Hugh Owen at Hans P. Kraus, Jr.

Not much is known of the life and career of the photographer Hugh Owen (1808 - 1897).  What little I could find is almost entirely derived from Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860 by Roger Taylor with Larry J. Schaaf.  According to this source, Owen was a British railway employee located in Bristol who began his photographic career as an amateur daguerreotypist.  In 1845, though, he began corresponding with Henry Fox Talbot and by 1847 had attained sufficient proficiency in that inventor's process to draw critical praise for his entries at a Calotype Society show given in London.  In 1852 his work was exhibited beside that of Henri Le Secq, Gustave Le Gray and Roger Fenton at the Society of Arts show, the first ever dedicated solely to photography, after which he became a founding member of the Photographic Society.  The following year two volumes of his work were published by James Cundall.

Already, though, technical advances had made Talbot's original process increasingly obsolete.  In 1854 Owen defended his continued use of the calotype negative in the Journal of the Photographic Society, but the battle was a lost cause.  After having exhibited shortly thereafter views taken while traveling through Portugal, Owen gave up working in the medium even though he lived on for more than another forty years.  The last mention of him is his obituary, some six years after his death, in the May 8, 1903 edition of the British Journal of Photography.

In light of all this, it's fairly safe to say that the current exhibit at Hans P. Kraus, Jr. is the first to have been held in quite some time.  This is unfortunate because all fifteen works shown are of the highest quality.  Fourteen are albumen prints and one, a smaller format street view of Bristol, is a salt print; all were made from calotype negatives.  The first thing the viewer notes is the sharpness of the images, very unusual in prints made from paper negatives.  The craftsmanship is uniformly excellent - composition, focus and exposure have been carefully thought out and perfectly executed.

As far as subject matter, Owen, like most early nineteenth century photographers, was forced to work only with landscapes and still lifes due to the inordinate exposure time then required.  But Owen had a good eye and his images are never dull. Some, such as his Harvest scene with stooks and Cart and thatched kindling storehouse appear to have been influenced by Talbot's The Pencil of Nature.  But there are also views of oyster boats at Swansea (presumably taken when the waters were very still) and even two of a derailed train, the No. 20 on the Bristol & Exeter line.

To help put Owen's oeuvre in context, the exhibit also contains prints from the same period by Benjamin Brecknell Turner and by Talbot himself.  Of special interest here are two nearly identical views of Loch Katrine that Talbot must have taken on the same occasion with two different size plate holders.  One image is 17.8 x 21.8 cm while the other is only 8.6 x 10.7 cm.

The exhibit continues through March 18, 2016.