Sunday, June 16, 2019

Her daughters in the garden - Autochromes by Etheldreda Laing, circa 1910s


With the Autochrome process, images taken in an interior - like these next few - could require an exposure of up to one minute.

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Etheldreda Janet Laing (née Winkfield, 1872, Ely– 22 December 1960, London), British photographer remembered for her color photographs using the early Autochrome process. The daughter of Richard Winkfield, head of the King's School, she went on to study drawing in Cambridge. She married the barrister Charles Miskin Laing in 1895, after which the couple lived in Oxford. In 1899, they moved to Bury Knowle House in the Oxford district of Headington. Enthralled with photography, which it appears she practiced since the late 1890s, Etheldreda had her own darkroom built in the house. She showed an immediate interest in the Autochrome color process when it first became available in 1907. From 1908 she took many photographs of her daughters Janet and Iris - born in 1898 and 1903, respectively - in the garden. The couple moved to London in 1923 where she took up miniature painting and joined the Royal Miniature Society. Her husband died in 1939, but she lived another twenty-one years, passing away at the age of eighty-eight. Bury Knowle House where these images were taken is now Headington Library, and the grounds Laing captured so vividly are a public park.

A self-portrait.



2 comments:

  1. These gorgeous photos, which must have been taken in the years just before World War One, seem to have a 19th century, languid romantic feel.

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  2. These are stunning. Thank you.

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