John Jabez Edwin Mayall
John Jabez Edwin Mayall ( born September 17, 1813 in Oldham, Lancashire as Jabez Meal, † March 6, 1901 in Southwick, West Sussex ) was a British photographer and local politicians.
Mayall was one of the most successful British professional photographers of the 19th century. Above all, his photographs of the royal family and other members of the public enjoyed great popularity. He was among the first who managed to sell photos of celebrities successfully.
Life
Early years and first successes as a photographer
Mayall was born the son of John Meal, a manufacturer of chemical products, and his wife Elizabeth and baptized with the name Jabez Meal. About his early years there is virtually no reliable information, except that he married in 1834. Supposedly he entered his professional career in his father's footsteps. However, there a census list of 1841 Leinweber as his profession.
End of 1841 or early 1842, he and his family left England and settled after a stay in New York settled in Philadelphia. He probably took at that time the last name Mayall. It is not certain whether he, as he himself claimed later, had already learned the daguerreotype process in England or familiarize yourself with it first made in Philadelphia. In any case, he established himself in the United States quickly as representatives of the fledgling craft of photography. He entered into a partnership with Samuel Van Loan a, another Englishman, and the two operated a joint photo studio. They received an award from the Franklin Institute in 1844 for their photographic production.
1845 Mayall was the sole owner of the photo studio. The following year, however, he sold it to Marcus Aurelius Root ( which was to become one of the most successful American daguerreotypists ) and went back to England. Perhaps the reason was for this in legal difficulties that had arisen from Mayall's practice to color daguerreotypes by hand.
Height of his career until 1863
Mayall now settled in London. He first worked for Antoine Claudet, another pioneer of the daguerreotype, operational from 1847 but on the beach a studio and called himself "Professor High School ". From 1848 he used the name American Daguerreotype Institution for his studio. Mayall was generally considered to be an American, which is likely to have inspired his success, because the American technology was considered superior. Soon he was one of the most respected photographers of London.
His professional breakthrough was achieved by Mayall 1851, when 72 of his daguerreotypes were exhibited at the Great Exhibition, many of them coming from his time in the United States. He received an honorable mention of the judges and drew the attention of Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, in itself, was a patron of photography. In addition Mayall photographed the exhibition itself, including the Crystal Palace. 1855 Prince Albert invited the photographer first one to photograph the Queen and members of her family. Also in 1855, Mayall advised the British Army and trained two soldiers to document the Crimean War. His growing professional success had already shown in 1853 when he had opened a second studio in Regent Street.
The now known as John Edwin Mayall photographer active in the Photographic Society of London, founded in 1853 and held several talks at their meetings. In May 1860 Mayall was allowed to re- photograph the royal family. The fourteen photos of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children were published in August of the year as Royal album and proved to be a spectacular success. At the wedding of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, with Alexandra of Denmark in March 1863 Mayall acted as official photographer and constructed specially for this purpose a glass house in Windsor Castle. The reputation it gained earned him further orders of outstanding personalities, including William Ewart Gladstone and Lord Palmerston.
Later years in Brighton
In addition to its three London studios Mayall opened a studio in 1863 in Brighton. In 1864 he moved himself into the resort and left the business to his eldest son Edwin London. The studio in Brighton he conducted himself, settled here in 1865 but increasingly help of another son. The family-owned business not less than ten studios in London, four in Brighton, one in Kingston upon Thames and three in Melbourne, Australia over the years. In many photos that were published during this period under Mayall's name so well known recordings of Karl Marx, Albert Heim and John Ruskin, the exact authorship can no longer be ascertained.
1864 Mayall was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institution and in 1871 a Fellow of the Chemical Society. Also in 1871, he began a political career locally in Brighton, in the course of which he first councilor, councilor from 1874 and was mayor from 1877 from 1878. In 1875 he sat in the suburb of the Photographic Society of London.
John Jabez Edwin Mayall died on March 6, 1901 at the age of 87 years. The last photo studio and founder of the family business closed its doors in 1941.
Private
Mayall has been married twice. From 1834 closed marriage with Eliza Parkin ( 1816-1870 ) three sons and one daughter were born. A year after the death of his first wife married Mayall the younger by more than twenty years widow Celia Victoria Hooper, with whom he had two more daughters and another son.
Significance of his work
While living in Philadelphia, Mayall turned 1843-1844 a series of ten photographs here, which implemented the Our Father allegorical, a hitherto hardly known form of the use of the new medium. In a brochure Mayall campaigned in 1848 saying that he had " some of the most beautiful and talented ladies of Philadelphia " photographed for them and put them into the context of their own efforts to bring photography to an art form. Unfortunately the images are not recorded. In the following photo series Mayall illustrated scenes from Macbeth and Hamlet and Thomas Campbell's poem " The Soldier's Dream".
Mayall has always been interested in the technical development of photography and this was also played their own contributions. Shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia he made contact with Hans Martin Boyé and Paul Beck Goddard, two chemists from the University of Pennsylvania, who worked at a perfection of the daguerreotype process. After his return to England Mayall gave up the coloring of his daguerreotypes because he feared that the colors could trigger chemical processes with the photographic materials and thereby shorten the life of the photos. How many photographers of the time he moved in the 1850s from the daguerreotype to the collodion wet-plate technique. After the death of its inventor Frederick Scott Archer he encouraged photographers in circles to a fund to support his widow and donated even the largest single amount. He had several proprietary inventions patented, including 1855 as Ivorytypie has become known methods could be printed with the photos on artificial ivory. After their coloration resembled those photos ivory miniatures, but could be produced for a fraction of the cost. Another invention Mayall was a kind of diaphragm whose star-shaped cut meant that the resulting photos showed characteristics of drawings.
Mayall took lay claim to have been the first to successfully using the collodion technique produced enlargements of daguerreotypes. Even in later years, he remained the improvement of enlargement techniques prescribed, so that he could eventually produce life-size prints of his photos. In 1880, the Mayall studio was in Bond Street one of the first photographic studio in which electric light was used.
In contrast to most gentleman - photographers who shaped the Photographic Society of London, Mayall was greatly interested in the commercial possibilities of the new medium, particularly with regard to the marketing of business card portraits of famous personalities. Together with the Publisher DJ Pound, he published 1858-1863 with The Illustrated News of the World and the National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Personages, a series of engravings, which were based on his own recordings and one of the first attempts represented to capitalize on photos of celebrities capital. With his Royal Album of 1860 first photos of the royal family to a wider public has had access. His photo series Mayall 's Celebrities of the London Stage ( 1867-68 ) enjoyed great popularity. Before 1862, a new copyright law was passed, knew Mayell such deductions Celebrity Photos with his initials and the date of the deduction to such curb the widespread reprints can.