Researching Lyddell Sawyer

Lyddell, or Lyd as he was later known, was a founder member of 'The Linked Ring', and although he showed almost 100 prints at what was later to become the Royal Photographic Society, only a handful of his images are well known.

He was born in North Shields on the River Tyne, and later moved to London. His early life in Tyneside had a lasting effect on his work, his Geordie roots shaping many of his photographs. Works like 'The Apple Stealers Dividing the Spoils' - 'Nutting Time' - 'Come Along Grandad' etc.. give evidence that his life was not one of affluence like so many of his southern contemporary photographers. And although he lived in an age of sentimental romanticism his images never become the cloying mawkish work of photographers such as H. P. Robinson.

Sawyer's figure studies are not straight documentation most are influenced by his love of the theatre, staging his images into tableaux with great sensitivity. His early work in the North uses locations he knew well where poverty was around every corner. And in no way do his images romanticise this poverty, we can decipher by analysis that often the children in his images are dressed in their 'Sunday Best' there is still that realism that the camera is so good at.

Of the English members of the 'Linked Ring' Lyddell Sawyer is probably the least well known, this has nothing to do with the quality of his work, which is arguably one of the greatest. The main reason for this is very few of his photographs have survived, there are the four that were illustrated in 'Sun Artists' in 1893 that was dedicated to him, along with such important figures in the history of photography as Julia Margaret Cameron and H P Robinson. Sawyer was not a man with money to spare, he needed to earn a living becoming a successful business forming a limited company with several branches including Regent Street, London as well as Sunderland and Newcastle upon Tyne in his native north east.