Midley History of early Photography:

This is a personal site in that it provides the publications on the history of photography of only one person. It is not otherwise personal in the sense of providing or promoting more private or family information. But there appears to be a general expectation that at least some limited information is supplied about an author. A very short item ‘About the Author’ was required in 1994 to accompany the publication of the essay on ‘The Arrival of the Daguerreotype in New York’, is available on an Author page.

It is appropriate here to provide the personal reason why this site is named as Midley. The author’s paternal ancestors through much of the nineteenth century, in particular at the period the subject of these articles are set — in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s —, lived at Midley in the middle of the Romney Marsh (at the south west corner of Kent on the English Channel). They were agricultural labourers and shepherds — or, to use the local word, ‘Lookers’. It must have been a hard life on the Romney Marsh at that period. Yet Thomas Wood and wife Elizabeth were obviously healthy having fifteen children, all who lived to become adults. In the Midley area resided only about six families in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet at some earlier period there must surely have been a larger number of residents of the area, for there had been a small chapel in existence which has very long since survived only as a ruin, prominent in the surrounding flatness of the Marsh. Photography would certainly not have touched their lives — they were typical of a neglected rural working class, ignored at the time and unknown now.

In my research on the history of the 1830s and 1840s (appropriate – I feel – to dedicate it to those labourers and Lookers at Midley of that period), I have been struck by the existence of many significant contributors to the beginnings of photography who have been greatly neglected or are entirely absent from what might be called the standard histories of the subject. The parameters of the early history of photography have become set, for example, by the self-promoting character of W. H. F. Talbot. The ‘standard’ texts need to be read and known, of course, but when you spend too much of your life looking at primary sources, then the inevitable result is that the historiography of the subject remains contained within very narrow boundaries. The history of photography requires some of the fresh air and wide open sky characteristic of Midley of the Romney Marsh.

What has been published from research by the author on primary sources (and what other research needs publication!) reconstructs forgotten episodes of the early history of photography no more than the surviving stones of the Midley Chapel can represent the original church. Maybe, dear reader, you can add a brick sometime to provide a fuller view of a Midley emblem history of photography.

Remember these pages are not expected to still be online after July 2010 Yet Midley History of early Photography will be preserved online to some extent as it has been automatically archived at the ‘Wayback Machine’ at http:///web/*/www.midley.co.uk and (for individual files that might be missing from the chronological presentation of the whole site) at /*/www.midley.co.uk/* ). The earlier site (originally at www,midleykent.fsnet.co.uk from July 2001-Jan 2007) is also archived online at The author has also archived onto CD the full site as at 1 March 2025

 To contact the author during 2009: click [here].

 Pages were last modified on this site on 15 Feb 2025

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