I don’t collect Victorian cabinet cards. Indeed, I own only one. And I didn’t buy it—as I do most photos in my collection—for the image on the front. I bought it because of the Studio stamp on the back. I found it in a box at a vintage fair. When I turned it over I spotted the address of W Wright’s studio: 188, 189, 190 Bethnal Green Road and the date, 1888. Number ‘188-190’ Bethnal Green Road is close to where I live, indeed I walk past its location every day. I say ‘its location’ because 188, 189 and 190 Bethnal Green Road no longer exist.
Many of the Victorian buildings...
I’ve been collecting Victorian and Edwardian photographs for quite a few years now, but I’ve always shunned the popular colourised images from this era as just a little bit tacky. I had a handful in my collection as curiosities only. Recently, though, I’ve been trying to perfect the art of hand-spotting photographic prints using correcting inks and while playing with the green-shaded olive-tones put some washes on a few of my own reject photos. Then, by chance, a few weeks back I came across a small collection of hand-coloured Edwardian studio images in an East London flea market; my interest...
New Orleans photographer Ernest J Bellocq has been a major influence on my work. Bellocq was a commercial photographer active in the early part of the 20th Century. The photos featured here are a small selection of images from 89 glass plate negatives found in his apartment after his death in 1949. They are believed to have been taken around 1912 and feature prostitutes from the legalised red light district known as Storyville that operated in New Orleans between 1897 and 1917.
The negatives turned up in Sal Ruiz's antique shop around 1958 and were bought by Larry Borenstein (owner of the art gallery...