes 472). Not only was it used for detective purposes, but also to show off one's class. If an individual had money, they displayed their wealth through their clothes and hobbies. However, one way to capture these great moments was through photography. Actually, "photography became another key genre in representations of the monarch" with the Diamond Jubliee where the first photographic portrait of the Queen was taken (Steinbach 192). Furthermore, with the rise of photography came lots of new photographers and businesses. An example would be Phylliss Lorimer and her sisters who ran G. & L. Lorimer: The Photographic Studio. From her personal journal, we can see how even as female photographers, they were gaining a good reputation. During this class-based society and patriarchy, women were underestimated in professions that were more common amongst men: "The complexity of asserting artistic agency for women was of course a torturous route on which photography constituted only one stop, but it was this medium that brings the problem into particular relief because the photograph’s reproductive, and possibly authorless, copying of nature itself replicated a variety of stereotypes of women’s creativity that had solidified in the later eighteenth century" (Bear 84). So, I find it amazing how Lorimer and her sisters were able to create a reputation for themselves and their business.
Works Cited:
Bear, Jordan. Disillusioned Victorian Photography and the Discerning Subject. Penn State University Press, 2017.
Deslandes, Paul R. “Visual Victorians: Response.” Victorian Studies, vol. 56, no. 3, 2014, p. 470, https://doi.org/10.2979/victorianstudies.56.3.470.
Metcalf, Ken. “HOLD IT! Part 2.” Graflex Journal, 2021, https://journal.graflex.org/.
Steinbach, Susie L. “11 ‘Good, Murderous Melodramas’ Arts, Entertainment, and Print Culture .” Understanding the Victorians Politics, Culture and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Taylor & Francis Ltd, London, 2023.