Flower Study

PhotographerEdward Seymour

CountryEngland

MediumAutotype (halftone)

JournalDie Kunst in der Photographie 1905

AtelierMeisenbach, Riffarth & Co.

Year1905

View Additional Information & Tags

Flowers, Still Life, Supports

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 17.0 x 12.7 cm Lieferung II
Support Dimensions: Detail: 33.0 x 24.0 cm mount color: olive


Amateur photographer Edward Seymour of Watford in England specialized in flower photography. From the issue of Jan. 24, 1908, he is singled out in a feature called My Best Picture and Why I think So (p. 83) in the English journal The Photographic News for Amateur Photographers:

 

EVERY reader of the “P.M.” is probably familiar with the name and work of Edward Seymour. Mr. Seymour appears to have founded—a few years ago—a new school of flower and fruit photography, which may be called “the apparently unsophisticated.” By this we mean Mr. Seymour obtains results which are gems of pictorial quality and masterpieces of technique, each of which appears as a careless study, yet perfect in composition and tone value, and all of which, when the secret is disclosed by the author himself, are the products of ceaseless care, observation, and cunning attention in assisting the subjects to assume the forms and contour necessary for his purpose.


Mr. Seymour’s work is a striking example of Art concealing Art, and he is, moreover, a specialist who specialises simply and solely because he loves his subject and has mastered it thoroughly.
In technical matters Mr. Seymour is surprisingly unorthodox. He practically never uses colour filters for his work and is not a believer in time development. His results, however, justify whatever means be employs, and his article on Still Life work in the last “Year Book of Photography ” gives a very complete and practical account of his methods of working.


Mr. Seymour is a delightful lecturer, and talks of the subject he loves with a frank ingenuousness, enlivened with touches of dry humour that are extremely refreshing. Every Society that has booked “Seymour” for an evening on “Flower Photography” may be sure of a notable and successful lecture, illustrated with probably some of the finest slides of flowers and fruit that have been yet produced.
The portrait given above is by W. H. Cox. of Luton and St. Albans. In writing of his well-known picture, “White Currants” (reproduced on page 74), Mr. Seymour says :—


I HAVE chosen the picture “White Currants” as my best not because I think it outshines many of my more recent endeavours to make pictorial studies of fruit, but because it is my favourite composition and brought me the first real success and encouragement I received from the photographic world.


Its simplicity is its strength, and its technical quality is, I believe, as good as anything I have done since. It was produced in the simplest manner possible, and undoubtedly set a fashion in this type of work. The number of bunches of white currants that have been photographed since this study was first exhibited several years ago at the R.P.S. exhibition would probably stock a fruiterer’s shop.


I do not wish, however, to pose in any way as a teacher of pictorial photography, but having at many lectures and in the “Year Book of Photography” described my methods of work, would like to say here that this picture was produced without expensive apparatus or materials, and I feel sure that the only essentials to success in the photography of flowers or fruit is a love for the subject and plenty of patience.


The picture of White Currants was not the result of the first attempt, and only by a process of elimination of unnecessary leaves and fruit was the exact result arrived at.
It pleased me as a picture then, and it still satisfies me, and I suppose I must assume, from the number of duplicates disposed of at exhibitions and the number of awards it has received, that it pleases other people also. (p. 83)

Flower Study