Ginx's Baby
Photograph
1871 (photographed)
1871 (photographed)
| Artist/Maker |
The photograph was one of a series taken for Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) work ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals’, 1872, a study into the origins of human expressions. After meeting Darwin in 1871, Rejlander became the main photographer for the project. ‘Ginx’s Baby’ was also commercially successful, and so Rejlander created versions on cartes de visite and cabinet cards. The title for the photograph was taken from a novel about an orphaned boy, by John Edward Jenkins (1838-1910). The polychrome drawing was an enlargement made after the original photogram, date unknown. Rejlander had produced a small, indistinct photograph of a crying baby, but it was too small and poor quality to reproduce, so he redrew it by hand and produced a large coloured drawing. The drawing was then rephotographed, giving it the appearance of a photographic original.
Object details
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| Materials and techniques | Carbon print. This is an enlargement after the original photograph (date unknown). |
| Brief description | Drawing by Oscar Gustav Rejlander, Ginx's Baby, carbon print, 1871. |
| Physical description | The photograph was one of a series taken for Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) work ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals’, 1872, a study into the origins of human expressions. After meeting Darwin in 1871, Rejlander became the main photographer for the project. ‘Ginx’s Baby’ was also commercially successful, and so Rejlander created versions on cartes de visite and cabinet cards. The title for the photograph was taken from a novel about an orphaned boy, by John Edward Jenkins (1838-1910). The polychrome drawing was an enlargement made after the original photogram, date unknown. Rejlander had produced a small, indistinct photograph of a crying baby, but it was too small and poor quality to reproduce, so he redrew it by hand and produced a large coloured drawing. The drawing was then rephotographed, giving it the appearance of a photographic original. |
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| Credit line | The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund. |
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| Bibliographic reference | 'Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement', by Philip Prodger, Tom Gunning, Iris & B. Gerald (Cantor Centre for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 2003) |
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| Collection | |
| Accession number | RPS.1374-2017 |
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| Record created | May 26, 2017 |
| Record URL |
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