1857 Isambard Brunel
ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL
Design Engineer (1806-1859)
One of the great British engineers of the 19th century ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL (1806-1859) built twenty-five railways lines, over a hundred bridges, including five suspension bridges, eight pier and dock systems, three ships and a pre-fabricated army field hospital.
Photograph by Robert Howlett, 1831-1858
Robert Howlett was one of the first photographers to earn a successful living from this new medium. Until the 1850s virtually all photographers were amateurs who arrived at the infant art form either from the sciences or painting. Howlett associated with amateur practitioners through exhibitions of his photographs and in 1856 began to exhibit his work at the Photographic Society in London.
Howlett designed and sold portable darkroom tents and in 1856 wrote a booklet entitled On the Various Methods of Printing Photographic Pictures upon Paper, with Suggestions for Their Preservation. Sometime after 1855, he entered into a professional partnership with Joseph Cundall to establish a commercial photography studio in London. Howlett is best known for a series of photographs commissioned by the LondonTimes newspaper to document the construction of the steamship The Great Eastern, the largest ship built in the nineteenth century. He died at the age of twenty-seven, reportedly due to exposure to the hazardous chemicals used to make photographs.
www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1691/robert-howlett-...
1857 Isambard Brunel
ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL
Design Engineer (1806-1859)
One of the great British engineers of the 19th century ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL (1806-1859) built twenty-five railways lines, over a hundred bridges, including five suspension bridges, eight pier and dock systems, three ships and a pre-fabricated army field hospital.
Photograph by Robert Howlett, 1831-1858
Robert Howlett was one of the first photographers to earn a successful living from this new medium. Until the 1850s virtually all photographers were amateurs who arrived at the infant art form either from the sciences or painting. Howlett associated with amateur practitioners through exhibitions of his photographs and in 1856 began to exhibit his work at the Photographic Society in London.
Howlett designed and sold portable darkroom tents and in 1856 wrote a booklet entitled On the Various Methods of Printing Photographic Pictures upon Paper, with Suggestions for Their Preservation. Sometime after 1855, he entered into a professional partnership with Joseph Cundall to establish a commercial photography studio in London. Howlett is best known for a series of photographs commissioned by the LondonTimes newspaper to document the construction of the steamship The Great Eastern, the largest ship built in the nineteenth century. He died at the age of twenty-seven, reportedly due to exposure to the hazardous chemicals used to make photographs.
www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1691/robert-howlett-...