Background
Paul Martin was born in 1864 in Alsace-Lorraine, France.
Paul Martin was born in 1864 in Alsace-Lorraine, France.
From 1973 to 1978 Paul attended school in London, United Kingdom. Then Paul studied at Ecole Gosserez in Chalons-sur-Marne, France.
Martin began to do serious work in 1892 and with H. G. Dorrett, opened a photographic studio that they ran from 1899 to 1926. He wrote articles for various journals of the day as well as presenting lectures during which he used his photographs for slide shows.
Martin was a pioneer of what we know today as "candid photography," using a Facile camera that he kept concealed to avoid making his subjects self-conscious. He hand-held the camera to capture spontaneous genre views of life in London, Brittany, Cornwall and Switzerland. He was one of the earliest experimenters in night photography. While Martin was known to have made carbon and platinum prints as well as lantern slides, his chief process was printing silver prints from gelatin dry-plate negatives. In his later years he did some pictorial work.