Beautifully illustrated hardback photography book, with around 100 masterpieces from the Galleries’ unique and vast collection of the duo’s ground-breaking work. This book accompanied the exhibition A perfect chemistry: Photographs by Hill & Adamson, held at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh from 27 May to 1 October 2017.
Pioneering Edinburgh photographers David Octavius Hill (1802–1870) and Robert Adamson (1821–1848) together formed one of the most famous partnerships in the history of photography.
Producing highly skilled photographs just four years after the new medium was announced to the world in 1839, their images of people, buildings and scenes in and around Edinburgh offers a fascinating glimpse into 1840s Scotland. Their much-loved prints of the Newhaven fisher folk are among the first images of social documentary photography.
The author, Anne M. Lyden, International Photography Curator at the National Galleries of Scotland, discusses the dynamic dispute that brought these two men together and reveals their perfect chemistry as the first professional partnership in Scottish photography.
