Alfred Horsley Hinton

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863 – 25 February 1908) was an English landscape photographer, best known for his work in the pictorialist movement in the 1890s and early 1900s. As an original member of the Linked Ring and editor of The Amateur Photographer, he was one of the movement's staunchest advocates. Hinton wrote nearly a dozen books on photographic technique, and his photographs were exhibited at expositions throughout Europe and North America.

Life

Hinton was born in London in 1863. By 1882, he had discovered photography, Hinton briefly worked for a company in Blackfriars selling photographic equipment before taking over a branch portrait studio of Ralph W. Robinson in Guildford in 1891. He exhibited several photographs at an early-1890s Leeds exposition described by his contemporary, Alexander Keighley, as the first pictorialist exposition, and was one of the original members of the Linked Ring, an organisation formed in 1892 to promote photography as a fine art.

Hinton helped organise the Photographic Salon in 1893, A poll conducted by Photographic Life in 1897 found Hinton to be the most popular photographer-exhibiter. He continued his defence of pictorialism into the following century, and was unimpressed with the rise of the "American School,"

During the early 1900s, Hinton was a regular contributor to the London Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Graphic, and the Yorkshire Post, and was frequently called upon to judge photo contests. In 1904, he oversaw the British photographic exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair, and he spent his last years writing manuals ("Little Books") to teach photographers basic techniques. In February 1908, he fell ill while returning from a trip to the Scottish Photographic Salon in Aberdeen, and died at his home in Woodford Green. He typically used sepia platinotype and gum bichromate printing processes.

Hinton's photograph, "Requiem," was used as the frontispiece of the first issue of Alfred Stieglitz's magazine, Camera Notes, in 1897.

Hinton's "Melton Meadows," "Beyond," "Recessional," "Woods and Rushes," "Fleeting Far," and "Niagara," are now part of the Royal Photographic Society collection, held by the Victoria and Albert Museum. "Fleeting Shadows" is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collections.