Photograph Album, 1892-3
Butler was a photographic pioneer and has been compared to the European writer-photographers Zola and Strindberg. He was one of the earliest photographers to use his camera informally, capturing scenes of the ordinary as well as the extraordinary.
Above you can see a double page from the second of five albums of ‘Snap-Shots taken by Samuel Butler’ in the Library's collection. The albums document Butler’s European travels, his views of street life, and his personal take on architecture and art. Many of the locations which appear in the photographs are also the subjects of Butler’s drawings and paintings.
Butler's photographs are works of art in their own right - displaying his natural talent for composition and for capturing the character of scenes and individuals.
'Art has no end in view save the emphasizing and recording in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affection. Where either interest, or desire to record with good effect is wanting, there is but sham art, or none at all: where both these are fully present, no matter how rudely and inarticulately, there is great art.'
– Samuel Butler, Notebooks