Fionn Montell-Boyd

Articles of Silver: The Materials and Industry of Photography’s Emergence in Britain, 1780–1851

Supervisor: Professor Geoffrey Batchen

My research examines the commercial networks on which early photographic experimentation rested, tracing the political and economic relationships which were written into photography's material foundations. My thesis focuses on the use of silver as the light sensitive basis of photography in Britain between 1780 and 1851. In it, I look to the local and global practices of trade which shaped the medium's beginnings, offering a reassessment of the circumstances under which photography emerged. The commerce by which silver moved from mining regions to the hands of photographic experimenters was shaped by processes of industrialisation, long-distance trade, and financial imperialism. This line of inquiry prompts us to reconsider the photographs made during this period from the point of view of the different kinds of work underpinning them.

This project has been supported by the Yale Center for British Art, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the Clarendon Fund.