Focus on childhood

The collection of pictures in When We Were Young represent society’s evolving relationship with children and the camera

The advent of photography changed our relationship with the world. If children in the past had usually been painted as stiff little adults it was probably as they were seen. It may have been coincidence, but with photography it seems that we begin to see them differently. Attitudes were already changing, certainly. Shortly before the arrival of the photograph, Wilkie, for instance, was a master in his observation of childish behaviour. He clearly thought this important, too, for he chose Boys digging for arat , a wonderful study of boyish behaviour as his Diploma painting for the Royal Academy. Nevertheless the evolution of photography seems to be paralleled by a shift in the way children are treated. The photograph may actually have been instrumental in this change too.

at the SNPG, documents this change in pictures of children from the beginnings of photography in the 1830s. It also presents photography and photographers as active agents in it, however. Certainly with more recent documentary photography, this was purposeful, but from the start photography captured and made permanent childhood’s fleeting moments. This in itself and the consequent dignity and consideration it grants its subjects may also have contributed to these changes.

It was not easy. Children don’t like sitting still. Exposures of half a minute or more were a challenge to both photographer and child. Where several children are involved it is pretty hard even now to get them all facing the same way long enough to take a useful picture. The first photographic studio established in Scotland was set up on a rooftop above Princes Street by James Howie in 1841. He made daguerrotypes, unique images on a silver plate, and an early example of a mother and her two children already shows one very reluctant child. Nevertheless, there are also great pictures of children from the start. Three years later, Hill and Adamson followed Howie. Their process, the calotype, used a negative to produce a paper print. With its texture, soft light and warm tone, their picture of three children fishing at the minnow pool already seems an authentic glimpse back through time into a golden moment of childhood unencumbered by adult expectations.

Books written for children simply to enjoy without burdensome lessons attached were another wonderful change. Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass are two of its earliest and most enduring monuments. Lewis Carrol (C.l.dodgson) was also a great photographer of children and he appears here photographing the children of George Macdonald. Macdonald was a friend and he too was a pioneer in the new children’s literature. It was apparently the

When We Were Young

SNPG

The older one looks warily at the photographer suggesting the distance between child and adult

Brecht’s Journal

Scottish Gallery

James Mcnaught, Unreliable Memories

The Open Eye Gallery success the Alice stories had with the Macdonald children that persuaded Lewis Carrol to publish them. To modern eyes, Lewis Carrol’s picture of Irene Macdonald, aged nine or ten, sprawled on a pile of leopard and tiger skin rugs seems just a little dubious. Nevertheless the album does document a fascinating and important alliance in the cause of childhood.

Julia Margaret Cameron was a contemporary and she too made great photographs of children. In The Red and White Roses, for instance, two young girls pose rather solemnly with a bunch of flowers. The older one looks warily at the photographer suggesting the distance between child and adult and so implicit respect for the autonomy of the child’s world. Cameron also made a rather beautiful portrait of Lionel Tennyson, son of the poet who was her friend and neighbour.

The Picture Book by Gertrude