William Harding: An unconventional eye

The meaning of a photograph

The word ‘photograph’ comes from the Greek photos, meaning ‘light’ and graphein, ‘to draw’. It’s a beautiful idea, this drawing with light, and reflects the idea in early photography that this new technology could capture the world as a painting did, then transcend it — unlike a painting, a photo could almost instantly capture a fleeting moment in time, recording reality with little interpretation or dependence on an artist’s skill.

A photographic portrait was expected to show a true likeness of its subject, yet, like a painted portrait, it also aimed to project an idealised view. Those ideals have changed over time – today we might think Victorian portraiture is staid, humourless and rigid, but back then those qualities indicated the virtues of respectability, beauty and accomplishment, achieved through the use of certain poses, facial expressions, backdrops and props.

First photographs

The first photographic studios opened in New Zealand in 1848 — J. Polack and J. Newman in Auckland, and H.B. Sealy in Wellington, making daguerreotypes. The collodion wet-plate process was invented in England in 1851 and just five years later, in Whanganui, William Harding set up his studio producing these glass-plate negatives.

An early adopter, he was also a real craftsman; having previously worked as a coachbuilder and cabinetmaker, he now turned his hand to making his own cameras and grinding his own lenses. His portraits were commissioned and many were intended for cartes de visite (calling cards), which had become popular. The emulsified and peeling edges seen in the Harding negatives would have been cropped out of the finished photograph.

Say ‘prunes’!

Most of Harding’s sitters would never have been photographed before, and having their portrait taken was an act of faith. They hoped to be shown in their best light, for they knew the image would be permanent. Convention dictated what facial expressions were acceptable. Despite not smiling, Harding’s subjects are full of expression.

Smiling was not usually done in formal Victorian portraiture, including Harding’s. Some argue it was because of the state of everyone’s teeth, but the convention came from painting, where only fools and drunks were shown to be grinning. It was Mark Twain who wrote: ‘A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to down in posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever’. So instead of saying ‘cheese’, sitters were encouraged to say ‘prunes’, to create the effect of a small, perfect, mouth.

Harding’s sitters are also largely unsmiling. But their faces are alight, staring down the camera, eyes aflame. Sometimes they look peevish, bored or exhausted. There seems to be little inclination towards idealisation. Harding refused to retouch his photographs as other commercial photographers did. Faces are weathered and freckled; clothing is often ragged, mended or borrowed. Wealthier clients look more poised, but even they have been captured in a moment where the mask of formality seems to have slipped. Harding seems to get beyond the rigidity of convention, his faces coming to us with honesty and startling immediacy.

Strike a pose

In Victorian photography, a sitter was usually arranged to highlight their best features and disguise any aspect that might be considered, by the standards of the time, unsightly. Harding didn’t seem to go in for that. There is little idealisation or subterfuge: a crippled child is shown wearing her callipers; a Down’s syndrome child is held on her mother’s lap; a man with a sheen of sweat lies on his deathbed.

The first portrait above is of Mr Thomas Nicholson, Walton Grange, 1860s (private collection of Audrey Linkman), and was taken by M. Boak of Driffield & Pickering. This English portrait is almost identical to one Harding took, of an unidentified man, in the 1870s (ATL ref. 1/4-006462-G). Note the differences: the Englishman, as convention dictated for men, looks into the camera and sits with legs apart and hands spread, suggesting a relaxed authority. The Whanganui man, with his hands clenched and gaze averted, seems less at ease, more reticent. He is concealing something. We are drawn to him – what is his story?

Props

Most props were supplied by the studio, but some sitters brought their own. Such props were used to convey something about the sitter. Some were common conventions; for example, a book held in the hand indicated literacy at a time when not everyone could read. Posing with a small framed photographic portrait indicated a need to remember someone who was otherwise absent. Children often posed with a favourite toy, and men with an object that represented the job they did and their status in society.

This unidentified Māori woman, c. 1870 –89, poses with a vignette of personal, not studio props, including a faux Greek vase, a book, a cameo brooch, a hat with an ostrich feather, and a box. She makes her wedding ring evident to indicate her married status.

In many of Harding’s portraits, we see the same props turn up over and over again, including a rocking horse, a statuette of a child, a stereoscope, a vase, and a side table with barley-twist legs. Men hold flowers — why would this be? Soldiers hold their rifles, or, if they played in a military band, their musical instruments. Perhaps needing something to do with an awkward pair of hands, some hold a hat, bag or clutch at a piece of furniture. The same oversized and overstuffed chaise longue is leaned, climbed or sat on by many of Harding’s subjects.

Painted backdrops

As well as pieces of furniture, the studio offered a selection of painted backdrops in front of which sitters were arranged. In Harding’s studio they depicted, for example, a scene through a window of a church steeple set in bucolic abundance, the interior of a stately home, and an archway beyond which lies Roman columns and trees. These came with the addition of artificial plants, a balustrade, plinths, patterned flooring and heavy drapes.

This might all sound opulent — but there is a shabby look to much of it. In some cases the painted backdrops are on a slight lean, or are crumpled. And because these are uncropped images, we see unused props and other studio paraphernalia cluttered at the edges. The artifice is fascinating, perhaps because it is in such contrast to the authenticity with which Harding depicts his subjects.

Visit ‘Between Skin & Shirt’ in the gallery and online

Between Skin & Shirt: The Photographic Portraits of William Harding is on at the National Library from 26 May until 29 October 2022.

Explore the Between Skin & Shirt online exhibition
Visit Between Skin & Shirt at the National Library in Wellington