Caroline Douglas is an artist and historian of early photography. In her practice she moves across photography, writing and creative archival research to work cross-historically, re-touching the archive, to recover and repair marginalised histories.
Caroline recently completed her PhD by practice at the Royal College of Art London (2024), where she researched the role of gender and class in early photography in Scotland.
She is the inaugural recipient of the RSA Elizabeth Lornie Photography Award.
Caroline continues this research in the USA as a current Consortium Fellow with the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. As a 2026 recipient of the Centre for British Photography Completion Grant, she is working towards bringing her research to publication.
Recent exhibitions include La couleur est la lumière: Inventions historiques, expérimentations contemporaines, at Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg, France.
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Located between the archive, darkroom and studio, Caroline Douglas's works give visibility to the underrepresented role of women early photography and photographic invention.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, women were at the centre of the scientific breakthroughs that would later become known as 'photography'. At a distance of over 200 years, this work draws on reenactment to give form to their still-thrilling pre-photographic moments of discovery. It considers the role of women in early photography; their hands and thinking that shaped the medium in its formative period. From unknown 'assistants' to unnamed sitters, women were witness to the invention of photography and participated in it.
Through archival research and contemporary photographic art practice, this newly created display focusses on the contributions of peripheral figures in photography's history. In many cases, their early photographic experiments predated the technology of fixing and stabilising prints. Today, these contributions are no longer visible, having faded or been destroyed by light.
The RSA Elizabeth Lornie Photography Award (£5,000) is an award for artists working in still photography in Scotland. The award is funded by the Elizabeth Lornie Charitable Trust (formally The Morton Charitable Trust) and administered by the Royal Scottish Academy.
