Benjamin Brecknell Turner
19th Century Photography from the V&A

Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery will show the very first recorded images of Worcester in its forth coming exhibition Benjamin Brecknell Turner. Benjamin Brecknell Turner (1815-94) was one of the first, and remains one of the greatest, British photographers. Many of Turner’s finest photographs were made in Worcestershire in the early 1850s and must rank as some of the very first photographs made here.

His images were highly praised during his lifetime for their rustic beauty and grandeur. The power of Turner’s photographs lies partly in their physical character – imposing scale, earthy texture and intense tonality – but the larger measure lies in their spiritual conviction, their expression of moral worth in tradition, nature and rural life and labour

His connections with the county came through his marriage in 1847 to Agnes Chamberlain, the daughter of Henry Chamberlain, a Worcester porcelain manufacturer.

In 1837, Turner’s father-in-law gave up his part in the porcelain business and purchased Bredicot Court in Bredicot village, a cluster of cottages, a church and a few farm buildings four miles from the city. Turner stayed there for holidays. A family history, based Turner’s wife’s memoirs, notes:

Benjamin Turner, when staying there, spent a good deal of time taking photographs, his camera being a huge square box …There was also a little folding tent, with apparatus for changing plates. Developing was apparently done on the spot. Of course the untidy farm furnished endless subjects for photography.

As the first person to photograph and, in a sense, ‘capture’ Bredicot, Turner must have felt great affection for and ownership of his surroundings

Martin Barnes
Curator, Photographs
Victoria and Albert Museum


Exhibition organised by the V&A, London