La Bohème: The Staging of Artists in photography of the 19th and 20th century

"Bohemia is the first stage in artistic life; it is the preface to the Academy, the hospital, or the Morgue."

They begin in the 1840s with exposures from the dawn of photography: Louis Alphonse de Brébisson for instance staged in around 1842 a group of friends painting and playing music, stylising them as the quintessence of a romantic group of Bohemians. The span ranges from the earliest Daguerreotypes to stunning portraits by Nadar and on to the artist's banquets in the 1920s, and traces out the idea of Bohemia in photographed portraits and often lavishly choreographed mises en scène.

Similarly fruitful was the collaboration between David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, whose stagings in photographs such as Edinburgh Ale were aimed at positioning themselves close to the artistic Bohemia.

Also on show will be numerous stylised portraits staged according to historical models by David Wilkie Wynfield, a Pre-Raphaelite photographer, and Julia Margaret Cameron.