Conventions & Innovations: Photography in Brighton in the 19th Century

Photography began in Brighton in November 1841 when William Constable opened his studio on Marine Parade. Over the next sixty years, photography would become well established in the town and the many studios that lined the seafront became very popular with visitors who chose to return home with a ‘carte-de-visite’. Photography, especially when it moved from glass to paper in the 1850s, easily lent itself to new approaches and applications. The pictures began to be coloured, ‘views’ were made of places, reproductions of celebrities were sold and stereoscopic images were taken. Photographs were also projected on screens through the use of the magic lantern.

This talk introduces this ‘new media’ and shows examples of work by Constable, Hennah & Kent, Mason, Mayall, Merrick and Harry Pointer – who became famous because of his portraits of cats.

Dr Frank Gray is an early media historian, a curator of film exhibitions for Brighton & Hove Museums, the co-founder of Cinecity (the Brighton Film Festival) and the retired Director of Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton. The archive collects, preserves and shares films made in Brighton & Hove and the region.

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