Final Analysis

Roger Hicks considers… ‘Moorish women making Arab carpets, Algiers,’ c1899, by Photochrom

Photochrom (now Photoglob Zürich, www.photoglob.ch) was founded in 1889 to exploit a process invented by Hans Jacob Schmid (18561924). The company grew out of Orell Geßner Füßli, a printing company dating back to the 16th century. Photochrom used up to 20 – yes, 20 – lithographic stones to reproduce colour images. Each stone was contact printed from an individual separation negative, and the colour image built up by sequential printing: the degree of precision required was truly Swiss. As far as I know, the pictures were hand coloured, but they could also be derived from separation negatives of original scenes.

The original is roughly 165x225mm, near enough whole-plate, which is important. A normal postcard is much smaller, and a constant, reasonably large size made it easier for the photographer to judge composition and content. Only easier, though: not easy. This would be a truly impressive picture shot with modern equipment – a (Swiss) Alpa, perhaps. Now try it with a plate camera on a tripod, with deadly slow plates, half a decade before red sensitisation... Then there’s exposure: look into the shadows behind the tops of the arches, and the differentiation of the highlights.

All this is fascinating enough, but it isn’t why I chose this picture, kindly made available by the US Library of Congress. No, it’s because it’s an absolutely stunning example of a kind of photography that is far more difficult than it looks. It really is very difficult to tell the story of a craft while setting it in the context in which it is practised. I know, because I’ve tried in both India and China.

Perfect composition and technical expertise

For me, this is the perfect balance of the craft, the craftswomen, and the setting in which they work. Come in too close and you lose the context of the Moorish architecture – crop off the top and bottom of the picture with your hands and you’ll see what I mean. Show any more of the building, and the women and the carpet soon become too small to see.

The detail is brilliant, too. With your thumb, cover the ewer and table on the right and the teapot on the left. See? Then ask yourself what is behind the big hanging blanket on the left, and whether the rest of the background behind the women (screens, carpets, wall hangings) always looks like that or if it’s normally a bit more of a mess. Oh, and don’t forget the plants, the flashes of cool green.

In short, I am consumed with admiration for both the technical expertise and aesthetic nous of the (anonymous) photographer, to say nothing of the excellence of the reproduction, which is quite a tribute to a picture that is now just under 120 years old.

‘For me, this is the perfect balance of the craft, the craftswomen, and the setting in which they work’