"The young photographer in his eager desire to master the technical aspects of the medium very frequently pays no attention to the artistic properties of his pictures…..Such I freely confess, was the case with myself…..so having in some degree mastered the difficulties of manipulation, my ambition spurred me on to attempt to produce pictures which should be as much admired for their artistic qualities, as for their excellence viewed in a purely photographic light."
~ Samuel Bourne Feb. 24,1860
Born in Muchleston on the Shropshire-Staffordshire border, Samuel Bourne began his working life as a bank clerk but pursued photography from as early as 1853, capturing landscapes in the Lake District, north Wales, and the Scottish Highlands. In 1857 he left banking to focus on photography full-time, and by 1859 his work was included in a major exhibition of some 2,000 prints organized by the Nottingham Photographic Society, earning praise from George Shadbolt, editor of The British Journal of Photography. In 1863 Bourne sailed to India as a professional photographer, embarking on extensive journeys including a ten-week expedition into the Himalayas and a nine-month journey through Kashmir. He joined the photography firm of Charles Shepherd and Arthur Robertson in 1864, which became Howard, Shepherd, and Bourne, and continued field photography until his final Indian expedition in 1866. After returning to England in 1867 to marry Margaret Tolley, he briefly reopened a branch of Bourne and Shepherd in Calcutta before settling permanently in England in 1870. He withdrew from the firm in 1874, later serving as president of the Nottingham Camera Club and Society of Artists in 1892, and retired in 1896 to focus on watercolor painting.
I began my collecting journey primarily with 19th-century travel photography, simply because it was what I could afford at the time. Even now, I still love it—it allowed me to be an armchair traveler, offering the chance to explore places and cultures I could only dream of experiencing firsthand.
