A. Darracq & Co. Motor Showrooms, New Bond Street, London, 1914. Photograph: Bedford Lemere & Co.; reproduced by permission of the English Heritage

Workers laying hollow pot concrete flooring, 8 Lloyd’s Avenue, London, 1903. Photograph: Bedford Lemere & Co.; reproduced by permission of the English Heritage

Lots Road Power Station, London, 1905. Photograph: Bedford Lemere & Co.; reproduced by permission of the English Heritage

Moorish Room, Rolleston Hall, Staffordshire, 1892. Photograph: Bedford Lemere & Co.; reproduced by permission of the English Heritage

Recording the New: The Architectural Photography of Bedford Lemere & Co. 1870–1930
Curators: Anne Woodward and Gary Winter
London, UK, Victoria & Albert Museum, 4 June – 30 October 2011

The dominance of the picturesque aesthetic in the nineteenth century meant that almost two decades passed since the advent of photography before commercial photographic studios began to include contemporary architecture among their subject matter. Firms like Bedford Lemere, in London, began shooting contemporary architecture around the 1860s, following a period in which they had specialized in portraiture. Within a decade, Lemere and his son, Harry Bedford Lemere, pioneered a form of photography that promoted ‘good architectural design.’ Between the 1870s and the 1940s, the firm was employed by industrialists, governmental departments, retailers, hoteliers, and state agents to capture their new buildings. This way, photography played a key role in promoting the work of leading contemporary architects, interior decorators, designers, and artists.

The Bedford Lemere & Co. collection, an archive of over 20,000 glass negatives, is owned by English Heritage, which is undertaking a major project to conserve, catalogue, and scan it, with the aim of making the images accessible on the internet (see www.englishheritagearchives.org.uk). A selection of prints from the original negatives is now on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The show explores the Lemeres’ transformation of commercial photography, while offering a fascinating glimpse into the application of new technologies in British everyday life at the turn of the century.

New technology is the exhibition’s common denominator. The small area dedicated to the show is divided in two sections: one focuses on the Lemeres’ photographic techniques, while the other reconstructs the firm’s depiction of progress. The first area includes a camera similar to the ones used by the firm and a sample of 10 x 12 inch prints that celebrate the Lemeres’ mastering of a technique they developed to capture architectural details with the sharpest definition. The selection of images shows a deep involvement with the new: new buildings, among which are the first examples in reinforced concrete; urban structures, innovative at the time, such as London’s first telephone booth and petrol stations; original occupations, like operators for wireless telecommunication; as well as fashionable interiors. As an example, the photograph of A. Darracq & Co. Motor Showrooms, New Bond Street (1914), not only shows the retailer’s brand new motorcar but also the sign of Rumbali Court Hairdresser, which reads: ‘COURT HAIRDRESSER: Artistic Transformation, Hair & Scalp Treated by Electricity.’ (Notice the Louis Vuitton store on the side.) Services, goods, and establishments, however, mostly share the photographic space in the form of signage: it is as written words that they found their way to the façades of buildings. While focussing on recording building details rather than street life scenes, as Eugène Atget did in Paris, Lemeres’ work, unintentionally perhaps, documents London as a continuous surface of writing.

Another aspect of the Lemeres’ fascination for modernity emerges clearly in 147 Strand, London (1907), a photograph of the firm’s offices. Placed at the beginning of the exhibition, next to the portraits of Bedford and Harry Bedford, this photograph acts as a portrait of the firm itself. Yet, paradoxically for a portrait, the photograph renders people as ghostly traces. This was a deliberate effect of the firm’s technology. In order to obtain a sharp and defined impression of the building’s details, the Lemeres chose to shoot early in the morning when the light was dim, evenly diffused all over the building. This effect was only possible through slow shutter, which proved successful at recording details but at the same time rendered people only as ghost-like figures. Such emptiness repeats the cloudless skies. This technique was probably used in the depiction of most interiors, where design had to be emphasized. For example, in the photograph of Eaton Hall, Cheshire (1883), Alfred Waterhouse’s beautiful design is rendered in all its glory, and the modest Italian Hospital in Queens Square, London (1903), makes use of central perspective to emphasize the neatness of its arrangement and operating machinery. Another example that further demonstrates the firm’s attention to detail is the photograph of Leighton House (1895), which has been located next to the original elevation drawing by George Aitchison in order to reveal the picture’s precision.

The exhibition emphasizes Bedford Lemere and Co.’s clientele list and the role clients played in promoting modern architecture. Leading contemporary architects, interior decorators, artists, hoteliers, and estate agents took advantage of the firm’s images as tools for promotion. Such marketing helped the Lemeres’ business to become the paragon of contemporary architectural photography practices, as confirmed by the firm’s advanced business card, which advertises ‘copies and enlargements to any size from this negative’ and also hints that the firm is an organized picture agency.

The work of Bedford Lemere & Co. shows how photography lent itself to the commoditization of the depicted new technologies and indeed architecture. Architecture became a commodity in the guise of a photograph by making images of architecture available to a much wider population. Indeed, Lemere’s photographs provided the public the opportunity to see, or even prompted actually visits to, buildings that otherwise would have been experienced only by a few. Conversely, the ability to emphasize the detail of architecture—also an effect of technology—meant the photograph, capturing detail, turns the architecture into a ‘collectible,’ hence a commodity.

In ‘The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire,’ Walter Benjamin’s examination of modernity, commodity is defined as an object placed in a velvety case that takes the form of the object itself. This wonderful exhibition can be seen as an application of Benjamin’s idea to architectural photography. The work of Bedford Lemere and Co. makes us think that architecture is to the object what photography is to the velvety case.

Tania López-Winkler
Architectural Association
London, UK

Publication related to the exhibition:
Nicholas Cooper, The Photography of Bedford Lemere & Co, Swindon: English Heritage, 292 pp., 270 b/w ill., ISBN 978-1-8480-2061-0, £ 25