BPH is very excited to have received a copy of A Royal Passion. Queen Victoria and Photography by Anne Lyden and contributions from Sophie Gordon and Jennifer Green-Lewis. The book accompanies the Getty's exhibition of the same name which opens on 4 February at the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Watch out for a review shortly.
Los Angeles - After the so-called "Royal Mania" following Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding, it's hard to open a newspaper or browse the internet without catching a glimpse of the British royal family. Their photographs saturate the international news cycle, fostering a sense of intimacy between the royals and their subjects and powerfully shaping perceptions of the Windsors around the world. But the ubiquity of royal photographs is not a new trend, and it has powerful roots that trace back to the birth of photography and Queen Victoria.
In January 1839, photography was announced to the world. Two years prior, a young Queen Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland. These two events, while seemingly unrelated, marked the beginnings of a relationship that continued throughout the nineteenth century and helped construct the image of an
entire age.
A Royal Passion (Getty Publications, $50.00, hardcover) explores the connections between photography and the monarchy through Victoria's embrace of the new medium and her portrayal through the lens. Together with Prince Albert, her beloved husband, the Queen amassed one of the earliest collections of photographs, including works by renowned photographers such as Roger Fenton, Gustave Le Gray, and Julia Margaret Cameron. Victoria was also the first British monarch to have her life recorded by the camera: images of her as wife, mother, widow, and empress proliferated around the world at a time when the British Empire spanned the globe.
Including more than 150 color images-several rarely seen before-drawn from the Royal Collection and the J. Paul Getty Museum, this volume accompanies an exhibition of the same name, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from February 4 to June 20, 2014.
The Authors Anne M. Lyden is International Photography Curator at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, and former associate curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. She is curator of the exhibition A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography and has written about nineteenth-century photography, including The Photographs of Frederick Evans (Getty Publications, 201 0) and Railroad Vision: Photography, Travel, and Perception (Getty Publications, 2003). Sophie Gordon is senior curator of photographs at the Royal Collection, Windsor. Jennifer Green-lewis is associate professor of English literature at George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Publication Information:
A Royal Passion. Queen Victoria and Photography
Edited by Anne M Lyden
With contributions by Sophie Gordon and Jennifer Green-Lewis
The J. Paul Getty Museum
232 pages, 9 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches
120 color and 43 b/w illustration, 1 map
ISBN 978-1-60606-155-8, hardcover
$50 / £36
Publication Date: February 4, 2014
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