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- Title
Shopping in St Petersburg: Lewis Carroll's Photographs and Icons.
- Authors
Smith, Lindsay
- Abstract
In the summer of 1867 the Reverend Charles Dodgson, Lewis Carroll, visited Russia with his friend Henry Parry Liddon. Carroll did not take his camera on his only trip abroad. Yet, in its absence, he shopped for photographs at every opportunity, supplementing their purchase with Orthodox icons, and frequently recording their presence in his journal. None of the photographs Carroll bought on the trip are known to have survived and, while critics maintain that the visit had little impact upon him, the multi-ethnic experience of Russia, together with popular cartes de visite of ‘Russian types’ from St Petersburg, and copies of ancient icons, did affect Carroll’s subsequent photography. While distinct from the technological modernity of a photograph, the painted form of an icon is similarly miraculous in its physical trace of, and causal connection to, a referent. On his return home, both metaphysical and material aspects of icon and carte intricately combine as Carroll increased his practice of photographing in an unadorned space single figures of children in ethnic costume.
- Subjects
SAINT Petersburg (Russia); CARROLL, Lewis, 1832-1898; 19TH century photography; CARTE de visite photographs; RUSSIAN icons; PHOTOGRAPHY of children; AUTHORS as photographers
- Publication
Art History, 2013, Vol 36, Issue 5, p968
- ISSN
0141-6790
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-8365.12037