Persona

Bridges, (Revd) George Wilson

1788-1863

English writer, photographer and Anglican cleric. After eloping with his wife, he was Rector for the Jamaican parish of St Dorothy until late 1817, and then Manchester from 1817 to 1823. He moved to become rector at the neighbouring parish of St Ann from 1823 to 1837. He published works against William Wilberforce and another book resulted in his London publisher being found guilty of libel against Louis Celeste Lecesne and John Escoffery. After his wife left him, he lost four of their daughters in a boating accident. Bridges went to Canada and returned to England to meet William Fox Talbot and take up photography. In December 1845 he learned the calotype process from Nicolaas Henneman, William Fox Talbot's printer, specifically so that he could record his upcoming tour of the Mediterranean and the Near East. Around 1850 he toured around the Mediterranean taking 1,700 early pictures including Egypt, Greece, the Holy Land and Mount Etna erupting; he became the first photographer to use the calotype process in Greece. The album he produced there, Illustrations of the Acropolis of Athens, was never published. Following his grand tour Bridges began issuing his photographs in instalments under the title Selections from Seventeen-Hundred Genuine Photographs: (Views-Portraits-Statuary-Antiquities). Taken around the Shores of the Mediterranean between the Years 1846-1852. With, or Without, Notes, Historical and Descriptive. By a Wayworn Wanderer. His last parish was Beachley in Gloucestershire, where he died in 1863.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wilson_Bridges.
• https://getty.libguides.com/photography-greece-mediterranean/photographers.