George Davison (photographer)

Self-Portrait by George Davison (1918)

George Davison (born September 19, 1854 , according to other information 1855 , in Lowestoft , district Kirkley, † December 26, 1930 in Antibes ) was an English photographer of Pictorialism , a founding member of the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring , manager and philanthropist .

Life

George Davison was born as the fourth child of the married couple William Davison (1816–1889), a ship's carpenter, and Eliza Miller (1825 – circa 1900). After attending an elementary school and a church secondary school , he graduated from civil service in the second division.

In 1874 he got a position at the Exchequer and Audit Office at Somerset House in London and took up residence in north London. On June 2, 1883, he married Susannah Louisa Potter (probably * 1858) in Finsbury Chapel at Finsbury Circus . The marriage resulted in a son in 1884 and a daughter in 1889.

Harlech Castle (1909)

In 1889, George Eastman gave him the position of director of the British subsidiary of the Emerson Photographic Materials Company. In 1897 Davison became Assistant Manager at Kodak , which was followed by a rapid rise to Deputy Management Director and finally in 1900 to Managing Director.

In 1912, as a result of Davison's contacts with anarchist circles and his involvement in social issues, Eastman's request to leave his company, which Davison followed. Due to the acquisition of shares in the Kodak company (Davison was the second largest shareholder in Kodak) and considerable increases in value of the same, Davison was no longer dependent on working to finance his living. Davison developed into an important sponsor of artistic and anarchist-socialist projects.

In 1913 he separated from his first wife Susannah Louisa, whom he provided for with the transfer of his house in Shiplake near Henley-on-Thames and ample child support. He moved to Harlech with his housekeeper and later second wife Florence Annie Austin-Jones (* 1897 (questionable); † 1955) . His second marriage resulted in a daughter. For health reasons, however, he ultimately moved to Antibes on the Côte d'Azur, where he died on December 26, 1930.

Photographic engagement and work

The Onion Field, original title: "An Old Farmstead", pinhole camera recording (1888, according to other sources 1890)

George Davison began taking photos around 1885 and soon became a member of the Camera Club in London. Differences in the club about the artistic direction of photography led to the establishment of the Linked Ring, of which he was one of the founding members.

In contrast to Henry Peach Robinson , another founding member of the Linked Ring, Davison rejected the combination of several negatives into one positive and the use of models in a set-like environment to achieve an artistic image statement. He was also of the opinion that the sharp image of an object is a valuable characteristic of the photographic process, negative. Davison saw no contradiction between a naturalistic and an impressionistic view. He was of the opinion that a photo was all the more an attack on the aesthetic sense, as it only portrayed reality. In order to use photographic means to achieve human vision that only individual objects in the field of vision can be seen in full sharpness and the others only perceive diffusely, he began in 1888, at a time when the anastigmat was a considerable advance in the image quality of the Lenses was made to take pictures with a pinhole camera .

George Davison's best-known picture is probably the photograph An Old Farmstead (later called The Onion Field ). This image, first presented to the public in the fall of 1890 at the annual exhibition of the Photographic Society, is considered to be the first Impressionist photograph. It not only received a medal from the exhibition organizers, but was also celebrated in The Times with the words that it was perhaps the most beautiful landscape photograph that has ever been made with photographic means (quote from the picture review: “Perhaps no more beautiful landscape has ever been produced by photographic methods than Mr. Davison's Old Farmstead ”).

George Davison has also worked as a writer on photographic topics such as: B. with an article entitled "The Limits and Possibilities of Art Photography" in an 1890 edition of the Photographic Quarterly.

swell

Biographical information on website of the town and community of Ammanford , accessed December 2, 2011
Biographical information on historiccamera.com , accessed December 5, 2011

Web links

Commons : George Davison - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

^ Anne Hammond in: Michel Frizot (Ed.), A New History Of Photography . Könemann, Cologne 1994/1998, ISBN 3-8290-1328-0 , p. 295.
^ Helmut Gernsheim: Creative photography: aesthetic trends, 1839–1960 . Courier Dover Publications, Mineola, NY 1962, pp. 122 f. ( Online in Google Book Search)
↑ Laurel Brake, Marysa Demoor: Dictionary of nineteenth-century journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press, Gent 2009, ISBN 978-90-382-1340-8 , p. 495 ( online in the Google book search)

personal data
SURNAME	Davison, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	English photographer, manager and philanthropist; Founding member of the Linked Ring
DATE OF BIRTH	September 19, 1854 or 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lowestoft , Suffolk , England , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
DATE OF DEATH	December 26, 1930
Place of death	Antibes

[1] Anne Hammond in: Michel Frizot (Ed.), A New History Of Photography . Könemann, Cologne 1994/1998, ISBN 3-8290-1328-0 , p. 295.

[2] Helmut Gernsheim: Creative photography: aesthetic trends, 1839–1960 . Courier Dover Publications, Mineola, NY 1962, pp. 122 f. ( Online in Google Book Search)

[3] Laurel Brake, Marysa Demoor: Dictionary of nineteenth-century journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press, Gent 2009, ISBN 978-90-382-1340-8 , p. 495 ( online in the Google book search)