Beschreibung:

The Cottingley Fairies. A rare original contact print photograph of 'The Fairy Bower', 1920, vintage photograph taken by Frances Griffiths, developed and printed by her uncle Arthur Wright from a glass plate used in her cousin Elsie's quarter-plate 'Cameo' camera, inscribed in Frances's hand in pencil to verso 'The Fairies Bower', a little dust-soiling and slight bruising to lower outer corner affecting blank area only, 10.5 x 7.5cm (Qty: 1) Provenance: Mrs Christine Lynch, daughter of Frances Griffiths. The fairies one can see in 'The Fairy Bower' (so named by Conan Doyle) are the same as the fairies Frances always claimed to see in the beck in 1917 and 1918. However, the fairies in this 1920 photograph were taken in the field above the beck. Frances had never seen them there before. This photograph, which is the only one featuring neither of the girls, was taken by Frances purely by chance. When Frances was brought to Cottingley from Scarborough in the summer of 1920, Elsie only had two paper fairies prepared. Photographing 'The Leaping Fairy' and 'The Fairy with a Posy of Flowers' went as planned, but Polly Wright was not satisfied they had only taken two photographs and sent them out to get more. To fill in the time until they could decently return, they climbed to the field above the beck. It was when sitting in the grass with the camera on her knee that Frances saw what she thought was a 'nest' in a cluster of harebells just three feet away from where she was sitting. Without thinking she set the camera for time, distance and exposure took her photo, having no idea what would appear on the plate until her uncle Arthur developed it the next day. Until the day she died in July 1986 Frances maintained she really did see fairies and that 'The Fairy Bower' was genuine and not faked. She told her daughter Christine in later life that she failed to understand how the camera lens had been able to detect the fairies as she herself only saw them 'obliquely'.