Michael Charlesworth

Fox Talbot and the ‘white mythology’ of photography

Abstract The ‘white mythology’ of photography is concerned with the epistemological status of photography.1 It is concerned with policing that status, overseeing it, fencing it in, framing it, riding herd on the interpretations of photographs, and ruling out of serious consideration certain photographic practices. The ‘white mythology’ of photography has occurred within the writings about photography for most of its history. Indeed, since (as we shall see) it began in I839 and versions of the ‘white mythology’ are still being written, it has some claim to be co-extensive with the life of photography as a practice— or rather, as a number of related practices. The ‘white mythology’ of photography is therefore a commonplace, and its main assertions can be summarized briefly as follows:

The group portraits of Charlotte Milles:: Staging by photo-collage

Abstract During the 1860s in England the Hon. Charlotte Milles made an album of images that combine portraits of people cut from photographs with richly coloured water-colour surroundings that she painted around the selected photographic figures (figure 1). The resulting images therefore combine photographs with painting in the most disjunctive way. In attempting to assess the historical significance of these works we are initially hampered by a lack of evidence about the intentions of their author. The historical record can tell us that Mrs Milles was the daughter of Sir Henry Josias Stracey, Baronet, and Charlotte Denne, that she was born in 1835 and married George Milles in 1859, that they lived at Lees Court, a country house near Sheldwich in Kent designed by Inigo Jones c.1640, and that in the 1860s she gave birth to the future 2nd and 3rd Earls Sondes, before dying on 23 June 1927 at Brenley House, Boughton under Blean, Kent. We can also find out the familys income and the extent of their landholdi...

On meeting Hercules in Stourhead garden

Abstract The iconography of Stourhead is still far from being incontrovertibly established, despite the work of Kenneth Woodbridge on this subject. 1 Presented at greatest length in Landscape and Antiquity: Aspects of English Culture at Stourhead (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); ee also The Stourhead Landscape (London: National Trust Guidebook, 1982). His iconographic theory concentrates on the Aeneid, finding, with the help of paintings by Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa, parallels between the garden features and parts of Virgils epic poem, in an elaborate allegory. This view has recently been questioned, first by James Turner, and more searchingly by Malcolm Kelsall. 2 James Turner, ‘The structure ofHenry Hoares Stourhead’, Art Bulletin, LXI, 1979, pp. 68-77; Malcolm Kelsall, ‘The iconography of Stourhead’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 46, 1983, pp. 133-143. This questioning has cast doubt over Woodbridges initial interpretation.

Alexander Pope's garden at Twickenham: an architectural design proposed

The above lines are part of the discussion of retirement and public life which forms one of the themes of Marvells poem. At the same time we notice that the specified symbolism, the bastions as suggestive of the senses, tells us something of the way the gardener (and the poet) see the nature of man in an unsettled part of the seventeenth-century: on guard in a potentially hostile world. Thus Marvells overt theme is given resonance. However, the metaphorical nature of the planting the poet describes is not what we usually think of as architectural in gardening: it is too literal a representation of a piece of architecture for that.

The picturesque, William Hodges, photographs, and some problems in recent interpretation of images of India

Abstract Viewing the exhibition of paintings by William Hodges in the somewhat constrained setting of the Queens House at Greenwich induced a mixture of feelings. The artists Indian paintings could be seen together with his paintings of the South Pacific: the juxtaposition could not help but be a thoughtprovoking one. In particular the Pacific works seemed to possess a freshness, an originality and a spontaneity that the Indian paintings lacked. Exception has to be made, however, for View of the Ghats at Benares, 1787, the presentation picture Hodges painted for the Royal Academy when he was accepted as a Fellow. The extraordinarily satisfying balance and tension of hues and tones in it cannot be transferred to its reproduction in the catalogue or to any photograph of it. The painting possesses a grandeur which matches, in a different mode, and perhaps exceeds, that of the artists Tomb and Distant View if the Rajmahal Hills in the Tate Gallery.

TRANSITORY GARDENS, UPROOTED LIVES and THE VERNACULAR GARDEN

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The poetics of gardens

The Poetics of Gardens exemplifies some of the problems inherent in making garden history applicable to contemporary garden design. Written by two distinguished American practitioners and professors of architecture, with axonometric drawings by William Turnbull, the book argues that the impetus for the planning of new gardens can be provided by historical example.