author
active 1854-1890 John Werge
A practical early photographer and historian of the medium, he wrote with the close-up eye of someone who had watched photography change in real time. His best-known book traces the craft from its first experiments to a mature art and industry.
1 Audiobook
About the author
John Werge was a British photographer and photography writer active in the nineteenth century. Museum and library records identify him with the early photographic world, and his work is especially linked to daguerreotypes and to the history of the medium.
He is best known for The Evolution of Photography (1890), a wide-ranging account of photographic discoveries, inventions, and practices, shaped by his own long experience in the field. The book mixes historical research with personal reminiscences, which gives it the feel of a firsthand record as well as a reference work.
Some records list his life dates as 1825-1911, while book catalogs often describe him simply as active between 1854 and 1890. Taken together, they suggest a figure who helped document photography while it was still new, preserving the story of how the medium developed over the course of the nineteenth century.