O. G. Rejlander's Photographs of Street Urchins

Abstract

0. G. Rejlander's series of street urchin photographs constitutes one of the major themes in his work. While these images derive from contemporary experience, they are also related to traditions in the fine arts, the work of preceding photographers, and images in popular culture. Examination of these photographs, their sources, context and critical reception demonstrates how Rejlander synthesized life and art to produce artistic images with popular appeal. Oscar Gustav Rejlander was one of the first generation of English art photographers. Born in Sweden and trained as a painter and lithographer in Rome, he moved permanently to England in 1841. Initially advertising himself as an artist, he became interested in photography in 1852-3 and by 1855 devoted most of his energy to the new medium. He exhibited regularly in British and international photographic exhibitions between 1855 and his death in January 1875, winning a total of nine medals. While some of his photographs, notably The Two Ways of Life, were controversial, reviewers and fellow photographers generally praised his work and respected Rejlander's efforts to apply the rules and aesthetics of the traditional fine arts to the photographic medium. During his lifetime he was honoured as the father of art photography. Rejlander's photographic subjects include portraits, landscapes, high art compositions and genre. Although he is best known in the twentieth century for his high art images, he actually made very few of this type and all were done in the early years of his career. Genre photographs were by far the most numerous and, more importantly, were the ones for which Rejlander was famous in his lifetime. While this significant category as a whole deserves attention, this study focuses on only one of Rejlander's major genre themes the street urchin. Fifteen photographs of street urchins have survived. One is dated 1859, one can be dated through external evidence to 1871 and the remainder, judging from exhibition catalogues and reviews, were done during the 1860s. With the exception of the earliest one which was taken in Wolverhampton, the rest were made in London. The photographs show a variety of occupations and activities a young costermonger (street vendor), crossing sweeper, shoe-black, organgrinder, newspaper vendor, match and fuzee (cigar light) sellers, beggars, a Ragged Schoolboy, two children playing a game similar to jacks, and a homeless waif. The models in all the photographs but one are young boys. Rejlander presented his subjects in a strongly anecdotal fashion; each photograph is an isolated and clearly defined incident of life in the streets. He took a predominantly humorous interpretative tone, emphasizing the pathetic only in the image of the homeless waif and one photograph of a sleeping shoe-black. Although Rejlander never explained his fascination with street urchins, it is nonetheless possible to suggest several reasons for his interest. First, urchins were picturesque in appearance and Rejlander, like many nineteenth-century photographers and painters, was drawn to the picturesque. Second, the urchins' behaviour lent itself readily to a humorous interpretation and Rejlander preferred to depict scenes from everyday life that were either amusing in themselves or that could be used to illuminate the foibles of human nature through a humorous interpretation. Third, it is possible that Rejlander viewed street urchins as representatives of a peculiarly British type. He may have agreed with a late eighteenth-century writer that: