Collection GPN - Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Glass Plate Negative Collection

Identity area

Reference code

GB 235 GPN

Title

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Glass Plate Negative Collection

Date(s)

  • 1890s to 1950s (Creation)

Level of description

Collection

Extent and medium

12? cabinets of glass plate negatives
?? boxes...

Context area

Name of creator

(1885-1967)

Biographical history

Born Carluke, Lanarkshire 1885; died Edinburgh 1967
After studying science at Heriot Watt College and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art, Adam started work at RBGE in 1903 preparing lecture illustrations for the Regius Keeper, Isaac Bayley Balfour. In 1914 he was made a permanent member of staff as assistant in charge of the studio and in 1915 promoted to the new post of Photographer and Artist, remaining in this post until his retirement in 1949. He became official artist to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, but Adam became best known as one of the foremost landscape photographers in Scotland, illustrating publications such as Quigley’s ‘The Highlands of Scotland’, 1936, and publishing pictures regularly in the Scots Magazine, the Scotsman and Picture Post. In the later twentieth Century his mountain photographs have provided conservationists and landscape historians with a reliable historic record of the landscape and rural life. He continued to use his heavy 1908 half plate camera, printing all the photographs himself in a style difficult to replicate today and his negatives are now in the collection of St. Andrews University.
Source: DNB; Bown's '4 Gardens in 1'; Desmond's Dictionary; Fletcher & Brown's 'RBGE 1670-1970'
by D.W.
see also: https://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/28160

Name of creator

(1881-1912)

Biographical history

Gardener and Foreman at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh before becoming Secretary and Garden Superintendent of the Horticultural Society in Alexandria, Egypt between 1906 and 1912. Skilled photographer. Wrote Book of the Winter Garden in 1906. Son of David Taylor Fish (1824-1901)

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System of arrangement

Arranged by reference number allocated by the Photography Department.

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Material restricted due to the difficulty in accessing images on glass. If interested in knowing more, please contact the RBGE Library. (right click, open link in new tab:) https://www.rbge.org.uk/contact-us/?team=Library#form

Conditions governing reproduction

Photographs copyright Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh - not to be reproduced without permission.

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