Life in the past lane

What was life like for an amateur photographer in 1884? John Wade takes a trip back in time

- John Wade

T he year AP was launched, a photographer’s life was a lot easier than it had been a few years before. But it was still complicated at a time when camera owners needed to

be half artist and half chemist. There was no roll film. Exposures were made on rigid glass plates. Photographers were mostly men, even though AP – probably in an effort to drum up readers – pointed out in its first edition, ‘ladies make excellent manipulators.’ Photography, until then, had been a business for professionals, rather than a hobby for amateurs. But by 1884, with photographic processes becoming easier to use, that first issue announced that the number of amateur photographers in the UK now vastly exceeded professionals.

With a few exceptions, cameras at this time were little more than lenses with adjustable apertures mounted on panels at the front, linked by bellows to plate-holding panels at the back. Once a photographer had purchased a camera, he tended to stick with it, with his interests more likely to be in how chemistry and new processes were changing to make it simpler to take better pictures.