Despite huge popularity in the United States of America, Victorian tintype photography never attained the same level of acceptance in Great Britain due to the strict hierarchy of the British class system. The tintype’s negative reputation was maintained at this time with derisive comments and disdainful sentiments in Victorian publications including the renowned British Journal of Photography. This stigma continued into the 20th Century as even Helmut Gernsheim and Alison Gernsheim’s 1955 tome The History of Photography denounced tintypes as “these hideous, cheap-looking pictures”, decades after they had become synonymous with lower class photographers and their working class clientele. As a result, British tintypes have been largely ignored and under-researched throughout British photographic history. Fast forward to the 21st Century however, and tintype photography is now enjoying a renaissance amongst the alternative photographic process community, and contemporary tintypes are again being created across the globe.

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