Photographers B

Augustin Barbichon

Versailles, France

  • A Barbichon – Jeannon & Guerronnan & Philippon – Entree 19 rue St Pierre – 28 Avenue de St Cloud Versailles

The son of a saddler, Marie Simon Augustin Barbichon (27 October 1855 to 7 May 1917) was born in Morey (Haute-Saône). At the age of 18, he enlisted for five years in a squadron of the train regiment where he was a saddler. The train  regiment organised and coordinated military logistics, transport and support for movement (particularly road traffic) of the French Army . It was created in 1807 by Napoleon before which these functions were carried out by private companies under contract or requisitioned.

Returning to civilian life, Barbichon became a painter in Nevers (Nièvre) when he married in Brou (Eure-et-Loir) on 19 November 1883. His wife, Armandine Théodorine Briard, who was 18 years older than him, brought as dowry the earthenware factory she had inherited from her father. Barbichon ran it until it closed. In his spare time, he was a painter but also a photographer and, as such, a member of the French Photographic Society from 1892. In March 1893, he set up as a photographer in Versailles. Charles Guerronnan gave him his studio located at 26 avenue de Saint-Cloud with entrance at 19 rue Saint-Pierre. On 1 July 1898 he added the studio that Philippon operated at 17, rue Colbert. On the back of his photos, Barbichon presents himself as “Artist Painter Photographer, successor to Jeannon, Guerronnan and Philippon”.

Barbichon also had a branch in Brou which he closed in 1899. Barbichon was listed at 19 rue Saint-Pierre in 1901 but not in 1906. In 1911, he was a painter, residing at 25, rue de Beauvau in Versailles where he died.

This image displays an advertisement or business card for a “Photographer Painter”.The business also offered “REPRODUCTIONS OF ALL KINDS” and a “NEW SPECIAL PROCESS For Child Portraits.” PORTRAITS IN PASTEL & PENCIL created both FROM NATURE and FROM PHOTOGRAPHY.

The reverse also claims “3 Silver Medals in Versailles, Paris (1878), and Chartres (1880)” The Paris Exhibition of 1878 was France’s third World Fair held between 1 May and 10 November to celebrate industry and the recovery of France after the Franco Prussian War. As part of the exhibition international juries awarded bronze, silver and gold medals designed by French sculptor Jules-Clement Chaplain. But 1878 seems too early for Barbichon and there is no sign of a medal-awarding event in Chartres in 1880. So perhaps the claim was to medals won by one of the predecessor studios or perhaps there is even less to his credit?

Source: Des photographes en France (1839-1939)

James Brooks

Todmorden,  West Yorkshire, England

  • Jas Brooks Wellington Road Studio, Todmorden. Instantaneous Portraits. Photographic Artist. All negatives kept. Copies from this Carte can be had or enlarged and finished in Oil or Water Color. Manufactured in Berlin for Wright, Burnley

According to the 1901 Census, Heywood-born Brooks was 49 years of age and in business on his own account. He was living at 78 Piccadilly Road, Habergham Eaves, Burnley with his wife Ada who was 36 and son David Brooks, a 21 year old sanitary ware worker, daughters Annie (18) and Martha (16) who were cotton weavers and Sarah (12) and three year old Hartley. Apart from Sarah who was born in Todmorden, all the children were born in Burnley, nine miles to the north-west.

Other CDVs described his place of work as the Todmorden Studio

James Brooks started the Coal Clough Lane Studio in Burnley around the turn of the century having previously been on Accrington Road. His father before him was also a photographer from around the 1870s. His son, Fred Brooks, photographer of Coal Clough Lane, was mentioned in the Burnley Express of Saturday 25 June 1927, and Saturday 19 February 1944. How this family history fits with James Brooks of Todmorden is not clear.

Sources: Burnley photographers; https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php

James Byron, Nottingham, England

  • 1882 J. Byron, PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST, NOTTINGHAM ESTABLISHED Quarter Of a Century NEW STUDIO BYRON BUILDINGS BRIDLESMITH GATE Marion, Imp. Paris

This is a complex tale featuring three generations of the same Nottingham family:

  • James Clayton (1802 to 1863) opened a photographic studio at Nottingham in the mid-1840s,
  • his son Walter Clayton (1833 to 1893), at 8 Greyhound Street, Long Row, Nottingham in 1856.
  • Another son, James Byron Clayton (1826 to 1880) opened a studio at 4 Ram Yard, Long Row East by 1857, operating under his baptismal second name Byron, so as to differentiate between his studio and that of his brother.
  • James Clayton’s grandson Joseph Byron Clayton (1847 to 1923)

James Clayton senior had basket making work rooms in Greyhound Street.

The first documentary evidence of a member of the Clayton family working in the photographic profession appears to be when Walter Clayton opened a photographic gallery beside the basket-making business by the end of February 1856. In 1857 James followed suit, opening a studio in Ram Yard, off Long Row East. As a means of distinguishing his business from that of his brother, he traded under the name “James Byron.”

This was around the period when the daguerreotype patents lapsed and the patent-free wet collodion process developed by Frederick Scott Archer made the profession far more accessible. Nottingham experienced a wave of new practitioners between 1854 and 1858, and soon the Clayton brothers were amongst twenty or so photographers offering collodion positive and other photographic portraits in the town.

The census enumerated in April 1861 shows Byron living with his wife and fourteen year-old son Joseph in Parliament Street. It is likely that he began to offer the newly-popularised and much more affordable carte de visite format to his customers shortly after its introduction into Nottingham in 1862.

As James Byron he was listed in Wright’s Nottingham Directory for 1858, at the premises in Ram Yard. When joined by his son, he was at Long Row and, when in business with more than one son, at Ram Yard Market Place. These could have been the same place as Ram Yard is in Long Row.

Byron was at Bridlesmith Gate in 1882 and 1885.

By the mid 1880s, the business fell on hard times. Facing a possible bankruptcy, Byron, his wife and oldest daughter emigrated to New York where for a year he practiced as a freelance press photographer for the Illustrated American, among other publications, before breaking into stage photography. His son Percy followed in his footsteps, but eventually moved to Edmonton, Canada, where he established a photographic business with his brother-in-law.

The family business faltered during World War I, forcing Percy to move back to New York, where he again joined forces with his father, establishing a studio specializing in ship photography. Joseph Byron Clayton died in 1923, after which Percy Byron took over the Byron Company and continued to run it successfully until the middle of World War II, when business experienced a downturn and the company closed for good in October 1942.

Sources: If you thought selfies were a new craze, think again: Amazing self-portraits taken by pioneering photographer in 1909 put Instagram to shame Daily Mail Snejana Farberov 9 February 2014; Brett Payne’s Victorian & Edwardian Photograph Collection

Marion, Printers, Paris (see also here)

By 1866 A Marion & Company of Soho Square, London were employed handling the wholesale publishing of ‘famous people’ carte de visites, for the top London studio of Mayall. By 1870 Marion were making the backs for sale to photographers, and must have had travelling salesmen pushing their product to the smaller studios using a standard catalogue of designs. The only way to get the price down to below the level of the customer’s local printer, would be by economies of scale, printing a lot of the same design to sell them to everyone. This they tried to do using muted colour cards with a simple border, a coloured line set in from the edge with rotating square shapes in the four corners, at the bottom in small print was Marion Imp, Paris. This simple border was soon generally replaced by other designs, but it kept going with some photographers until at least 1884.

Later, Marion printed postcards.

Sources: The Marion Date Code; cartes free uk