Alfred Seaman was a professional Victorian and Edwardian photographer who ran a network of photographic portrait studios in the Midlands and North of England. He published a large (2,000 + views) series of stereoscopic

Stereoscopy

Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...

 photographs of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
Alfred Seaman was born in Norfolk in 1844. He began his working life as a builder and took up photography as a hobby in the 1860s. He opened his first studio in Chesterfield

Chesterfield

Chesterfield is a market town and a borough of Derbyshire, England. It lies north of Derby, on a confluence of the rivers Rother and Hipper. Its population is 70,260 , making it Derbyshire's largest town...

 Derbyshire in 1880 and subsequently ran studios in, Ilkeston

Ilkeston

Ilkeston is a town within the Borough of Erewash, in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the River Erewash, from which the local borough takes its name. Its population at the 2001 census was 37,550...

, Alfreton

Alfreton

Alfreton is a town and civil parish in Amber Valley, Derbyshire, England, adjoining the Bolsover and North East Derbyshire districts. It was formerly a Norman Manor and later an Urban District. The population of the Alfreton Ward was 7,928 at the 2001 Census...

, Matlock, Sheffield

Sheffield

Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

, Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

, Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

, Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, Hull

Kingston upon Hull

Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

 and Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

.

In 1866 he was a founding member of the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom

Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom

The Photographic Convention of United Kingdom was founded in 1886 and held its first convention in the city of Derby, England in August of that year.The founding members were a mixture of professional photographers and wealthy amateurs...

 (PCUK) which held its first convention in Derby

Derby

Derby , is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands region of England. It lies upon the banks of the River Derwent and is located in the south of the ceremonial county of Derbyshire. In the 2001 census, the population of the city was 233,700, whilst that of the Derby Urban Area was 229,407...

. He served on the Committee of the PCUK from 1886 until his death and through this organisation he had links with eminent professional photographers of the day including Henry Peach Robinson

Henry Peach Robinson

Henry Peach Robinson was an English pictorialist photographer best known for his pioneering combination printing - joining multiple negatives to form a single image, the precursor to photomontage...

, William Crooke

William Crooke (photographer)

William Crooke was a professional photographer with a studio in Edinburgh.Two of the best-known portrait photographers in England [sic Britain], William Crooke of Edinburgh and of London sailed on December 17 for a six weeks' tour of the United States, during which they plan to visit some of the...

, William England

William England

William England was a successful Victorian photographer specialising in stereoscopic photographs.-Life:Sources disagree on his date of birth, with dates from 1816 to 1830 quoted by different authors. In the 1840’s England ran a London daguerreotype portrait studio...

, Alexander Tate and Richard Keene

Richard Keene

Richard Keene was an early Derbyshire photographer. He was a founding member of The Derby Photographic Society in 1884 and the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom in 1886 as well as being an early member of The Linked Ring.-Life:Keene was the son of Richard Keene and Priscilla Kimpton,...

, as well as the many wealthy amateurs who were members, such as the astronomer Professor Alexander Stewart Herschel

Alexander Stewart Herschel

Professor Alexander Stewart Herschel was a British astronomer, born in Feldhausen, South Africa.He was the son of John Herschel and the grandson of William Herschel. Although much less well known than either of them, he did pioneering work in meteor spectroscopy. He also worked on identifying...

.

He was married three times and had 9 sons and a daughter. All but one of his sons followed him in to the photographic trade and ran studios either under the ‘Seaman & Sons’ title or in their own name. He died in Sheffield in 1910.

External links

• http://www.freewebs.com/jb3d/index.htm Alfred Seaman and the Photographic Convention of the United Kingdom
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~brett/photos/dbyphotos.html Photographers & Photographic Studios in Derbyshire, England