Fading

Henry Peach Robinson, like the painters of the Renaissance, photographed not only to re-create a scene, but to make viewers respond to the situations he presented. 

Robinson was much like other photographers of the day who valued pictorialism, or making a photograph that looks like a painting. This involved a technique that is much like using layers in Photoshop. 

The downside to Robinson’s creativity is that he used so many hazardous chemicals that he succumbed to their effect and wasn’t able to work with them after he was 34.

A few years after Le Gray used two negatives to make one photograph, Robinson used several. In the photograph “Fading Away,” shown above, Robinson used several cut glass negatives, each taken at a different exposure, as is apparent when you look at the clouds out the window. 

The clouds contain much detail because Robinson divided up the photograph, using several negatives, each exposed differently to get details in both the shadowed and lit areas. Just so you know, the photograph was staged.