Image Analyses: The Beggar-Maid
Dodgson,
C. (1859) The Beggar-Maid, [online]
Available at: http://www.freewebs.com/paulchristiano/Alice%20Liddell%20as%20the%20Beggar-Maid%20%28Lewis%20Carroll,%201858%29.jpg
(Accessed: 2 November 2011)
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson who is better
known as Lewis Carroll took the image known as the beggar-maid, shown above, in
1859. The image is of a young girl named Alice Liddell who is posed leaning
slightly back against a garden wall. She appears to be gesturing with her right
hand open holding it out from her and her left hand resting on waist pressing
her ragged dress in slightly. This could be her holding her dress in place
while the picture is being taken. The girl’s
pose and clothing were all planed by Carroll as he also took photographs of her
in a summer dress then asked her to change into the scruffy dress and pose as a
beggar. The reason for this was to invoke a link to a story of a legend called The King and the Beggar-maid
written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in 1842. The
story is about a king who comes to find love for female beggar.
Carroll was a
huge fan of Tennyson poetry. He was also an individual that adored the world of children and
was able to immerse himself within a group of children a bridge a gap between
an adult and child social conventions. He was seen as a friend to the children
he came to know. Carroll later went on the to publish several book one being
Alice’s adventures in wonderland in 1865. He became interested in photography around 1856 and was able to
excel at the practice. Photography at
the time was still a fairly new. The discipline had only been around for over
30 years and was mainly used for documentary photography and portraits of families
and individuals. Over time it became a hobby for middle class individuals to
pick and learn. This allowed photography to branch out into a more creative
field for the arts.
The
photograph was taken in the garden of Alice Liddell’s family whom Carroll was a
friend of. This was to get better lighting for the cameras exposure. As you can
see in the image there is a strong contrast built up from the pale whites of
the girls dress and skin tone to the dark stoned background and the girl’s
brunette hair. A harsh rough texture can be seen on the garden wall and as it
curves round the girl; it appears to blur in the upper right corner of the
photo. This may be due to the lens not focusing on objects closer or further
away from the camera. The girl’s right foot is cut off at the bottom of the
photograph. This creates an opening to the image or an image that isn’t fully
composed by framing of the subject. It constructs this point, which leads the
viewer inwards to engage with the image. Carroll used a Thomas
Ottewill Folding camera to take the
photo. It would take up to half a minute or longer for the exposure to take
effect on the photograph. Carroll mentioned
that it took 40-45 seconds for him to get a good exposure for the
photograph. So one can conclude that the
pose was not spontaneous but that of an instructed pose given by the
photographer. For the child to remain in that position for 40 second or more
keeping the same facial expression and holding her body in that position must
have been difficult to a degree. The wall that she is leaning against begins to
have a bigger meaning when considering the waiting time for the photograph to
be taken. It probably served as a resting spot and perhaps enabled her to
maintain poses during exposure times.
At the time the
collodion process would have been used. This would involve
dissolving iodide in a solution
made up of pyroxylin in alcohol and ether. This was then spread across a glass plate allowing it to thicken into a
gel. It would then be put into a silver nitrate solution, which would convert
the iodide into silver iodine. This would be photosensitive to light. In
Carroll’s case this would all be done in a small portable tent to cover it from
any light sources. Carroll, at this point of the process, would have placed the
plate into the camera ready for exposure while it’s still wet. This process had
to be done every time to take a new photograph, as the plate would lose
sensitivity as it dries. The plate also had to be developed while still wet in acetic
acid, iron sulfate and alcohol in water solution. To prepare each plate and
take a photo and develop it would have taken Carroll a short while.
One of the
main controversies about this picture is the nudity shown in it. According to
Simon Winchester (2011) it became a controversy in modern times. He mentioned
on BBC Front row highlights podcast ‘This is very much a 20th and 21st
century controversy because there was no such controversy in 1870 when Alice in
wonderland was published’. Taking this into account, mindsets come into play.
An Idea is that due to how people in modern times have come to see any pictures
of children with nudity as pedophilic pornography. Associating everyone
involved with a sordid seediness of that of a pedophile but perhaps this isn’t
the case like Winchester suggests.
Everything could just be down to preconceptions of the photograph in 20th
and 21st century context. Winchester also mentioned that Alice
Liddell’s mother and older sister where present during the time the photo was
taken. If anything inappropriate were to have happened they would have stopped
it straight away.
Hale, B (2008) in an online newspaper
article for the daily mail titled ‘Was Lewis Carroll a Paedophile? …’ Adds
speculations that points to an alternative motive for the photograph to be
taken. Hale wrote ‘He had many 'child friends' and was an avid photographer,
taking pictures of young girls, often nude.’ This information leads into the
preconceptions of Carroll’s photograph that Winchester tried to debunk.
Looking at
the image from a 21st century viewer’s perspective, this harmless
notion that everything was innocent begins to get over shadowed by small
details of the photograph. In a lecture discussion about this photograph conflicting
opinions to Winchester’s began to arise about the girl shows her uncovered legs
and arms with her left nipple visible. At the time these alarming details would
have surely been inappropriate. The Victorians approach to nudity was always something
of a public moral outrage. To see women showing her bare legs would have been
highly indecent to the people at the time. Men and women even wore garments
suits to have baths. Women’s clothing at
the time was designed to cover as much of the body as possible with long sleeve
dresses, high collars and long Skirts. So one would assume the viewers of
Carroll’s picture would be very offended by the relaxed showing of the almost
fully naked young girl. Another point about the time would be how prostitution
became a strong moral indecency to the middle class. Movements arose that
believed the world had become corrupted by obscenities of decadence
of everyday life and felt people should return to a pure lifestyle as people
lived in the past.
Prostitution would later become known as the great social evil. When taking
into account the view of nudity and prostitution of the time, the pose of the Alice
Liddell begins to look more seeded with sexual suggestions. Her parted legs
could symbolize underlining sexual deeds, which the viewers may be unhappy to
welcome such thoughts, toped with the hand gesture of the bagger. Things begin
to become a little distorted with her no longer representing a bagger wanting
money but perhaps a prostitute asking for payment.
There’s more
to this then just the nudity but is her face as well. Her facial expression
suggests that she is alluring yet gently drained. This could be due to holding
poses and waiting for the picture to be taken. Her look could also be that of
her frustration and wanting to the process to finish. The way Alice Liddell looks directly at the
viewers creates this almost voyeuristic element to the picture. You could
surmise that she knew the photographer from this direct stare, but it’s this effect
that makes the viewer apart of the picture. This idea of bringing the viewer
into the act has been done before in art with Francisco Goya’s the nude Maja
painting 1797–1800 and also the painting called Olympia, painted
by Edouard Manet, Painted in 1863. In these cases it caused similar
controversies as the subjects of the work were nude and in Olympia’s case the
subject was a prostitute. This angered viewer of the painting for those simple
aspects when it was exhibited. So with the Image of the Bagger-maid this could
be something that viewers find distasteful as well. The fact that now the
viewer has to acknowledge what’s happening in the photograph in a way which
makes them part of it. This again arcs
back to the idea of her appearing as a prostitute and the conditioning we have
come to accept that there is something more unsettling about this image than it
appears or the image is inviting the viewer to explore concepts that are not of
the viewers taste. In any case things
begin to become distorted when every small detail is over analyzed.
In conclusion
this image although riddle with speculation and perhaps misconceptions created
by an audience not of its time is still a unique stepping stone towards
different practices of photography and demonstrates the skill required to by
the photographer to produce such an image using the techniques and methods of
the time.
Bibliography
Bates,
S. (2011) ‘The Alice Behind Wonderland by Simon Winchester –
review’, The Guardian, 16 April
[online]. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/16/alice-behind-wonderland-simon-winchester-review (Accessed: 2
November 2011)
Dodgson, C. (1859) The Bagger-Maid, [online] Available at: http://www.freewebs.com/paulchristiano/Alice%20Liddell%20as%20the%20Beggar-Maid%20%28Lewis%20Carroll,%201858%29.jpg
(Accessed: 2 November 2011)
Hale, B. (2008) ‘Was
Lewis Carroll a paedophile? Discovery of cryptic letter raises questions about
author's relationship with real-life Alice’, Daily Mail, 19th November [online].
Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1087447/Was-Lewis-Carroll-paedophile-Discovery-cryptic-letter-raises-questions-authors-relationship-real-life-Alice.html#ixzz1f22Fx6dY
(Accessed: 2 November 2011)
Joyce, F. (2008), ‘Prostitution and the
Nineteenth Century: In Search of the ‘Great Social Evil’', Reinvention: a Journal of Undergraduate Research,
Volume 1, Issue 1, Available at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/go/reinventionjournal/volume1issue1/joyce (accessed: 2 November 2011)
Lawson,
M. Lang, K. Wilson, J. and Winchester, S. (2011) ‘Front Row
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Smith, A. (1996) The Victorian nude: Sexuality, Morality and Art. Manchester: Manchester university press Inc.
Winchester, S. (2011) Alice Behind Wonderland. New York: Oxford university press Inc.
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The Great Social Evil: Victorian Prostitution (no date) Available at: http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/Prostitution.htm
Wikimedia Foundation Inc (2011) Olypia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_%28Manet%29 (Accessed: 2 November 2011)
Wikimedia Foundation Inc (2011) Indecent Exposure. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indecent_exposure (Accessed: 2 November 2011)
Wikimedia Foundation Inc (2011) The King and The Bagger-Maid. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_and_the_Beggar-maid (Accessed: 2 November 2011)
Wikimedia Foundation Inc (2011) Alice Liddell. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Liddell (Accessed: 2 November 2011)
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