The "Sleepy Backwater": Photography in St Andrews
By Madina Burkhanova
St Andrews Harbour, 1846, by D.O. Hill & Robert Adamson. Image courtesy of University of St Andrews Special Collection.
St Andrews is a provincial melting pot for the arts and scholarly development - even so, it’s surprising that the town was so important to the inception of photography. St Andreans were able to take up photography almost immediately after its advent in the late 1830s, largely due to the friendship between local physician Sir David Brewster and Sir William Henry Fox Talbot (inventor of the calotype). Brewster was then the Principal of the United College of St Salvator and St Leonard. He collaborated with Talbot to ensure Scotland’s immunity from the rigid patent laws that prevented those in England from accessing the new art form. Thus, St Andrews became a hidden alcove where photography flourished - a term I use tentatively.
John and Robert Adamson, Sir David Brewster, 1841–1842, salt paper print from a paper negative, 13.3 × 14.1 cm. Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, purchase made possible by the Friends of the Museum of Art (1988/1.135).
The experimentation with calotypes that occurred in St Andrews preceded the global spread of photography by decades. A community embodying academia and ambition being so participatory in the birth of photography seems linear. However, it’s impossible to avoid the serendipity of the connection between Brewster and Talbot. In 1983, Dr Alison Morrison-Low of National Museums Scotland posed the enticing question of “why, then, did this sleepy backwater, a town whose population had declined since the Reformation, become a centre for early photography?” This idyllic phrase - sleepy backwater - has been frequently repeated in reference to St Andrews. It juxtaposes interestingly with the town’s status as a scholastic hub of drive and determination.
Dr Luke Gartlan, deputy head of school and lecturer at the University of St Andrews, brings to light the role of imperialism in the development of the photograph. He believes there’s been far too little research into the intertwinement between the British Empire and the emergence of the discipline. In the early 1840s, Brewster cultivated a group of wealthy enthusiasts, a consortium that very quickly developed an aura of exclusivity. Membership was heavily based on gender and class. This seems to have gone undocumented by most, with the obvious exception of Gartlan. More explicitly, Brewster is quoted as having said that “the fields of ancient and modern warfare will unfold themselves to the soldier’s eye in faithful perspective and unerring outline”. It seems that he was all but drawing a map of how photography could aid in imperial military action, and even the appropriation of foreign peoples and their heritage, culture, and monuments. Gartlan’s take is that Brewster’s insistence on the introduction of photography to St Andrews and his consequent creation of the Photography Society were ultimately for colonialist purposes. His alliance with Talbot was initiated and progressed with the ultimate aim of creating a locus for retirees and the wealthy with imperial ties. This is all excluding the issue of Brewster’s temperament, which Gartlan described as “abrasive”.
John Adamson, St. Andrews from the East, Brewster Album, circa 1845, salted paper print from a paper negative, 14.3 × 18.6 cm. Collection of the Getty Museum (84.XZ.574.35).
The relationship between St Andrews and the beginnings of photography is more convoluted than it seems. Perhaps it is also darker than one would expect. In my preliminary research, I held onto a subconscious image of St Andrews in the early nineteenth century: picturesque and pedagogical. I had been pleasantly surprised when I learned of Brewster’s role in the advent of photography. Now, as a current student at the University of St Andrews, I can’t help but think that the same problems that plague this town in the present day - those of economic and social divide - seem to have been just as prevalent two centuries ago, with an added overtone of imperialism. Dr Gartlan emphasises how, in several ways, the “provincialising” of St Andrews has made room for the town’s detachment from its actual role in the British Empire. We’re left with the startling thought that the erasure of colonial themes in St Andrews’ photographic history is an effort to disguise imperial action as rustic, utopian fortuity. Even more jarringly, we become aware that this elitist culture is nowhere near eradication now, and in fact, is rarely even explicitly addressed in this not-so-sleepy backwater.
With special thanks to Dr Luke Gartlan, whose research from his article “Inventing Provinciality: St Andrews and the Global Networks of Early Victorian Photography” in the 23rd Issue of British Art Studies has provided the foundations for this article.
Bibliography
Gartlan, Luke. “Inventing Provinciality: St Andrews and the Global Networks of Early Victorian
Photography” in British Art Studies, Issue 23. https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-23/st-andrews-and-the-global-networks-of-early-victorian-photography. Yale University Press, 20th July 2022.
Special Collections, University of St Andrews. “The Origins of Photography Great Britain: St Andrews”.
https://special-collections.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2019/03/14/the-origins-of-photography-great-britain-st-andrews/. University of St Andrews: 14th March 2019.