Unknown photographer: Mungo Ponton 1860

This portrait epitomises the gentleman-scientist-scholar of the 19th century. A fabulous concoction of bohemia, orientalism, eccentricity, and wisdom, topped with a discerning modesty, Mungo Ponton made important contributions to photography, improving upon Fox Talbot’s calatype process, and discovering the light-sensitivity of potassium dichromate, which resulted in shorter exposure times. In the 1860s Ponton made some of the earliest micro-photographs of pollen. A Scotsman, he ended his days in bohemian Clifton in Bristol. He died in 1890.