How the National Trust's collection spans the history of photography

100 Photographs from the Collections of the National Trust offers an enticing curated representation of the half a million photographic objects in its care. The selected photographs explore the breadth and depth of the medium from the 1840s to the present day.

Many of those included entered the collections through the significant houses and businesses to which they relate and are therefore contextualised by those histories, as well as those who originally made the photographs, whether famous professionals or lesser-known enthusiasts. Discovery, invention, tragedy, beauty, the extraordinary to the everyday—these diverse photographs and their stories conjure intrigue in their leap between the familiar and the unexpected.

Photographs from Lacock Abbey, once home to William Henry Fox Talbot, inventor of the photographic negative sit alongside another significant inclusion, that of the work of Edward Chambré and Margaret Hardman, whose 1950s preserved studio and home can be visited in Liverpool. While offering insight to such places and many more across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, these photographs also encourage us to consider our own personal or family photographs, perhaps inspiring further photography to fulfil the individual yearning for such tangible memories to treasure ourselves today.

From photography’s earliest days, the rise of the portrait studio encouraged stylised portraits from eminent photographers with sitters formally and fashionably portrayed. Cartomania—the avid collecting of the Victorian cartes de visite—encouraged ownership of photographs of famous personalities as well as family and friends.

Later studio prints, such as those by Lafayette or Alice Hughes, are met by 20th century examples from from Edward Chambré Hardman, Angus McBean, Vivienne, or Antony Armstrong-Jones.

A hand-tinted ambrotype portrait of a young man posing in a professional studio, c. 1860s, from the collection at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire.

Actor Robert Donat posed dramatically in the sought after studio of Liverpool’s Edward Chambré Hardman, 1929, from The Hardmans’ House collection, Liverpool.

Landscapes, landmarks and people encountered on travels across the globe are a subject of continual interest to the photographer. Numerous photographic albums commemorate occasions or personal journeys of discovery across the British Empire and beyond. The renowned Francis Frith’s images in Egypt or the Dufty Brothers photographs of Fiji reflect Victorian travel, collecting and imperial perceptions of these places, even when not visited in person.

Photographs were purchased as souvenirs or actively taken by professionals and amateurs alike as the medium became more accessible. 21st century responses to India and China are also explored through contemporary photographs in the collections.

Mahedevis of the Shan States attending the 1903 Delhi Durbar photographed by Bourne and Shepherd, from an album at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire.

Vita Sackville-West composing a picture of Bakhtiari men encountered en route through Persia in 1927, from an album at Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent.

A view of Mount Kenya c.1965 by Frants Hartmann, from Florence Court, County Fermanagh.

Alongside abundant professional portrait photographs, taken in or outside the studio, widespread access to photography from the late 19th century onwards, enabled the birth of the snapshot and the ability to take images of family and friends far more easily. More relaxed and informal photographs emerged.

Automated photography also added to the offer. The more natural images strike a chord with themes of family, self-identity, celebration and memory-making all playing their part in how we engage with photography and those around us today.

Playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw, a keen amateur photographer, composes this self-portrait with his wife Charlotte in 1898, here as a digital positive of a negative at Shaw’s Corner, Hertfordshire.

Early photo-booth portraits of Elizabeth Kerr-Smiley (right), or “Betty” as she was affectionately known, in the collections at Scotney Castle, Kent.

The Yorke brothers photographed by their Aunt May Scott in 1908, from an album belonging to the boys’ nanny Lucy Hitchman, in the collection at Erddig, Wrexham.

The work of women photographers is keenly evident, from the 1850s to 2023. Many of these women were pioneering in their field, paving the way for many more in their footsteps.

Julia Margaret Cameron is one of the best known, using her typical characteristics of soft focus and motion blur in capturing Thomas Carlyle’s likeness. Christina Broom, considered to be the UK’s first woman press photographer, produced newsworthy images as photographic postcards and submitted to the illustrated press.

Thomas Carlyle, voiced his dislike for this portrait by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1867, but recognised that it had “something of likeness”, from Carlyle’s House, London.

Edith Craig, the daughter of Ellen Terry, attending the 1909 Green, White and Gold Fair in support of women’s suffrage, photographed by Christina Broom, found at Smallhythe Place, Kent.

Images reflecting conflict stand among some of the most poignant photographs in the selection, depicting civilians and soldiers from the Second Anglo-Afghan War to the Second World War.

Significant events such as war are present, but so too are more positive moments, such as the incredible archaeological discovery made at Sutton Hoo, recorded in meticulous detail by Mercie Lack and Barbara Wagstaff.

Pilot Arthur Tylston Greg in his Airco DH-4 plane not long before a fatal mission, 1917, from a scrapbook album made in memory at Quarry Bank, Cheshire

Barbara Wagstaff with her camera at the excavations of the fossil on an Anglo-Saxon ship, photographed by Mercie Lack using rare colour film, 1939, from Sutton Hoo, Suffolk.

Innovation underpins much photography in this book and the work of Anna Atkins was no exception. Pioneering the cyanotype process in pursuit of photographs of botanical specimens, she even published the first photographically illustrated book in 1843 and her methods continue to inspire contemporary practitioners today.

Innovative approaches to photography are also seen in the 1890s from the experiments in electricity by Lord Armstrong at Cragside, captured by John Worsnop, to the playfully attempts at “spirit photography” by the Ketton sisters in Norfolk.

The Hedysarum genus as a cyanotype print, made by Anna Atkins in 1854, from the collections at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire.

Gertrude and Marion Ketton play ghost in this entertaining picture in the 1890s from Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk where they lived.