‘Photography Extraordinary’: Changing the focus on Lewis Carroll

When Charles Dodgson (1832–1898) published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 it propelled him to worldwide fame, under the pen-name Lewis Carroll, as one of the great storytellers. This reputation remains as strong, more than 150 years later, as it has ever been. So significant have the Alice books been, that it is rare for anyone to attach equal importance to other aspects of his life, such as his work as a mathematician, his religious faith or his opus as an amateur photographer. There have been both populist and scholarly books and articles on all these aspects of Carroll’s life, but when it comes to biography the approach is almost universally to write the story of the man who wrote Alice.¹ This is easily explained, of course – it is because the Alice books are so remarkable, and loved so much, that people want to learn more about the man behind them and, as has often been pondered, we might not even know his name today had he not written those two successful books. Whilst this is understandable it is hardly adequate if we are to seek a deep understanding of the real man.

Smith’s Lewis Carroll, Photography on the Move is not a biography in any sense, and is not intended to be one, but it is the first book to explore Dodgson’s life and work by taking his interest in photography as a central theme. Nor is the book simply an account or analysis of that photographic work; there is another theme running through it. The words ‘on the move’ in the book’s title refer to many other forms of ‘movement’ as recurring ideas throughout the book. Whatever Smith’s intentions were with this book, she has significantly deepened our understanding of Carroll as photographer and as collector and lover of photographs, and in doing so, has revealed much about the man’s personality and interests. Much of which, I think, has been obscured by writers more drawn to examining Carroll as the author of children’s stories.

After the short introduction, we have six chapters, each examining a particular aspect of Carroll’s life and each taking a different approach to his interest in photography. Chapter One, which looks at Carroll as an Oxford man (he was a member of Christ Church for his whole adult life), serves as a further introduction to his interests and an overview of his love of photography. Some of the content here will be familiar to anyone who has read a major Carroll biography or one of the better pieces on Carroll’s photography, but the approach here is highly original and Smith states her view here that there are clearly a number of significant issues regarding Carroll’s photography which have yet to be satisfactorily addressed.

Any illusions we might have of Carroll’s life being quiet, still and rather stuck in time in academic Oxford are immediately shattered once we move into Chapter Two, ‘Carroll on the Train’. Carroll was clearly fascinated by train travel, by movement, time and the idea of taking a journey. He loved his frequent train journeys and the railway-carriage created drama for him and the opportunity to meet and entertain children. Although this chapter is, perhaps, slightly less rooted in photography, it does raise and explore a particularly fascinating aspect of Carroll’s creativity – that of the photograph album. Smith refers to an album as ‘not simply a repository of precious images, or a vital record of “sittings”, but an object of attachment that evokes a tapestry of occasions on which photographs were taken and processed’. Whilst many of Carroll’s images stand up as individual works of art and many may be seen as the result of a happy afternoon spent entertaining and being entertained by child friends, these albums demonstrate a more significant thread through Carroll’s life – something which re-emerges in later chapters.

The third chapter explores Carroll’s passion for the theatre, demonstrating just how strong that passion was and how stage performers and performances influenced his photography. Photography becomes a form of theatre: ‘Photography was theatre for Carroll’, as Smith notes (p. 92). Carroll’s interest in stage performances and fascination with toys, particularly dolls and marionettes, come together here with the ‘movement’ theme which runs throughout the book. The discussion of Carroll’s apparent lifelong attachment to mechanical toys, puppets and the like is extensive and not only shows it to be deeper than we might have imagined but indicates that in some respects it informs much of his photography and written work. Equally, though, this is the chapter that delves deeper into Carroll’s fascination for children and child-performers in particular. Hard not to be amused, though, by his diary entry from 1878 which refers to performer Connie Gilchrist: ‘she is losing her beauty, and can’t act – but she did the old skipping-rope dance superbly’ (p. 127).

In Chapter Four, Carroll is on the move again as we learn of his journey to Russia in 1867 with companion Henry Parry Liddon. Less revealing about the man, but fascinating nonetheless to learn of Carroll being a somewhat typical Victorian traveller as he acquired cartes de visite and other mementos of his journey. The chapter also makes an interesting connection between Victorian photography and Russian icons and delves into Carroll’s dressing up box of national costumes.

The final two chapters are the most revealing. If the reader ever believed Carroll was either troublesomely eccentric or socially awkward then these chapters will caste serious doubt on those myths. Chapter Five is written around the problems Carroll had with his stammer, his method of coping with it and the therapy he sought from Dr Hunt of Hastings. Smith dwells less on the social implications of stammering and more on the sense in which it forced Carroll to think deeply about the connections between visual and verbal spaces, and, of course, how this relates to his photography. Although only a short chapter it is the one which looks most deeply into Carroll’s psyche. It works well as a stand-alone essay, but also hints that there is a lot more to be said on the subject – not on the stammering, per se, but on the interactions between Carroll’s visualization of language and image. Although slightly tangential to the theme of the book I would be interested to read more from Smith on this subject.

The final chapter sees Carroll on the beach at Eastbourne. Here all aspects of Carroll’s life come together – his social circle, love of the theatre, time spent writing and walking, innocent but loving relationships with child-friends and photography; not just taking photographs, but arranging them with commercial photographers and collecting them. On reaching the end of the chapter, and thus the end of the book, save a brief ‘postscript’, the reader has covered a lot of ground. It would be hard to claim that the main themes of this book represent the most significant aspects of Carroll’s life, but they certainly work well as the important topics for Smith’s particular approach to the study of Carroll’s photography.

This is a rather unusual book and certainly very different from any other book about Carroll’s photography. It takes a unique approach and analyses aspects of the man and his work, which have rarely been examined with such a sharp scholarly mindset. It would be far too trite to suggest that the author is looking back through the camera lens to reveal the photographer, but throughout, as I was learning more about Carroll’s work and how it was created, I felt I was observing the artist, understanding his motivation and getting closer to appreciating his complex personality.

There will always be more to be said about Carroll’s photography and the recently published catalogue raisonné will open up the subject immensely, simply by making the vast majority of the images, and information about them, readily available.² I believe, though, Lewis Carroll, Photography on the Move will also prompt further scholarship, particularly as it reveals much about the inter-connections between the man and his work.

The book is beautifully produced; nicely printed on good quality paper and very well illustrated. It is a scholarly book and clearly well researched and recommended for both Carroll scholars and more general enthusiasts of the man, his life and work. It might also be seen as an interesting experiment in finding alternative forms for producing a monograph. With so much now written about Carroll the fresh approach of this book and its deep analysis are most welcome.

In 1855 Carroll wrote a highly original paper titled ‘Photography Extraordinary’. Photography is an extraordinary medium and Carroll was an extraordinary man and Smith has brought us a step closer to fully appreciating it.