John Osborne, Peter Smeaton. Out of the Studio: The Photographic Innovations of Charles and John Smeaton at Home and Abroad. McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History Series. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022. Illustrations. 208 pp. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-228-01205-4.
Reviewed by Katherine Mitchell (Boston University)
Published on H-Sci-Med-Tech (January, 2023)
Commissioned by Penelope K. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
John Osborne and Peter Smeaton’s Out of the Studio: The Photographic Innovations of Charles and John Smeaton at Home and Abroad is a thoughtful and thorough history of the Smeaton brothers’ photographic practices in Canada (at home) and in Europe (abroad) in the mid-nineteenth century. Charles and John Smeaton ran photography studios and a commercial photographic business, sometimes with the assistance of their father, Alexander. The book begins with a history of their immediate family, first in Scotland and then in the years after their immigration to Quebec City, primarily constructed by tracing the various Smeaton business addresses in annual city directories and newspaper advertisements. The authors then trace the brothers’ photographic business, first based in Quebec City, followed by Charles’s work in Rome, and then John’s move, after his brother’s death, to Montreal. The book is remarkably readable and approachable; Osborne and Smeaton balance enough background information and technical history to be accessible to a general audience with in-depth archival discussion for specialists. Neither author is a historian of photography, but each has a close connection to the work (Osborne’s professional and Smeaton’s personal) that offers a unique approach to this history.
With this book, Osborne and Smeaton provide an excellent foundation for future scholarship to include the Smeaton brothers in critical discussions. The late Peter Smeaton, who was the great-grandson of John Smeaton, generously contributed family stories and photographic archives, which enrich this publication and will certainly prove valuable to other scholars, especially preserved as they are alongside archival history. (I know I sometimes wish I could talk directly to the nineteenth-century photographers I study!) The title Out of the Studio is indicative of how Osborne initially came into contact with the Smeatons’ photographs, using Charles Smeaton’s photographs of Rome in his work as a historian of the material culture of the early Middle Ages. However, as the subtitle describes, the book is expansive, covering the Smeaton brothers’ outdoor and studio work in Quebec and Montreal, as well as Charles’s architectural and underground work in Rome. It also places the Smeatons within the cultural, political, and photographic contexts of mid-nineteenth-century Canada. Osborne’s curiosity about Charles Smeaton, which resulted in a 2007 publication and talks on his work, led him to connect with Peter Smeaton.[1] Their contribution to the field in publishing this project is important; future scholars who include the Smeatons in their histories will certainly be indebted to Osborne and Smeaton. The book’s emphasis on the movement of both photographers and photographs within Canada, between Canada and the United States, and across the Atlantic situates the Smeatons within broader trends and discussions within the fields of photography history and North American art history, both of which are increasingly emphasizing scholarly work that crosses national borders and traditional geographic bounds.
Out of the Studio is roughly chronological and brings together family, photographic, and political histories in geographically organized chapters that emphasize the movements of the Smeaton brothers and, to a lesser extent, other members of the Smeaton family. The careful archival work that Osborne and Smeaton undertook in writing this book, both in Canada and in Europe, is impressive and enriches the family stories and historical discussions, all of which are masterfully woven together. It is this thorough work that will make Out of the Studio invaluable to future scholarship. However, the descriptions of archival sources and findings are sometimes so detailed that they become overwhelming, and occasionally the links between the extensively recounted historical events and the Smeatons’ photographic work seem only tenuous. Future scholars will be able to synthesize this information further to draw out additional analyses, arguments, and conclusions.
The historical narrative is the bulk of the book, which skims over critical interpretation and formal analysis of the photographs (many of the Smeatons’ photographs are reproduced—beautifully—to illustrate descriptive moments in the book). Charles Smeaton, to whom more of the surviving images seem to be attributed, emerges as the main character, so the text intermittently reads as something of a monograph on his work. Most of the contextual information in the book is historical background; the history of photography as a field is primarily employed to emphasize the firstness or supremacy of Charles Smeaton’s practices and achievements. The book’s subtitle emphasizes this focus on innovation. This practice of telling photography histories, especially of the nineteenth century, as a series of firsts or a progression of technological innovations and achievements is quite common, although a practice that the field has moved away from somewhat in recent years.
Osborne and Smeaton have unquestionably achieved the goal they set out in their preface, to preserve the story of Charles and John Smeaton so that they may be included in future histories of photography in Canada. The brothers have been, as the authors point out, essentially unknown and unstudied in photography scholarship. Osborne and Smeaton make a compelling case for the inclusion of the Smeatons in future discussions of Canadian photographers and their contributions to the development of the practice of photography, because of Charles Smeaton’s status as a pioneer in underground photography and the use of magnesium flash, and also for the resonances of their studio and outdoor work with the images of their contemporaries. Out of the Studio is ripe for future scholars to build on, providing ample archival documentation alongside attentive storytelling.
Note
[1]. Andrea Terry and John Osborne, “Un canadien errant: Charles Smeaton and the Earliest Photographs of the Roman Catacombs,” RACAR: Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review 32, nos. 1-2 (2007): 94-106.
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Citation:
Katherine Mitchell. Review of Osborne, John; Smeaton, Peter, Out of the Studio: The Photographic Innovations of Charles and John Smeaton at Home and Abroad.
H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2023.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58450
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