JMB's photography

[Hannah Grippo]

I just wanna say it's especially interesting thinking of Barrie with his camera, snapping the boys and Sylvia. I think there's some art or talent there (not that I'm a good judge). I love taking pictures of the children I work with when they're at play. But for Barrie, I also notice such beauty in the ones of Sylvia, perhaps because he loved her so much. I'm looking through my copy of JM Barrie and the Lost Boys to see how many photos are actually by JMB, then trying to find them on the database. I can't remember (forgive me, it's been awhile), but does your biography at all explore Barrie's photography and how he got into it? If it could be called an interest at all? Was it only for the Davies family? Did he stop taking pictures once the boys were grown up? I know nothing about photography, but JMB's snaps are rather lovely and fun to look at more so than the professional ones of the family. I'm so glad you made that video of The Boy Castaways. Those photos (along with Michael as Pan years later) are haunting and exciting. 

[andrew]

No, I didn't delve too much into Barrie's photographic exploits, not least because there wasn't much evidence to go on, other than the photographs themselves, variously spread across different family albums. Nico found a number of original nitrate negatives at the back of an old drawer, from which I made new prints (we had a darkroom in those days), and I've uploaded both negatives and prints to the database.

Barrie had a touch of the "been there, done that" about some of his enthusiasms. He had a camera early on, before the arrival of the Davies boys - see his photos of Bevil Quiller-Couch for instance, which he compiled into an album called "The Pippa & Porthos", but it seems that he lost interest in photography around the time of Sylvia's death. Similarly he was an early enthusiast of cinema, and made a silent movie in 1915 called "The Real Thing at Last", being a parody of Hollywood film-making, but lost interest once Paramount dumped his own screenplay for Peter Pan ...

I've uploaded an article in a Photographic magazine from 1980 - not particularly well-written or informative, and mostly me blabbing to whoever wrote the article, but it does touch on what little we know about Barrie and photography.

btw, I'm gradually replacing all the photographs on this site with higher resolution scans (and without irritating watermarks) in chronological order - I'm up to 1912 - but with so much else going on it will take a while longer; hopefully by this time next year the site will be close to the one I first imagined back in 1999 ...

[Hannah Grippo]

Thank you, Andrew, for the information. I had forgotten about the Bevil photos! And I'll check out that article later. For now, so enjoying the pictures (and writings) on this website, those of JMB's camera and others. The hours and years you pour into this are greatly appreciated! 

[Dani1923]

I realized that Barrie’s photography of Bevil Quiller-Couch and George, Jack Peter in The Boy Castaways reminds me of the early photos of Sally Mann. Early in her career as a photographer, she was famous for the photos she took of her three young children. But they were also met with controversy as she would photograph them nude, but I think she only did that for a few photographs. The rest of the photographs are of them at play in the countryside where they lived and the children look as if they are Lost Children in Black Lake or in Neverland!

[E.N]

Does anyone happen to know what type of camera he used?