Portrait of a commercial traveller (photographic): George Jobson (1862–1925)

Abstract

Recent work in the study of photographic technology and the UK photographic industry has touched upon national distribution networks in addressing relationships between manufacturing and retail. Facilitating these networks was a small number of specialised commercial travellers. As a case study toward understanding these individuals, it is discussed here how George Jobson, with an early career as a typical photographer’s assistant of the Victorian era, went on to develop two additional careers as an inventor and as a commercial traveller specialising in photographic equipment and supplies. Some of Jobson’s forgotten work as a professional photographer is also identified and contextualised by drawing on a large number of primary sources. It is discovered among other findings that he worked in the US for the prominent Syracuse NY photographer Philip S. Ryder. Jobson’s subsequent contributions to photographic technology are discussed and contextualised. While the historiographical approach applied is individual, personal (familial), chronological, and empirical, I suggest that this study can be viewed as an indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of an interdisciplinary (photographic, patent-based, and industrial) approach as a means of understanding figures like Jobson, for whom photographic, archival and other records are scarce and fragmented.