Reappraising the Abraham brothers (2)

Continued: they took mountain photography to a new level - but was it Art?

Their mentor's death did little to deter the Abraham brothers. Picking up where Owen Glynne Jones had left off, they published a climbing guidebook for North Wales in 1906. George developed into a strong leader in his own right, making first ascents in the Lakes and Scotland. 

The Pinnacle on Scafell.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

The guidebook also helped to launch George on his prolific career of mountain writing. And both brothers became family men and pillars of the local community: Ashley was first a member and then chairman of Keswick Council.

Climbing the Eiger: original caption reads "A safe pull".
Image from George D Abraham, Swiss Mountain Climbs.

They also continued their tradition of summer mountaineering holidays in the Alps, proving that they could wield a camera as stylishly in the big mountains as on their local crags. 

Climbing the Wetterhorn.
Image from George D Abraham, Swiss Mountain Climbs.

Although it's hard to believe that they used an Instanto to capture pictures like the crevasse mishap below – surely, by this time, they’d kitted themselves out with the kind of lighter, handier apparatus that the hard-driving Mrs Main had already adopted for en-route photography. But again the record remains silent on this point.

"Hold tight! A sudden slip into a snow-masked crevasse on the Jungfrau."
        Original caption and photo from First Steps to Climbing.

They certainly explored other photographic innovations. Like Mrs Main, they experimented with film-making before the First World War and in 1921 they helped to make a feature film based on a story written by the mountaineer/novelist A E W Mason – although here the brothers served as stand-ins for the actors during climbing scenes, not as cameramen.

Image from Ashley Abraham, Beautiful Lakeland (1912).

Meanwhile, Ashley had parlayed his mountain photography skills into a series of books celebrating the broader landscapes of the Lake District and North Wales. His command of lighting and composition invites comparison with the likes of Albert Steiner (1877–1965), whose moody exposures captured the dream-like light of Switzerland’s Engadine valley.

Image from Ashley Abraham, Beautiful Lakeland (1912).

Albert Steiner is an intriguing parallel here. For decades after his death, nobody in the fine art world took him seriously. After all, the Swiss photographer had started out as a baker’s son and apprentice and for most of his career he’d made his living as a commercial photographer, producing images of hotel rooms, post buses and whatever else his clients needed for brochures and advertising copy. It was only after a landmark exhibition of his landscapes in 1992, at the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, Switzerland, that the art world started to take him seriously.

View of the Cuillins from Sligachan, Skye.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

All this raises the question whether George and Ashley Abraham aren’t also overdue for a “Kunsthaus moment”. Back then, Mills & Boon hardly did their pictures justice. Shoehorned as sketchily printed plates into one of the romance publisher’s duodecimo editions, their photos have scant room to breathe. But what if the best of their images were digitally remastered, lavishly printed on fine paper, framed, and exhibited as artworks? Then we’d see something like a Steiner-esque transformation, I suspect.

If it does happen, please enjoy the exhibition. And remember you read it here first…

References

George D. Abraham, First Steps to Climbing, Mills & Boon, Limited, London, 1923.

Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags: a portfolio of early rock climbing photographs by the Abraham Brothers, Heinemann 1975.

Iso Camartin, Peter Herzog and Ruth Herzog, «Du grosses stilles Leuchten»: Albert Steiner und die Bündner Landschaftsphotographie, Zürich, Offizin, 1992.

Reappraising the Abraham brothers (1)

They took mountain photography to another level – but was it Art? 

Back in March, I dropped into Jimbōchō, Tokyo’s used book district, on the first day of its annual festival. This yielded a musty copy of George D Abraham’s First Steps to Climbing, published in 1923 by Mills & Boon, Limited. Yes, that Mills & Boon – the back papers advertise the kind of titles that the publisher is still best known for, such as Miss Pretty in the Wood, Elizabeth Who Wouldn't, and Love and Chiffon…

The Abraham brothers, Ashley and George, in the 1930s.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

We digress. To share George Abraham’s quirky yet often pertinent climbing advice, this blog then posted a series of excerpts from his book, with the accompanying photos. Which prompted reader Stephen50 to put up some perceptive comments highlighting both the quality of the Abraham brothers’ photography and the existence of a biography, Camera on the Crags by Alan Hankinson.

Climbers in Easter Gully on Dow Crag (detail).
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

Intrigued, I reached for a copy of this genial and informative book, which explained just why the Abrahams were such skilled image-makers. For George (1871–1965) and his brother Ashley (1876–1951) were professionals, both born and bred. Their father, George Perry Abraham (1844–1923), founded and owned a successful photography business in Keswick, in the English Lake District – a business that, in turn, passed to Ashley’s son.

On Tryfan's Central Buttress.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

So they had already inherited their photographic smarts by the early 1890s, when they set about learning to rock-climb. This they did on their own bat, which probably explains why George Abraham opined in First Steps that “For a party of beginners the most effective plan, and that which really produces the best climbers, is to tackle the rocks unaided and rely on their own initiative” – a view not widely endorsed today.

Owen Glynne Jones climbing on gritstone.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

But what lofted the brothers into the big league of mountain photography was their partnership with Owen Glynne Jones (1867–1899). By profession a physics teacher in London, Jones was then at the forefront of the rock-climbing scene. A fluent writer, he was working on a climber’s guide to the Lake District, but needed somebody to make the photographs. In the Abraham brothers, he found just the team he was looking for. 

Alpinists on the way to the Fiescherhorn, Bernese Oberland.
Image from George D Abraham, Swiss Mountain Climbs.

From early 1897, for a brief two years, the brothers climbed with Jones in both the Lake District and North Wales. During that time, the brothers also went to the Alps for the first time, although not with Jones. They even talked with him about an expedition to Kanchenjunga. George Abraham advanced his climbing skills and made friends within the climbing community, while it was Ashley who more often than not tended the camera on narrow ledges.

An Underwood "Instanto".
Image by courtesy of antiquewoodcameras.com.

And what a camera! Manufactured by E & T Underwood of 130–2 Granville Street, Birmingham, the “Instanto” was little more than a mahogany frame supporting a leather bellows that could be racked in and out for focus. Shutter? Forget it: after propping the camera on a sturdy tripod, focusing onto a ground glass screen and inserting a dry plate, the photographer removed and replaced the lens cap for an estimated exposure time of, say, a second or more. By today’s norms, the name “Instanto” extravagantly violated any law of trade descriptions.

Climbers on Napes Needle (also styled the Aiguille du Nuque).
Image from Alan Hankinson's Camera on the Crags.

Yet, when viewed in the generously sized plates of Alan Hankinson’s book, the results speak for themselves. The compositions breathe a sense of classical repose, enforced by those lengthy exposure times that froze the climbers by necessity into statuesque poses. But this was only a part of it. 

On the Cuillin Ridge, Skye.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

A typical Abrahams photo never fails to bring out the shadow detail, revealing the texture and detail of the rocks in an opulent, luminous granularity. This they achieved partly from their attention to lighting – diffuse, if possible, and ideally from a three-quarter angle, over the photographer’s shoulder. But development times and tricks must also have played a role. Unfortunately, these are lost to history: the brothers wrote little or nothing about their photographic techniques. 

The Cioch, Skye.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

On a good day, the Abrahams could give even photographic masters such as Georges Tairraz of Chamonix (1868–1924) a run for their money – like themselves, Tairraz represented the second generation of a photographic dynasty. Although any recognition for their skills from that direction was distinctly back-handed. Several of their photos, records George in First Steps to Climbing,  “appeared surreptitiously in Alpine centres with French titles, as though they portrayed bits on the Chamonix aiguilles. The Napes Needle was unmistakable, even titled as the Aiguille du Nuque…” 

On Pillar East Face (detail).
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

Alas, the Abraham brothers' rock-climbing apprenticeship with O G Jones was all too short. In August 1899, their mentor fell to his death along with his three guides from the Ferpècle Arête of the Dent Blanche. The accident horrified the climbing world, even leaving its mark on a famous Japanese novel....

(Continued)