The Evolution of Photography: With a Chronological Record of Discoveries, Inventions, Etc., Contributions to Photographic Literature, and Personal Reminescences Extending over Forty YearsWerge, John, active 1854-1890
History
The Evolution of Photography: With a Chronological Record of Discoveries, Inventions, Etc., Contributions to Photographic Literature, and Personal Reminescences Extending over Forty Years
Werge, John, active 1854-1890
Photography -- History
Highlanders playing in the centre, and their pipers walking about the
grounds ready to take up the strains of music in another key, for
presently we saw them marching about, playing "Hielan' Skirls," and
sounding the loud pibroch, with a five-bag power that was more stunning
than the nocturnal wailings of a dozen or two Kilkenny cats. The
directors furnish music and offer other inducements to secure a good
attendance, and their efforts ought to be successful, and it is to be
hoped they will be so.
On the first day of our visit there was a grand archery meeting, and the
turn-out of Dublin belles was double in numbers. There was a large
attendance of bowmen, too, and belles and beaux were banging away at the
targets most unmercifully in keen contest for the prize; whether it was
a medal, a ring, or an heiress, we could not learn; but if nothing more
than the privilege of entering the lists against such lovely
competitors, the bowmen ought to have been satisfied; but we don't
suppose they were, for men are both ambitious and avaricious, and
probably some of them hoped to win a prize medal, kill a beauty, and
catch an heiress all at once, with one swift arrow sent whizzing and
quivering into the very heart and gilded centre of the gaily-painted
target.
Perched up on the top of the cascades we noticed a double sliding-front
stereoscopic camera, and doubtless Mr. York was busy photographing the
scene we have been describing--impressions of which the London
Stereoscopic Company will probably issue ere long. We must, however,
leave this gay scene and turn our attention to other things, certainly
not more attractive; but duty calls us away from beauty, and we must
submit.
Re-entering the Exhibition building, we seek the photographic
department, which we readily find on the ground floor, between the music
hall and the first-class refreshment-room. Entering from the Belgian
department in the western transept, we find three rooms in the main
building devoted to the exhibition of photographs, and a lobby between
the rooms pretty well filled with apparatus. To Sir J. Jocelyn Coghill
are photographers indebted for obtaining so much space for their works,
and in such a get-at-able situation; but it is a pity the rooms are not
better lighted. Many of the pictures on the screens are very
indistinctly seen, and some are in dark corners scarcely to be seen at
all.
The foreign department, which is the first room we enter, is mainly made
up of reproductions of old and modern engravings, and copies of drawings
and paintings. One very remarkable photograph on the wall of this room
is an immense magnification of a flea, by A. Duvette. What a subject for
the camera!--one that suggests in sporting phraseology something more
than the "find," the "chase," and the "death."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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