Lewis Carroll and his Camera

Roy Aspin

Published by Brent Publications, softcover, illustrated.

After the death of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, (Lewis Carroll's real name) the family recovered a heap of photographic albums and loose prints from his apartment at Christ Church, Oxford - the result of over 3000 negatives made over a period of twenty five years.Outside his own circle, Lewis Carroll's commitment to amateur photography was unknown and seemed destined to remain so, had not Helmut Gernsheim, the photo-historian, stumbled upon a scrapbook of Lewis Carroll's photographs in 1947. Impressed by the exceptional quality of these portraits, Gemsheim made a study of Lewis Carroll's art, resulting in his book Lewis Carroll; Photographer. In it, he asserted that the author of Alice in Wonderland, besides being one of the finest photographers of his day, was the best child photographer of the nineteenth century.

In 1956, Lewis Carroll was one of the three British photographers represented in the "Family of Man" exhibition, the other two being still alive and using modern equipment. In 1972 the Victoria and Albert Museum staged a massive exhibition, "The Beginning of Photography," in which eighteen of Lewis Carroll's photographs were shown. Then, in 1974, the National Portrait Gallery held an exhibition of his portraits of Oxford dignitaries and published a catalogue entitled, Lewis Carroll at Christ Church. Four years later, the Granada series, "Camera" showed a number of his child portraits which were then passed on to another exhibition of Victorian photographs at the National Portrait Gallery.

A renewed interest in Victorian photography has brought about the publication of several books, in which Lewis Carroll's work has been given recognition. To gather all his pictures together now would be virtually impossible; they have wandered far and wide to museums, galleries, into private hands on both sides of the Atlantic and many have been lost. Here is shown a representative selection of them, along with the story of how they ca me to be taken.