Façade van de Union Club in Manchester before 1878

Alfred Brothers created this albumen silver print of the Union Club in Manchester. It’s a great example of how photography, a relatively new medium at the time, was used to document the built environment. Look closely, and you’ll see the materiality of the building itself – probably stone or brick, rendered in precise detail. But also consider the materiality of the photograph. The Union Club’s façade is translated through a complex chemical process, involving light-sensitive emulsions and painstaking darkroom work. Think about the labor involved: the quarrying of the stone for the building, and the skilled construction. Then, there's the photographer's labor, meticulously framing and developing the image. Both reflect the industrial and social fabric of Manchester at the time. By considering both the building and its photographic representation, we can appreciate the layers of craft, industry, and social context embedded within this image. It challenges us to see photography not just as a record, but as a material object with its own history.