[Two small girls reading at small round table]

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Two small girls bent over books at a small round table are the subject here, and the picture was made by Henry Peach Robinson, a leading figure in British photography in the 1860s. It was reproduced as an illustration in his 1869 book *Pictorial Effect in Photography*, which argued that photographs should be composed with the same care as paintings. Robinson often arranged staged scenes of domestic life with models, so the reading children were most likely posed. The picture shows how Victorian photographers used ordinary subjects to make the case for photography as an art.

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