Although Edwin Smith made a name for himself as a photographer
and writers as diverse as Sir John Betjeman, John Piper and Cecil
Beaton praised him as "a genius at photography",
"a great artist" and "an understanding
and loving connoisseur of his subject", he became a
photographer by chance not choice.
Trained as an architect, he thought of himself as a painter: it
was only in the last year of his life, when lecturing at Bristol,
that he wryly admitted to being a photographer. It was because
he did not wish to feel wholly committed to the camera that he
refused to install running water in his darkroom until 1967, made
do with an antiquated enlarger and only acquired a relatively
modern camera, a second-hand Linhof, in 1970. His favourite camera
throughout his career was a massive mahogany and brass half-plate
veteran of 1904 called the Ruby. It accompanied him on all his
travels even after pressure of work had compelled him to resort
to more easily portable equipment, hand cameras of the bellows
type, at least twenty years behind the times.
Chance plays a major part in all our lives, but seldom so conspicuously
as in Edwin's, perhaps because his guiding principles in both
art and life—"Bend with the stream" and
"Co-operate with the inevitable"—offered
little resistance to the whims of fortune. Passionately concerned
with every form of visual expression, Edwin was struck by some
reproductions of the work of Atget which he saw in the library
of the northern Polytechnic in Holloway, where he was a pupil.
He decided to get a camera. It was a simple Box Brownie acquired
with coupons given away with packets of cornflakes. Despite its
limitations Edwin was intrigued by the medium and a year or two
later his interest was encouraged by a friend's gift of a quarter-plate
camera. It was old and defective and while putting it in order
Edwin learned a lot about its possibilities. With it he took some
close-ups of ferns, dog daisies and hedgerow plants which already
bear the impress of his style. At that time he knew nothing of
developing and printing and the photographs were processed by
a local Camden Town chemist. Edwin called for them on his way
to a party. Among the guests was Paul Nash who looked over Edwin's
shoulder when he was showing the prints to the donor of the camera.
Generously ready as he always was to help the young and attracted
by the freshness of these images, Nash not only enabled Edwin
to use the darkrooms of Lund Humphries after office hours and
thus to learn the grammar of his craft, but recommended him to
the editress of Vogue. It was in this periodical, most unsuitably,
that in 1935 Edwin's work was first published. Two of the photographs
he took at the Henley Regatta for Vogue are included in this exhibition.
Edwin always said the whole episode was the result of a mistake,
the editress having wrongly understood his name to be Chetwynd-Smith.
As soon as Edwin made it clear that he was just plain Smith the
commissions came to an end.
But the photographs had been noticed and from then on the demand
for them never stopped. Edwin never once sought work, but without
ever having intended it he eventually became an almost full time
photographer. The process was gradual and at first it was the
publishers of newspapers and periodicals who asked for Edwin's
work, reproducing photographs taken for no other reason than to
record a particular visual experience. The fairground and circus
photographs shown in the present exhibition represent a major
interest of these early years. Between 1935 and 1938 Edwin made
a comprehensive record of the exuberant, fantastic world of the
fairground and circus, many of the traditional elements of which
did not survive the forties. A few of these were used by the press;
most of them have never been seen.
Edwin always had an amused and sympathetic eye for the poetry
of the commonplace, for things seen casually in the street, in
shop windows, in pubs and in humble interiors and his photographs
of these subjects brought him a number of commissions. His pictures
of the street life, the terraces and shops of Camden Town, where
at that time he was still living with his mother in the two rooms
in which he had grown up, attracted the attention of Sir Arnold
Wilson who in the summer of 1936 asked him to record the lives
and work of the Newcastle colliers. One wonders what the patron's
reactions were to the fruits of this expedition, a small selection
from which can be seen in this gallery. For the photographs do
nothing to confirm Sir Arnold's political extremism. Edwin's delight
in the Newcastle scene was, as with all his subjects, predominantly
visual, kindled, as always, by the timeless, aesthetic qualities
of tone, light and rhythm. He photographed the people who were
part of this urban, industrial scene without any sense of the
'concern' or 'commitment' which his patron felt and about which
we hear so much today. Through instinct with his warm humanity,
affection and humour these images express complete tolerance and
acceptance of the situation. Among others who noticed Edwin's
early work was the director of the Focal Press. For him Edwin
wrote several books on photographic technique and one of these,
entitled, ironically enough for one who never resorted to tricks.
All the Photo Tricks, is still being reprinted. Leonard
Russell, editor of The Saturday Book was another admirer
and Edwin's long association with this popular annual brought
him to the attention of many publishers.
Before 1950 photography took up no more of Edwin's time than two
or three days a week at the most. It seemed to offer an ideal
solution to the problem of earning a living while leaving ample
time for painting and print-making. Edwin's knowledge of the painting
and graphic techniques was astonishing - later he edited two standard
works on the subject - and whereas the most makeshift equipment
was good enough for the darkroom, only the best was accepted in
the studio. Edwin loved all the materials and appurtenances of
the painter's art, always ground his own colours and throughout
his life kept a collection of canvases, boards, paper, powder
colours, inks, pastels, brushes and pencils big enough to stock
a shop. Despite the tremendous pressure of his later years he
never ceased to think of himself as a painter and always managed
to do at least two drawings every day when he was not travelling.
In 1950 Thames and Hudson commissioned Edwin to take the photographs
for a big book on English parish churches. The subject was entirely
congenial. Twenty years later Edwin said that the village church
had given him some of the most poignant visual experiences of
his life. He has described his procedure and it is worth recalling,
for it remained much the same whenever he was confronting an architectural
subject. When Edwin arrived at a church he would dump his equipment
behind a pier, under a bench or perhaps under the collecting box
table until he was ready to begin work. He was never seen with
his camera draped about his person. It was always discreetly satchelled
or, if it was the Ruby, carried in a large suitcase. Edwin would
spend some time strolling round the outside of the building, then
savour the interior, enjoying not only the immediate pleasures
of the eye but thinking also of the needs of the camera. Usually
he became excited by a number of possibilities and always worked
in the lighting conditions that existed at the moment when he
decided to start. He never used photographic lamps except for
individual works of art and did not possess any until the late
sixties. Interiors invariably necessitated the use of a black
cloth over the head and exposures which might last from 10 seconds
to many more minutes. The passage of the seconds was measured
not by a meter, but by a whispered incantation: "Cat
one, cat two, cat three, cat four . . .", while the
photographer smiled encouragingly at his subject and, with spectacles
pushed up onto his forehead, fixed it with his short-sighted gaze.
Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of this use of long exposures
in dim interiors was the series of photographs Edwin took in Westminster
Abbey at the beginning of 1970. Among them was the jewel-like
head of William of Valence which figures in the present selection.
So that he should be able to work undisturbed Edwin spent the
best part of a night in the great, dusky building, his only companions
the effigies of the illustrious dead. It was a thrilling experience,
enhanced, when the final prints emerged, by the revelation of
details of capital and boss, lineament and dress which eluded
the human eye in the full light of day.
The Thames and Hudson book was a huge success and from that time
Edwin was deluged by commissions for similar books. His work took
him all over England many times and to every part of Europe. Such
extensive travel was in itself extraordinary, for Edwin never
left home from choice and when I first met him had not been away
from London for several years. He would set out on a project with
great reluctance. Yet once the break had been made he gave himself
up to the visual impact of the journey and worked with the utmost
dedication. Generally his authors and publishers supplied him
with lists of subjects. They often turned out to be ludicrously
unpictorial and Edwin would waste no time on them, directing his
lens only onto what moved him. He never developed his plates or
films until he returned home and thoroughly enjoyed the uncertainty
of not knowing, sometimes for two or three months, whether his
work had prospered.
Edwin never thought of photography as an art. To him it was a
miraculous recording device. At the time of his death photographic
galleries were still almost unheard of and he would have thought
it eccentric and pretentious to exhibit photographs. When asked
to show some of his work at the Cambridge Festival in 1970 he
agreed but felt he was indulging a wild caprice on the part of
the organisers. His view of photography remained what it had always
been and was expressed in a passage he wrote in a revised edition
of All the Photo Tricks in 1971:
"The man who lives in his eyes is continually confronted
with scenes and spectacles that compel his attention or admiration
and demand an adequate reaction. To pass on without pause is impossible
and to continue after purely mental applause is unsatisfying;
some real tribute must be paid. Photography, to many of its addicts,
is a convenient and simple means of discharging these ever recurring
debts to the visual world."
Nevertheless Edwin's photographs, like those of every sensitive
witness with a lens, are so much more than factual records: they
are revelations not only of those hidden details which delighted
him but of the magic and mystery with which light and shadow can
invest the most commonplace themes and, above all, of his own
warm, emotional and transforming response to the visual world.
With his special knowledge and love of architecture it was not
surprising that his books should earn him a considerable reputation
as a photographer of buildings. But it was landscape which finally
became most important to him. He had always been stirred by
the fleeting effects of light and weather, winds and water which
he felt that only the camera could capture. Even with his first
primitive camera Edwin took photographs of trees and plants
and of patterns shaped by storms, tides and frost. In his Bristol
lecture he singled out his landscape photographs as his particular
testimony. In them, he said, he had perhaps managed to convey
something of infinity.
Olive Cook
© The estate of Olive Cook