Retouching The Archive: Gender and Class in Early Photography in Scotland
‘Retouching the Archive’ is a practice-based research project located between the archive, darkroom and studio that explores the role of women in early photography in Scotland between 1780 and 1847. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, women were at the centre of the scientific breakthroughs that would later become known as photography. This project focusses on the contributions of three women who lived and worked in Scotland: Elizabeth Fulhame, Mary Somerville and Elizabeth Johnston Hall. Through archival research and contemporary art practice, it examines their lives and works as they intersect with histories of photography. The project’s contribution lies in its retrieval of their work and its repair of the subsequent, canonical narrative which marginalised their vital contributions to an ‘invention’ of photography dated to 1839. More than this, its significance is in the creative methods of reenactment and retouching, demonstrating how a fine art practice can deepen our understanding of women’s contributions to early photography.
Following Lütticken’s theorisation of reenactment as activating ‘a potential waiting’ (Lütticken 2005), the project reenacts the published technical workings of women’s chemical and optical experiments undertaken before and after 1839. Its method of reenactment provides a haptic encounter with the materiality of historical photochemical processes, enabling me to experience, at a distance of over 200 years, these women’s still-thrilling pre-photographic moments of discovery. Reenactment also undertakes a reparative action that allows me to make the invisible labour of these women’s production visible once again. When the limits of the archival case files are breached (Hartman 2019b), I advance a feminist research method called retouching in which non-verbal, non-visible and non-dominant narratives are reactivated, and new knowledge produced. Ultimately, the art practice and archival research presented here attempts to create a space for women’s contributions to early photography to become known again so that a history of photography can be learned anew.
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Biography
Caroline is an artist and historian of early photography. She recently completed her PhD by practice at the Royal College of Art London (2024), where she has been researching the role of gender and class in early photography in Scotland. In her practice she moves across photography, writing and creative archival research to work cross-historically, re-touching the archive, to recover and repair marginalised histories. This practice-led project was supported with an AHRC-techne Scholarship. This work incorporates a range of photographic collections and archives, including; the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the University of Glasgow, and the University of St Andrews.
Recent exhibitions include La couleur est la lumière: Inventions historiques, expérimentations contemporaines (Colour is light: Historical inventions, contemporary experiments), at Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg, France.
In 2025 she was elected as an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (RHS). In 2023 she was awarded the Royal Photographic Society Postgraduate Bursary, The Scottish History Society Alasdair Ross Prize and an award from the Society of Dyers and Colourists for her research on Mary Somerville and early photography. In 2022 she was awarded a Research Support Grant from the Royal College of Art to undertake archival research on the Mary Somerville Papers held in Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. In 2020 she was the recipient of the Paul Mellon Centre Andrew Wyld Research Support Grant for Retouching the Archive.
She works as a Lecturer in Fine Art - Photography at The Glasgow School of Art (2021-). In 2021 she undertook two Doctoral Training Partnership placements, one at the V&A Museum as a Cataloguer (Photographs) and the other at Collective, Edinburgh.
She is part of The Glasgow School of Art School of Fine Art Research Network Feminist Histories of the Future and on the Advisory Board for the RSE Network Women Make Cities. In 2019 she co-organised Speaking With - a one-day event exploring voicing historical subjectivity at the Royal College of Art. She is a contributor to Photomonitor, and has worked as a tutor and lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh Napier University. She teaches colour darkroom courses at Stills Centre for Photography in Edinburgh (2013 - ongoing).
For 2024-2025 she was the Fedwa Malti-Douglas Fellow at the American Philosophical Society’s Library & Museum. In 2025 she will conduct research with Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund to conduct historical photographic research at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. For 2025-2026 she will be the short-term Fellow at the Science History Institute, Philadelphia.
Degrees
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Arts and Humanities, Royal College of Art Royal College of Art (UK), (Viva 2024, Convocation 2025)
Postgraduate Master of Fine Art (with Distinction), The Glasgow School of Art, 2010
BA (Hons) Photography, (First Class), Edinburgh College of Art, 2006
Experience
Lecturer in Fine Art Photography, The Glasgow School of Art, 2021- (2025)
Archival Research, Mary Somerville Papers, Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries, 2022
Women Make Cities, Advisory Board, Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Network, 2020-
Doctoral Training Partnership Researcher, Observatory House, Collective, 2021
Doctoral Training Partnership Cataloguer (Photographs), Victoria & Albert Museum, 2021
Steering Committee, Speaking of Her, RCA Open Research Network, 2019
The Facture of Research; a process-led residency enquiry into method for artist-researchers, University of Cumbria, 2018
Art and Design Studies Tutor, (Photography), Edinburgh College of Art, 2012-2017
Photography Lecturer, BA (Hons) Photography, Edinburgh Napier University, 2012-2017
International Residency, Project Fabrika, Moscow, Russia, 2011
AiR Artist in Residence, Fondazione Fotografia, Modena, Italy, 2010
MFA Postgraduate Residency, School of the Art Institute, Chicago, 2009
Re:Create Artist in Residence, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2008
BA (Hons) Exchange, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, 2005
Awards
Short-Term Fellow, Science History Institute, Philadelphia, 2025
Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (RHS), 2025
Fedwa Malti-Douglas Fellow at the American Philosophical Society’s Library & Museum, Philadelphia, 2024
The Royal Photographic Society Postgraduate Bursary, 2023
Alasdair Ross Prize, Scottish History Society, 2023
University of St Andrews Library Visiting Scholarship, 2017
Funding
Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund for Historical Photographic Research, 2025
Scottish Historical Review Bursary, 2024
Society of Dyers and Colourists, Bursary, 2023
Richard & Siobhán Coward Grant for Analogue Photography, 2023
Research Support Grant, Royal College of Art, 2022
Retouching the Archive: Encountering the Paper Calotype, Andrew Wyld Support Grant, Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
Association for Art History Grant Award, 2019
Scottish Society for Art History Research Support Grant, 2019
The British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) Funding Grant Award, 2018
Women’s History Scotland Bursary, 2018; technē Doctoral Training Partnership, Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 2017-2020
techne Scholarship, the AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, 2017
Exhibitions
Feminist Methods, The Glasgow School of Art - Group Show, 2024
Retouching the Archive, Upper Gulbenkian Gallery, Darwin Building, Royal College of Art - Viva Show, 2024
La couleur est la lumière: Inventions historiques, expérimentations contemporaines, Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg - Group Show, 2024
Chasma, Royal College of Art, School of Arts & Humanities - Group Show, 2024
Hopscotch, Royal College of Art Research Biennale, Copeland Gallery - Group Show, 2023
Unruly Encounters, Royal College of Art Group Show, Lake Gallery/Dilston Gallery, 2022
Chemistry of Colour, St Andrews Photography Festival, 2019
There's Something Lurking in the Shadows..., Royal College of Art - Group Show, 2019
'SEND BACK THE MONEY!' An Evening With Frederick Douglass, Organised by Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray and Dr. Arun Sood, The Jam House Edinburgh, 2018
FLIGHT MODE, Royal College of Art Group Show, Asylum, Peckham - Group Show, 2018
Documents, Lumen Studios, The Crypt, Bethnal Green - Group Show, 2018
Publications
Common Good and Colonialism: (Study Resource) Collective, Edinburgh, 2023
Retouching Postpartum (photograph) ‘I Care By…’, ed. Gemma Blackshaw, London UK: Royal College of Art, 2022
'Frederick Douglass: Witness to Early Scottish Photography', National Galleries of Scotland Blog, 2021
'Postpartum: Unlearning Conception and Photography', CARE(less), MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE, 2021
'Pictures and progress? Frederick Douglass and early Scottish photography', V&A Blog, 2021
'Sonsy Fishwives: Gender and Class in Early Scottish Photography', Studies in Photography (Spring), 2021
'A Conversation: Tait / Maxwell', PROVA, the annual RCA Humanities Research Forum Journal, Issue 5, 2020, Royal College of Art
'Conceiving Reproduction', PROVA, the annual RCA Humanities Research Forum Journal, Issue 4, 2018, Royal College of Art
Research outputs
Paul Mellon Centre: New Discoveries - Through her research and her own photographic practice, Caroline makes an exciting discovery after uncovering a series of outtakes from the calotype portrait of Mrs Elizabeth Johnstone Hall, 2021
Symposium Co-Organiser, Speaking With- voicing historical subjectivity, with Marita Fraser, Royal College of Art, 2019
Conferences
Elizabeth Fulhame and the Chemical Networks of Early Photography, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 2024
Pioneers of Colour: Fulhame and Somerville’s Protophotography, Colour Matters Exploring Colour and Chromatic Materialities in the Long Nineteenth Century (1798-1914), Trinity College, Oxford | 2023
'[he] had a very low opinion on the capacity of my sex': Mary Somerville (1780-1872), Feminist Histories of the Future, Henry Moore Institute | 2023
Cloths of Gold and Experiments on Light, Colour Fever, V&A | 2021
Ways of Seeing, Second Morton Photography Symposium, Glasgow Women's Library | 2020
Where Are The Women?, Friday Night Mixer, Scottish National Portrait Gallery | 2019
Extraordinary Creative Summer Session, The Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 | 2019
Afterlife of the Object, European Summer School, University of Copenhagen | 2019
Spectre of a Woman, DRN Summer Symposium, Paul Mellon Centre, London | 2019
Newhaven Madonna, Say Something Back, Merton College, Oxford | 2019
Women, Work and Commerce in the Creative Industries, Britain 1750 – 1950 V&A | 2019
Pickling, capturing and collecting, History of Art, University of St Andrews | 2018
Visiting Scholar Talk, Martyrs Kirk Research Library, St Andrews | 2017