Introduction
Given that our Association’s aims embrace the advancement of Science and Arts alongside Literature it is to be expected that there has been a long-standing interest in photography among its membership. Reaching back 126 years to 1896, we find that among the papers presented to members attending the 35th Annual Meeting, held in Ashburton during the Presidency of the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, was one entitled ‘A Photographic Survey of Devon’.
Presented by C. E. Robinson, a Bristol water engineer, this paper referred to a report prepared two years previously by the Congress of Archaeological Societies proposing that systematic photographic surveys be undertaken. Robinson suggested that the Association was well placed to initiate such a photographic survey for Devon. He recognised that this would involve historians, geologists, antiquarians and naturalists working alongside amateur photographers and he drew attention to the value of publishing a selection of the survey’s photographs. He identified thirty types of ‘objects of interest’ that might be covered in such a survey. Along with some obvious choices such as ‘churches’, ‘castles’ and ‘old houses’, he included ‘very old people’ and natural features such as ‘celebrated trees’ and ‘effects of lightning’. Robinson also identified the need to deposit duplicate copies of survey photographs in the Barnstaple Athenaeum and the museums at Exeter, Torquay and Plymouth. (Robinson, 1896)
By the time of Robinson’s paper, the potential of photography was already well recognised. Its development had been gaining growing attention in the Westcountry during the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1855 over 500 people had attended the second annual gathering of the Devon and Cornwall Photographic Society and two years later the Devon and Exeter Photographic Society had been founded. (Kember et al., 2016, 44) Photography was identified as an ‘independent art’ in its own right during the London International Exhibition of 1862 (the same year that our Association was founded). (Anon, 2016)
A recent study of the early days of photography on Dartmoor lists nineteen individual photographers active between 1860 and 1880. (Greeves, 2015) The advent of tourism in the Victorian period was one of the drivers behind the popularity of photography in Devon, with Torquay’s rise as a seaside resort providing one particular stimulus. (Greeves, 2012) Among the most active early commercial photographers in Devon was Exeter-born William Spreat, who by 1862 was offering ‘tourists and visitors’ a choice of more than 300 ‘First-Class Photographs and Stereographs of the principal objects of interest in the counties of Devon and Cornwall’. (Greeves, 2018)
So, conditions in 1896 would have been favourable for the Association to take up Robinson’s suggestion that it organise a county-wide photographic survey, not least because Robert Burnard, one of its most active members and also a council member of the Devon and Cornwall Camera Club, had recently shown a way forward by publishing his four-volume series, Dartmoor Pictorial Records. (Burnard, 1890–4) However, although the Association promptly set up a committee to progress the survey idea and a series of that committee’s reports appeared in the next few annual Transactions, enthusiasm seems to have soon dried up. The committee reported a disappointingly small number of photographs being submitted to it.1
120 years after Robinson presented his paper to its 1896 Annual Meeting, the Association again had photography as a theme for discussion when Dr Tom Greeves chose it as the topic for his 2016 President’s Symposium on ‘Science meets Art – Aspects of 175 Years of Photography in Devon’. (Hurley, 2016) A capacity audience of 130 people gathered at Tiverton to hear an excellent array of presentations on the history of photography in Devon and on its contemporary practice in the county.2 Enthusiasm was again aroused within the Association to become more actively engaged with photography - this time with the idea of setting up a new Photography Section. But again, as with the Association’s response to Robinson’s 1896 paper, interest did not gain sufficient traction to see that suggestion become a reality.
One conclusion that the Association’s 2016 President’s Symposium did demonstrate was that photography was very much alive in Devon and that the county had become home to photographers of national and international significance. Among this number must be ranked the documentary photographer James Ravilious (1939–1999).3
Ravilious started his career as a photographer in Devon in 1972 when he took up the post of resident photographer at the Beaford Centre. He remained living and working in North Devon until his death in 1999. As 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the arrival of this master photographer in our county, it seems timely to review his achievements and celebrate his lasting legacy in this paper presented to the Association’s 160th Annual Meeting, held in Bideford in September 2022. The story begins with the creation of the Beaford Centre in 1966.