According to his naturalisation papers, Rejlander was born in
Stockholm on 19 October 1813. He was the son of Carl Gustaf Rejlander, a
stonemason and
Swedish Army Officer. During his youth, his family moved to the Swedish-speaking community in
Rauma,
Grand Duchy of Finland (then part of
Russia). In the 1830s, he relocated to England, initially settling in
Lincoln, England. In the 1850s, he abandoned his original profession as a painter and portrait
miniaturist, apparently after seeing how well a photograph captured the fold of a sleeve. He set up as a portraitist in the industrial
Midlands town of
Wolverhampton, probably around 1846. In the early 1850s, he learned the
wet-collodion and waxed-paper processes at great speed with Nicholas Henneman in London, and then changed his business to that of a photography studio. He undertook genre work and portraiture. Rejlander also produced nude studies, mainly for use as studies by painters, and later revealed that his early work was made with the aid of a local troupe of theatrical performers. Rejlander undertook many experiments to perfect his photography, including
combination printing, which he did not invent; however, he created more elaborate and convincing composite photographs than any prior photographer. A 15 November 1854 article in the
Wolverhampton Chronicle called "Improvement in Calotypes, by Mr. O.G. Rejlander, of Wolverhampton" suggests that by then he was experimenting with combination printing from several negatives. He was a friend of photographer
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by the
pen name Lewis Carroll), who collected Rejlander's work and corresponded with him on technical matters. Rejlander later created one of the best-known and most revealing portraits of Dodgson. Like Dodgson, Rejlander's work included many pictures of "undraped" children: :"The remarks of his contemporaries bear witness to both his attainments and to the influence which he exercised. Some of his critics were exuberant. Thus, one speaks of his undraped children as being as 'beautiful as those of Della Robbia, Flamingo, and Raphael.' Mr. H. Robinson, the immediate successor to Rejlander, who was also for many years a rival in seeking public applause for genre photography, calls the foregoing 'wonderful pictures of nude children.'" Rejlander participated in the
Paris Exhibition of 1855. In 1856, he made his best-known allegorical work,
The Two Ways of Life. This was a seamlessly
montaged combination print made of thirty-two images (akin to the use of
Photoshop today, but then far more difficult to achieve) in about six weeks. First exhibited at the
Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, the work shows a man being lured to paths of vice or virtue by good and bad angels. The image's partial nudity, which showed real women as they actually appeared and not the idealised forms then common in Victorian art, was deemed 'indecent' by some. Rejlander was also accused of using prostitutes as models, although Rejlander categorically denied this and no proof was ever offered. Reservations about the work subsided when
Queen Victoria ordered a 10-guinea copy to give to
Prince Albert. Victoria and Albert would go on to purchase three copies of the work, all of which are now lost. Despite this royal patronage, controversy about
The Two Ways of Life in
Scotland in 1858 led to a secession of a large group from the Photographic Society of Scotland, the secessionists founding the
Edinburgh Photographic Society in 1861. They objected to the picture being shown with one half of it concealed by drapes. The picture was also shown at the
Birmingham Photographic Society with no such furor or censorship. However, the Photographic Society of Scotland later made amends and invited Rejlander to a grand dinner in his honour in 1866, held to open an exhibition that included many of his pictures. , 1862. Rejlander moved his studio to Malden Road, London, around 1862 and largely abandoned his early experiments with
double exposure,
photomontage, photographic manipulation and
retouching. Instead, he became one of Britain's leading portraitists, creating pictures with psychological charge. He became a leading expert in photographic techniques, lecturing and publishing widely, and sold work through bookshops and art dealers. He also found subject matter in London, photographing homeless London street children to produce popular 'social-protest' pictures such as "Poor Joe", also known as "Homeless". Charles Lutwidge Dodgson visited Rejlander's Malden Road studio in 1863. Carroll was in the process of relocating his studio and sought Rejlander's advice regarding its design. Around 1863 Rejlander visited the
Isle of Wight at the request of
Julia Margaret Cameron and helped teach her photography. Some of Rejlander's images were purchased as drawing-aids by Victorian painters of repute, such as
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. In 1871, he contributed photographs to
Darwin's classic treatise on
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. == Personal life ==