Born Cuba 13 May 1856 Died Falmouth, England May 12 1936

Born in Cuba to a British mother and an American father Emerson spent much of his youth in New England. Moving to England in 1869 he went to Cambridge University, where he earned his medical degree in 1885. The following year, he abandoned his career as a surgeon to become a photographer and writer.

He made many pictures of rural life in the East Anglian fenlands. He published eight books of his work through the next ten years, but did not release anything else after the turn of the century.

During his life Emerson fought against the British Photographic establishment and its manipulation of many photographs to produce one image. This work was especially undertaken and promoted by Henry Peach Robinson. Some of his photographs were of twenty or more separate photographs combined to produce one image. Emerson said this was false and his pictures were taken in a single shot.

Emerson also believed that the photograph should be a true representation of that which the eye saw. This led him to produce one area of sharp focus in his pictures the remainder being unsharp. This he believed mimicked the eye's way of seeing. The effect was for a picture that remains up-to-date when compared to the constructed all over sharp production a la Robinson school.

This was an argument he pursued vehemently and to the discomfort of the Photographic establishment. Emerson and the establishment squared up like two bulls. Emerson also believed with a passion that photography was an art and not a mechanical reproduction. The same argument with the establishment ensued but Emerson found that his defence failed and he had to allow that Photography was probably a mechanical reproduction. The pictures the Robinson school produced were mechanical but Emerson's still remain artistic not being a faithful reproduction of a scene but having depth due to his one plane sharp therory.

When he lost the argument over Art of Photography he did not publicise his Photography but continued to take photographs. A strange ending for a photographer whose pictures endorsed his argument so eloquently. Working in the late nineteenth-century England, P.H. Emerson pioneered the creative use of the photogravure process. He considered it the most refined photomechanical technique and the ideal means of publishing his work.

Beginning in 1887, Emerson published seven books heavily illustrated with his sensitive gravure images of life, labour and landscape in rural England. He learned the process from his friend Walter I. Colls, the country's leading photogravure printer. Emerson so emulated the ways of artist-etchers that he reportedly destroyed the printing plates once the editions were finished, ensuring the rarity of his prints.

Emerson was a rugged outdoorsman, living among the landscapes and people he photographed. He wrote extensive texts to accompany his photogravure, describing the colorful individuals, rural livelihood and emphasizing the need to maintain the natural order.

Much of his imagery is highly reminiscent of the paintings from Jean Francois Millet and other nineteenth-century artists who idealized rural life.

He died in Falmouth in 1936, the day before his 80th Birthday.