Lewis Carroll, Photographer
by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling.
The Princeton University Library Albums.
Princeton University Press,
Princeton, New Jersey, 2002.
288 pp., illus. Cloth, $49.95. ISBN
0-691-07443-7.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens.
2022 X Avenue, Dysart, Iowa
USA. ballast@netins.net
Anyone with any amount of education must know that Lewis Carroll was
the nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), the Victorian-era
British author, mathematician, and Oxford don who wrote what very well
may be the most famous childrens story of all time, Alice in Wonderland.
What is less commonly known is that Dodgson was also an avid and early
practitioner of the science (and eventual art) of photography. He made
the first of about 2700 photographs in 1856, the last in 1880. Half
of these are photographic portraits of children, while thirty percent
are of adults and families. Far less frequently, he also made self-portraits,
photographs of his extended family, still lifes, landscapes, works of
art, literary narratives, and skeletons (including that of an anteater)
and other props for anatomical studies. He even made a portrait (reproduced
in this book) of the Dodgson family doll named Tim.
Of the third or so of his photographs that are known to have survived,
the majority are in American collections, and 407 of those are at the
Princeton University Library. This scholarly album of photos (designed
in award-winning format by Lindgren/Fuller Design) features a book-length
essay by Roger Taylor (a British photographic historian) about Dodgsons
interest in photography in the context of his time and place; a chronology
of his life; an annotated catalog by Edward Wakeling (a British scholar)
of all the Dodgson images at Princeton, each of which is reproduced
in the order that Dodgson intended; and a complete listing of the dates,
subjects, and (if known) the current whereabouts of all his photographs,
which is of course a great assist to Dodgson scholars. Writes Peter
Bunnell (in the books introduction), Alice in Wonderland has
been read, and cherished, by generation upon generation. Charles Lutwidge
Dodgsons photographs can now be seen to warrant a similar admiration
and equal affection
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 18, No.
1,
Autumn 2002.)