In 1843, the artist David Octavius Hill was present at the Great Disruption Assembly when 450 ministers walked out and formed the Free Church of Scotland. Encouraged by Lord Cockburn, he decided to paint this event. Sir David Brewster, the inventor, suggested he contact Robert Adamson an early adopter of photography to help him take photographs of the people present on the day of Disruption to help him create the monumental work.
It is only recently that the relatively short partnership between the photographer and the artist has been recognised as "the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography." (1)
Hill provided the lighting and composition skills, while Adamson was deft at using the new process of Calotypes. In their partnership of four years, they produced about 3000 images. Adamson had a studio at Rock House on Calton Hill.
Until relatively recently, the earliest woman associated with early photographic processes was considered to be Anna Atkins who produced a work called British Algae using the Cyanotype process in 1843. Atkins is known to have had access to cameras via her husband but no photographs by her have been preserved. Roddy Simpson suggests in Studies in Photography 2010 there is strong evidence that the first woman who used actual photographic equipment was Jessie Mann, who became Hill & Adamson's assistant sometime in 1844/5. Constance Talbot, the wife of Henry Fox Talbot, is also associated with early photography but no known photographs by her appear to survive either.
Mann grew up in the same street as Hill in Perth and moved with her siblings - Alexander, a solicitor( Hill was his client), and her two sisters, Elizabeth and Margaret - to Leith in 1841. They appear to be staunch Free Church supporters, having been added to the Communion Roll of Lady Genorchy's Free Church in Oct 1843. Perhaps the fact that DO Hill was engaged in a work to commemorate a highly seismic spiritual event as the splitting of the Church was one reason why a seemingly middle class woman went to work for the artist.
Mention of Hill and Adamson having an assistant is in a letter from James Nasmyth writing to Hill on the 30th of April 1845:
'Pray present my best regards to that authentic and worthy person Mr Adamson. (H)e is of rare merit and praiseworthy perseverance, not forgetting Miss Mann. (T)he sisterhood (Illeg) their kindest regards to her.'
The sisterhood probably refers to Nasmyth's sisters who live with him and appear to be friends with Jessie Mann, suggesting she is of the same social class.
He continues
'(M)y dear wife desires her best wishes (..)( R ) egards to you with kindest Remembrance to all our Friends and especially to Miss Mann from the Sisterhood.'
Two years later he writes:
'(H)ow goes on the divine solar art? And how does that worthy artist Mr Adamson the authentic contriver and manipulator in the art of light and darkness? And thrice worthy Miss Mann the most skilful and zealous of assistants? You must excuse me bothering you with so many questions of that kind as I name the remembrance of All on 'EM so clearly caloyped in my minds Eye as I last saw them in full manipulation of the divine art of light.'
By 1843/4 the Mann family had moved to Leopold Place which is near to Hill & Adamson’s Studio in Rock House on Calton Hill. In 1844 the King of Saxony dropped into Rock House to have his photograph taken but both Hill and Adamson were out. It was reported at the time that their assistant took the photograph instead. The picture, The King of Saxony and his Entourage, is one of the earliest photographs taken by a woman still in existence.
There is other evidence for Jessie Mann's photographic knowledge, a letter in the Royal Scottish Academy collections from her to Hill in 1856, she was working as a housekeeper in Mussellburgh and requests, on behalf of a Free Church missionary, a loan of photographic equipment for the Reverend Thomas Smith to use while on home leave.
More compelling evidence is that Roddy Simpson thinks that the three Mann sisters are in DO Hills' picture of the first Assembly of the Free Church (which took 23 years to complete). One of the women is wearing a leather glove and he thinks it would be to hide the unladylike black stains from handling silver nitrate from the calotype developing process.
For more information see Roddy Simpson's article in Studies in Photography 2010 'Exposing Miss Mann' available at the Fine Art Library, George IV Bridge.
1. Daniel, Malcolm (October 2004). "David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (1821-1848) (1840s)". Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.