Setting Up the Bow Net

Emerson first began photographing in 1882, and only seven years later, he published an influential treatise on the medium, Naturalistic Photography for Students of Art. In it, he incorporated theories of vision into the photographic method, defending photography as a fine art, but only if it was true to nature. For Emerson, truthfulness to nature meant that photographic images should mimic an aspect of the way that the human eye sees the world, with a main subject in sharp focus and its surroundings slightly blurred. Emerson called this approach naturalistic, and his preference for naturalism informed what he chose to photograph. For his first major work, Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads (1886), Emerson photographed the rural and traditional lives of residents of the Norfolk Broads, a marshy area in eastern England. Here, the workers are shown clearly, with the trees beyond them rendered in soft focus. Emerson’s photographs can be seen as a precursor to social documentary photography, faithfully creating a portrait of life on the Norfolk Broads.