Hugh Owen (photographer)

Moving to Bristol, Owen worked as chief cashier for the Great Western Railway of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

His first wife, Mary Anne, died in 1846 when Owen spilt alcohol on her dress and it caught fire from a candle.

This complex process involved sensitizing the paper with a silver nitrate solution to produce images upon wet plates.

His images so impressed the Commissioners that, along with his French contemporary Claude-Marie Ferrier, he was asked to make 155 photographs of the exhibits.

[1][4] Owen exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts in 1852 and a review in The Times listed him among the best photographers of the day.

[7] Although he gave up photography relatively early, he remained active in historical preservation, authoring the well-received Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol.