The partnership between David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson was formed in Edinburgh
in July 1843, just four years after the invention of photography was announced to the world.
In the four years that followed they produced a remarkable body of work that included portraits,
landscapes and social documentary.
Robert Adamson moved from his home in St Andrews
to Rock House, at the foot of Calton Hill, Edinburgh in May 1843 with the intention of
setting himself up as a photographer. He had suffered from ill health since boyhood, which
had left him too frail for his chosen career as an engineer; photography offered a less
physically demanding alternative.
As Adamson was setting up his Edinburgh studio,
Hill, already a successful painter, was about to undertake his most ambitious painting to
date, a large-scale work depicting the signing of the declaration of the Free Church of Scotland.
With over four hundred signatories to depict, Hill faced the unenviable task of obtaining
a likeness of each participant. It was Sir David Brewster who suggested that Hill engage
the services of the newly arrived Adamson. The partnership was an immediate success,
quickly producing photographs that were artworks in their own right. Within a month they had
announced the first exhibition of their work. With the partnership already making great
progress, Hill, together with his daughter Charlotte, moved in with Adamson at Rock House.
Adamson really was, I think, the more behind the scenes, technically proficient part of
the partnership, he really knew things about photography that others didn’t, and Hill
said as much; whereas, Hill played down his role on the technical side of things. He really
didn’t understand how it worked even if it was happening under his nose.
For him, his involvement, his contribution was more in bringing the artistry to the medium.
And I think, for him, that was not only knowing how to compose the scene and how to work with
the sitters, but actually how to engage with them, how to make them feel relaxed. By all
accounts, he was quite a congenial character, and liked to joke around, he was good company.
And so, I think having a portrait session with them
would have been a potentially tremendous amount of fun.
The strong sunlight needed to produce a successful
calotype meant that Hill and Adamson were required to work outdoors, skilfully employing
props and furnishings to transform their garden setting into a convincing-looking interior space.
The partnership in the years that followed
was incredibly productive. In addition to the photographs of ministers for Hill’s
painting, they produced portraits of friends, family members and notable figures from Edinburgh
society and beyond. They documented the changing city and laid the foundations for social documentary
in their much-lauded photographs of the Newhaven fishing community.
The partnership was cut short after only four and a half years by Adamson’s untimely death
at the age of only 26.
The loss of his partner and friend was a bitter blow for Hill.
It really is quite remarkable that this partnership,
this perfect chemistry that Hill and Adamson had, was really only in effect for something
like four and a half years. And even then, because they couldn’t work outdoors every
day of the year, you’re really sort of condensing it down into a much shorter time period.
And yet, in that time, they produced thousands of prints, and those prints have made their
way out into the wider world. Part of that dissemination was through a kind of reappraisal
and re-awareness of their work in the late 19th century by the Scottish photographer
James Craig Annan, who made a series of photogravures
that were then published in Alfred Stieglitz's
journal Camerawork, and effectively this brought Hill and Adamson’s work to
an international audience
Their legacy is not just important to photography
in Scotland, to Edinburgh, it’s important to the entire history of photography all over
the world. And it has its roots here, at Rock House, in Edinburgh, in Scotland, in the 1840s.