George Davison (photographer)

George Davison ( born September 19, 1854 according to other sources 1855 in Lowestoft, Kirkley district, † December 26, 1930 in Antibes ) was an English photographer of pictorialism, a founding member of the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, manager and philanthropist.

Life

George Davison was born as the fourth child of Mr and Mrs William Davison (1816-1889), a ship's carpenter, and Eliza Miller (1825 - circa 1900 ). After visiting an elementary school and a church Secondary School, he reached the final for the Civil Service in the Second Division.

In 1874, he received a position at the Exchequer and Audit Office at Somerset House in London and took up residence in north London. On 2 June 1883 he got married in the Chapel at Finsbury Finsbury Circus Susannah Louisa Potter (probably * 1858). The marriage was a son of 1884 and 1889 a daughter out.

1889 George Eastman gave him the position of a director of the British branch of Emerson Photographic Materials Company. 1897 Davison was then Assistant Manager at Kodak company, the rapid ascent to the Deputy Management Director and finally in 1900 succeeded to the Managing Director.

1912 was due to the contacts Davison to anarchist circles, and his commitment to social issues of Eastman's request to leave his company, the nachkam Davison. Due to the acquisition of shares in Kodak and substantial increases in value ( Davison 's second-largest shareholder in Kodak was ) the same was Davison henceforth no longer rely on to work for the financing of livelihood. Davison developed into an important patron of artistic and anarchist- socialist projects.

In 1913 he separated from his first wife Susannah Louisa, which he supplied with the rewriting of his house in Shiplake near Henley-on -Thames and ample alimony. He pulled with his housekeeper and later second wife Florence Annie Austin -Jones ( * 1897 ( questionable ), † 1955) by Harlech. From his second marriage a daughter emerged. For health reasons, but he moved ultimately to Antibes on the Côte d' Azur, where he died on December 26, 1930.

Photograph commitment and work

George Davison began around 1885 to photograph and soon became a member of the Camera Club in London. Differences in the club over the artistic direction of photography led to the founding of the Linked Ring, to which he was a founding member.

Unlike Henry Peach Robinson, another founding member of the Linked Ring, Davison refused combining multiple negatives to one positive and the use of models in scenery lush environment to achieve an artistic Bildausssage from. He also was of the opinion that the sharp image of an object is a valuable characteristic of the photographic process, opposed to. Saw between a naturalistic and impressionistic view Davison no opposition. He was of the view that a photo of an attack on the aesthetic feeling is all the more since it only reflects the reality. To the human vision, that only individual objects in the field of view as clearly, the other other hand, perceive only rather diffuse, reached by photographic means, he began in 1888, at a time when, in the anastigmats a significant advance in the imaging quality of the objective was achieved, take pictures with a pinhole camera.

The most famous image George Davison's likely to be the photograph An Old Farmstead (later The Onion Field called ). This the first time in the fall of 1890 presented to the public at the annual exhibition of the Photographic Society picture is considered the first impressionist photography. It not only received a medal of the exhibition organizers, but was also celebrated in The Times as saying that it was perhaps the most beautiful landscape shot that had ever been made ​​using photographic methods (Quote from the image Meeting: " Perhaps no more beautiful landscape Has ever been produced by photographic methods than Mr. Davison 's Old Farmstead ").

George Davison was also active as an author for photographic subjects, such as with an article of the title " The Limits and Possibilities of Art Photography" in an issue of Photographic Quarterly of 1890.

Swell

• For biographical information on website of the town and community of Ammanford (English), accessed December 2, 2011
• For biographical information on historiccamera.com (English), accessed December 5, 2011