After building a reputation as both a gifted technician and portrait photographer of some talent, William England eventually abandoned portraiture to join The London Stereoscopic Company, upon its founding in 1854. England soon became the company’s principal photographer and leading technical innovator.

The idea for this article started when my wonderful colleague Rebecca drew my attention to a group of twelve ninth plate ambrotypes that were for sale on eBay as “Buy it now” (not a very common thing, unfortunately) and were described by the seller as possibly representing members of the same family.

The Photographers’ Gallery, London, presents An Alternative History of Photography: Works from the Solander Collection, a bold new perspective on the history of photography. Curated by Phillip Prodger, co-founder of The Solander Collection, the exhibition includes over 130 works that invite the viewer to look again at well-known works and new discoveries by major artists, alongside forgotten greats, regional champions and unknown artists.

This is no ordinary sitter I am writing about this time but one with feathers and a beak: a pigeon. What makes this bird interesting is that it was no ordinary pigeon either but a champion homing one.

This project is so very important because the use of the photographic image, which we understand to be true, is used to create a degree of inner challenge, a cognitive dissonance. The way each of us see these portraits and judge the sitter is a direct reflection of how we see and value each other. It challenges the myth that we will live forever.

I was recently offered an amateur stereo card showing an elderly lady, sitting on a chair on the lawn of a fenced garden...On the back of the card someone has written the following words: E. Budden, Crouch End, May 13th 1917.

Compassion for his fellow man and the naturalness of composition was what mattered most to Hutton and he abhorred what he called “artificial pictures”. His job, as he saw it, was to simply produce “an objective picture of life” – capturing both the ordinary and the extraordinary - which was Picture Post’s forte.

There are many myths surrounding this story, but the myths about this supposed 15th century event have no contemporary references, and began to develop in the 17th century around a house built in the 17th century.

On May the thirteenth 1875, Mrs Elizabeth Summers pushed the door of Richard Dighton’s photographic studio, at 433 High Street, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and had some carte-de-visite portraits taken. After she collected the photographs or they were delivered to her house, she wrote down the date of the sitting on the back of one of the mounts.

In 1970, Sean and Susan Thackrey opened a gallery, The Poster, in San Francisco, which later became the Thackrey & Robertson Gallery when Sally Robertson became a partner. In a Victorian on Union Street, down a brick ramp, Robertson hung vintage Art Nouveau posters and prints, and Thackrey focused on rare vintage 19th century photographs

All his life, Lefort seems to have devoted his energy to entertaining his fellow citizens, whether as a composer of comic songs, a toy-maker, an optician or a stereo photographer. He made them laugh but also travel, dream and escape from their daily lives through various optical instruments and dioramic slides with day and night effects, or through the scenes he staged for the stereoscope or the landscapes and interiors of palaces he photographed.

McMillan and four friends; Ed Ruscha, Patrick Blackwell, Don Moore and Jo Goode, decided to leave Oklahoma City, and go to art school, the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. They shared a house in Hollywood, where Patrick Blackwell would interest the others in photography.

Very little is known about Robinson as his photography was very much a hobby and has rarely been seen outside the UK. Very much a pillar of society, Robinson was a local magistrate for much of his life and regarded photography much as he did his other recreational pursuits of hunting, fishing and shooting.

Only when I got it home did I start to go through the pages carefully. I hadn’t turned more than a page or two when I stopped short.

"The year 2010 marked a major turning point for PhotoResearcher. As soon as I became president, I realised that PhotoResearcher had to be the calling card of the ESHPh and have a high level of scientific excellence.

The diverse group of Almanac participants, including dancers and sculptors as well as visual artists, didn't care if they were referred to as photographers, and the common thread uniting the project became “artists with cameras.”

In January 1911, Ponting loaded up a sledge with 200 lbs of photographic equipment and headed across the Antarctic ice, intent on capturing images he which would appeal to Scott, as well as to Gaumont (who would distribute his films) and publications whose sponsorship was vital to the expedition.

On that particular Monday, around eight o’clock in the evening, William Richards, a coastguardsman at the Pevensey Sluice Station, noticed something floating in the water, about half a mile at sea.

When I click buy on eBay that for me is like taking a photograph. That’s my decisive moment...

What was the purpose of this collection? For whom was it intended? Between a desire for beauty and the stimulation of sexual imagination by voyeurism, speculation about motives could only be misleading.

Now working in the field of photography, I soon heard of The Photographers’ Gallery, a new beacon for contemporary photography, and I became a frequent visitor, getting to know first the Director Sue Davies and then Dorothy Bohm, a committed friend to the Gallery.

For some strange reason I felt I had to find out exactly who the model and the photographer were. I consequently bought the image, started doing some research and here is what I found.

I happened to be present last night, at the reading of a paper of Sir John Herschel, upon some new effects lately obtained by the action of light upon prepared papers. Some of the results appeared to me to be very striking, and beautiful, and as they are new, you may not yet have heard of them.