"Redding the Line," Willie Liston, Newhaven

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Medium

Salted paper print from paper negative

Dimensions

Mount: 9 11/16 in. × 7 1/16 in. (24.6 × 17.9 cm) Image: 8 9/16 in. (21.7 cm)

Classification

Photographs

Department

Photographs

Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Credit

Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2012

Accession Number

2013.159.22

Art Historical Context

Step into the world of pioneering photography with *Redding the Line, Willie Liston, Newhaven (1845), a salted paper print from a paper negative by the celebrated Scottish partnership of David Octavius Hill and Adamson. Capturing fisherman Willie Liston from the coastal village of Newhaven near Edinburgh, this intimate portrait shows him meticulously mending—or "redding"—his fishing lines, a daily ritual of hardworking seafarers. Hill, a painter, and Adamson, a chemist skilled in the calotype process, collaborated from 1843 to 1848, producing over 2,500 images that elevated photography from me...

About the Artist

Robert Adamson|David Octavius Hill|Hill and Adamson (British, Scottish|British, Scottish|British, Scottish) · 1802 |1821 |1843 1870 |1848 |1848

British, Perth, Scotland 1802–1870 Edinburgh, Scotland|British, St. Andrews, Scotland 1821–1848 St. Andrews, Scotland|British, active 1843–1848

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