The Personal Albums Of Samuel Bourne At The National Media Museum And The Art Gallery Of Ontario

This paper analyzed a group of seven photographic albums belonging to the personal collection of British photographer Samuel Bourne (1834-1912), which are now split between two public collections, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada, and the Royal Photographic Society at the National Media Museum in Bradford, England. The project includes: contextual research on Bourne's commercial practice and nineteenth-century colonial photography in India, and an extensive literature survey discussing both primary and contemporary sources on Bourne and colonial photography, documentation of the albums' history and provenance, and a detailed analysis of the organization and contents of the albums as a complete and coherent record of Bourne's photographic achievement in India. Furthermore, the applied component of the project, which entailed the substantial documentation of all seven albums, in the form of a catalogue of their 705 albumen prints, is included an appendix. The paper also describes the collections management strategies used to reunite the collection and facilitate future access and research.