Scottish Photography: The First Thirty Years

• This is the first comprehensive and multi-illustrated book on the subject
• Makes extensive use of the archive of historic instruments (cameras etc) and photographs held by National Museums Scotland, and photographs from the National Galleries of Scotland

Scottish Photography discusses the sympathetic relationship between art, science and technology in Scotland which, around 1840, laid a fertile groundwork for photography to flourish, including the camera obscura and the panorama.

It looks at the professional daguerrotypists, those in the cities and those who traveled around, and at calotypists including DO Hill, Robert Adamson and Miss Mann. It goes on to examine professional photographers from about 1851, including James Ross and John Thomson, James Valentine and George Washington Wilson and discusses photographic societies, and Julia Margaret Cameron's encounter with Scotland; while another chapter looks at more radical photographers such as Thomas Annan in Glasgow and William Carrick in Russia, and the visit to Edinburgh of the controversial Oscar Rejlander, while the last two chapters look at photographers visiting Europe and the Near East and those who went further afield in the service of the Empire.

Dr Sara Stevenson was chief curator at the National Galleries of Scotland for 36 years and was responsible for building and developing the Scottish National Photography Collection. Dr A. D. Morrison-Low is Principal Curator, Historic Scientific Instruments and Photography, National Museums Scotland. the is also the author of Photography: A Victorian Sensation, the guide to the exhibition of the same name, National Museums Scotland 19 June - 22 November 2015.