Oscar Gustav Rejlander, a Swedish painter, was probably born in 1883 to Carl Gustaf Rejlander, an officer in the Swedish army. Oscar studied art in Rome and initially settled in England. Abandoning his original line of work as an artist and portrait painter, he turned to photography. One of Fox Talbot’s assistants inspired him.
Oscar Rejlander began working as a portrait painter in Wolverhampton in about 1846. Rejlander learned the skills of photography in the 1850s to facilitate his painting techniques and produced many works, including the most famous “The Two Ways of Life” (1857). This work was meticulously printed from 32 glass negatives. Portraiture and genre works were a couple of key dimensions of Rejlander’s works. His series “Charlotte Baker” corroborates ‘Erotism’. The artist used his nude works as a reference model. In 1853 the artist probably invented the ‘Combined Print’.
Portraits especially were very difficult in those days, as exposure times could be as long as 10-12 seconds. Rejlander supposed that photography made him a better artist and a more cautious draftsman. His experimentation with light reduced exposure time, accentuated the contours and textures of his work. He experimented with the unusual composition of photography, in which each print contained numerous images from different negatives. This practice overcame the innate limitations of the Wet Collodian Process. Photographic compositions were difficult to print, as the light exposure on each negative had to be precise. Even a small mistake resulted in a damaged print and therefore the printing procedure had to start all over again from the beginning.
Rejlander was a pioneer in this genre of photographic composition and is considered the most successful fine art photographer of his day. The main composition print by him was called ‘Group Printed from Three Negatives’ and was exhibited in December 1855. The same year, Oscar participated in the Paris Exposition. Being a creative person, he designed his studio in a unique and unusual way, bent like a cone. The camera was placed in the narrow part in the shadow and the models in the opposite end, so they don’t notice the camera.
Oscar’s most famous work is an allegory called “The Two Ways of Life” (1857), which captures a framework guiding two young men into manhood. One of the men seems interested in gambling, wine, prostitution and idleness, while the other is attracted to the figures that symbolize religion, family, industry and good works. In the center appears the veiled and half-naked figure, which symbolizes contrition and turning towards good. The same year, the photograph was exhibited at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition. The photograph, though mired in controversy, eventually gained fame for the artist. He was extended membership in the Royal Photographic Society of London, which in turn earned him the respect of London’s high society.
In 1862, after moving his studio to Malden Road in London, he continued to refine and improve his photographic techniques. The same year, he married his favorite model, Mary Bull. Soon after, Oscar’s key tracks took a liking to social issues, of which “Poor Joe” and “Homeless” are a couple of examples. The demonstration of the different human expressions in Charles Darwin’s book “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” (1872) is one of his most appreciated works. During his last years, Oscar Rejlander returned to painting, but without success and died in poverty. He fell ill in 1874 and died in 1875.