The lives of gifted photographers are often as engaging as their images. This is certainly the case with the 19th century pioneering French photographer Camille Silvy, whose short but highly successful career not only involved taking imaginative and carefully composed images, but evolving ways of manipulating them to create aesthetically pleasing compositions that often convey social comment.
Born in 1834, Silvy, with a French aristocratic background, entered the French diplomatic service before experiencing a moment of personal revelation in front of a photographic display at the 1855 Paris World Fair, when he decided to take up the medium, which was then still in its infancy. Silvy investigated many now familiar branches of the medium, including theatre, fashion and street photography, working in places as diverse as Algiers, rural France and Paris.
A move to London in 1859 brought greater success. He acquired a studio at 38 Porchester Terrace, which became renowned for its tasteful furnishings. With the patronage of Queen Victoria – although he never photographed her – he pictured all of the royal family and most of the British aristocracy. Silvy established himself as one of the leading portrait photographers in London. By 1864, aged 30, he had 40 employees producing hand-printed images.
Almost any subject caught Silvy’s attention, all most thoughtfully considered, such as the highly animated image of the famous opera diva Adelina Patti. Alongside such stars, he also portrayed uncelebrated people, the professional classes and country gentry,their wives, children and servants. One such image, Studies on Light: Twilight, is not only a technical feat in using available light to evoke a mystical atmosphere, but the subject is of a man and a youth standing under a lamppost, seemingly engaged in conversation, although we can only ponder on their presence.
One of Silvy’s most engaging images, River Scene, France, is a haunting image of landscape and a technical accomplishment in overlaying one negative over another to create a scene of social and even political comment. When originally exhibited, it was acknowledged as “a triumph of the art” and was shown as such. The two negatives were so placed to portray both sides of the river. On the left bank, a well-dressed couple are about to go boating, while on the right, farm labourers lounge in a meadow. At first glance, the landscape looks entirely natural, but each group represents a different stratum of French society, the river separating the wealthy working classes, town and country. This was a subject that was subsequently to be taken up by the Impressionists and others.
All the prints in the exhibition are original and many are small – magnifying lenses are available for visitors to see the fine detail – but the effort required is well worth the bother. Silvy’s images were popular during his lifetime, but his meteoritic career lasted only 10 years before the start of devastating mental illness that could well have been brought about by the chemicals he used in the processes he employed. Confined to a madhouse for the last three decades of his life, he died in 1910, all but forgotten. Only recently has his work started to receive the full recognition it merits.
