Customer Reviews

Lewis Carroll, Photographer

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I've been waiting for this very book for quite some time now. Carroll's photography has never been collected in a full form like many other photographers. Previous books have been light on material and all too heavy on the photographs of young child-friends. This book gives a more even account of Carroll's photography---even going so far as presenting the photographs as he did so in his own albums. Rather than classify his photographs, his albums show a wondrous variety of images---a skeleton of a fish, a landscape, a child-friend, a famous painter, a sculpture, etc.... Though it concentrates on Carroll's one hobby, Roger Taylor's essay is as good as any biography, being a hundred or so pages long. Edward Wakeling contributes insightful captions to each photograph in the Princeton Collection---for all are included! What more could one ask for? Wakeling, one of the leading experts on Carroll with a database of information, even offers his list of all photographs taken by Carroll, a list that will be continually updated. He even gives his email address for those who may have lost photographs.
An indispensable book for the researcher and a delight for the casual photography fan.

The trouble with this book is that in trying to address Carroll's
photography of children it uses perspectives and arguments that were already defunct and discredited before the book went into print.

The best defence pf Carroll's relationship with the nude child has been offered by Hugues Lebailly and Karoline Leach, who both have shown that we have misunderstood Carroll by failing to set him in the correct social background of his time.
Basically, during the Victorian age EVERYONE as making nude studies of children, and Carroll was merely being trendy when he did the same. The mistake as been to forget this and see his actions in isolation.

This revelation of the 'Victorian Cult of the Child' has revolutionised our understanding of Carroll, but Taylor in this book makes almost no use of it at all.

Instead he revives very weak and illogical arguments to 'defend' Dodgson, claiming, for example, that Dodgson didn't take many nude pictures, as if this in itself precludes the suspicion of paedophilia.

It doesn't. In fact it's a pale and dishonest argument. The only thing that defends Dodgson against paedophilia is the research of Leach and Lebailly which Taylor so oddly refuses to use to any extent. The result is muddled, dishonest and already out of date.

For the only serious analysis of Lewis Carroll's relationship with the nude child see Leach 'In the Shadow of the Dreamchild'. But if you just want to look at nice pics, then enjoy this book.

The photos of the kids are remarkable, All are lovely, and some show faces filled with determination, as the one of Alice as begger girl or another child as little Red Riding Hood. There is a single, dignified semi-nude of a 20 plus year old girl by another phoographer.

Children who read or have read to them the story of Alice (God forbid the
horror by Disney) may look upon the face of the real Alice as child. The book is quite suitable for children. There is not the slightest hint of
the lurid.

When children have the stories explained as logical absurdities, in an unacademical way, they remember. Dodgson was at least highly talented, perhaps a genius; his genius or talent shows up in his photographs. I only wish I had such an eye and ear for creating (writing) and catching (photos) beauty and wonder.
To me Lewis Carroll always seemed much like Dante. I used to read my little sister both when she was small to show her that Dante was just stories, not to be taken seriously (as having any truth)and that Carroll was reason turned upside down and fun. Dante had his Beatricci, and Lewis Carroll had his Alice. Both men were much older than the beloved; both men gave apotheosis to the beloved; both had imagination hard to equal.

This book provides a link to the mind of Lewis Carroll, and it is beautiful in places. Most of the most beautiful photos are to be found free on the www.

Some years ago an"expert",a respected college professor,put out a revisionist history of the notorious political corruptor William M.Tweed,in which his"research"alledgedly "proved"that the old crooked boss was,of all things,a victim of the new york times and the good-government forces of that time period..Not many people bought that novel theory,and even fewer will buy the notion that Lewis Carroll,writer,oxford don,photographer,was not also a closet pedophile..One need only look at the man's work,wherein he poses little girls in naked and half-naked situations designed to appeal to the more lurid aspects of one's imagination..Sure,other photographers of the victorian period also took naked pictures of little children,but this neither excuses them nor does it excuse Lewis Carroll..pornography is pornography,and this stance is not mitigated by the fact that a lot of people are involved in it...The fact that this is the same fellow who also wrote"Alice in Wonderland" also does not excuse him...One need only take a long,hard look at this man's private life,and then consider that,out of all of the subjects he chose to photograph,little girls in half naked poses were his favorite,to dismiss the one or two current,revisionist voices who insist that Carroll was not a pedophile..
There is also the incident which ended the long-standing relationship between Carroll and Oxford dean Liddell,father of several small children,one of which,Alice Liddell,happened to be Carroll's model for his own"alice"of "wonderland"fame(in point of fact Carroll did not use the term"wonderland"but instead called his book"Alice through the looking glass)to further be convinced of Carroll's misdeeds..Although no definitive evidence exists which can say exactly what the incident that destroyed thier relationship was,Alice Liddell herself hinted,in later life,that it involved something Carroll did with her sister..Given that both Carroll and Dean Liddell were upper class,and therefore horrified of any hint of scandal,especially scandal involving a subject that might in any way involve pedophilia,it is no wonder that today,more than 100 years after the fact,there is so very little "evidence"to pin down exactly what happened..Alice Liddell was not the only little girl that Carroll like to photograph,and some few of the others were not so reluctant to hint rather broadly at Carroll's peculiarities,and these hints tend to over-shadow all of the revisionist twaddle that today not only passes for scholarship,but is used to "redeem"Carroll..
This volume shows off Carroll's pictures,including the many that he took of naked and half-naked little girls..Taylor's text is definitive in a way that no revisionist balderdash could ever be.