Man met een telescoop langs een kade before 1890

This platinum print of a man with a telescope was made by Peter Henry Emerson sometime in the late 19th century. Emerson was part of a movement called naturalistic photography, which pushed back against the conventions of art photography, and it's important to understand this in relation to what came before. He was trying to change the institutional practices of photography. In the Victorian era, photography, which was still a relatively new medium, was often styled to imitate painting. Naturalistic photographers, like Emerson, sought to capture scenes from everyday life as they really appeared. Emerson was particularly interested in rural life in East Anglia, and this image probably depicts someone working in the maritime industry. The telescope, an instrument of scientific observation, symbolizes the relationship between humanity and the natural world. To more fully appreciate Emerson's work, it helps to situate it within the debates of the late 19th-century art world, and also to consider the technological changes taking place at the time, such as the invention of dry plate photography, which allowed photographers to take pictures more spontaneously.