1845
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Newhaven Fishwives, Jeanie Wilson and Annie Linton is a 1845 by David Octavius Hill, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This photo shows two women in striped skirts cleaning fish on a dock. The women wear aprons and carry wicker baskets. Sunlight catches the scales of the fish. Hill and Adamson focused on everyday life. This was rare in the 1840s. They used a new way to make pictures with light. Their work started a trend. Look up David Octavius Hill (British, 1802–1870).
Hill and Adamson’s four-year collaboration yielded around 3,000 photographs, including portraits of members of the middle and upper classes and, in what may be the first social documentary project, of the working class. Included in their survey of contemporary life were numerous portraits of the fishermen’s wives in the villages around Edinburgh. The women, garbed in distinctive striped skirts and aprons, cleaned their husbands’ catch, then carried it in wicker baskets to the city where they offered it for sale. They were reported to be hard bargainers. Hill and Adamson respectfully recorded…
Read the full account in the museum source.
David Octavius Hill (20 May 1802 – 17 May 1870) was a Scottish painter, photographer and arts activist.
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