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History of Photography
Introduction
History of Photography
A World History of Photography
The Story Behind the Pictures 1827-1991
Photographers' Dictionary


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Chapter 1
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THE EARLY YEARS:
TECHNOLOGY, VISION, USERS
1839-1875
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The Calotype
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For much of its existence, photography has been
understood by most to be a process resulting in a negative image that can
be replicated almost endlessly to produce positives in which tonal and
spatial values are in normal relationship. Using the same matrix, the
picture can be made larger and, because of the light weight of the
support (paper, fabric, plastic), it can be inserted into books and
albums, attached to documents, and sent through the mails, as well as
framed and hung on the wall. The photograph's physical and utilitarian
advantages over the daguerreotype are so obvious that it may seem
incredible that when first announced the negative-positive process took a
most definite second place in the public mind.
The reasons are complex, involving timing,
technique of production, aesthetic standards, and social factors.
Photogenic drawing, as Talbot first called the paper image, was made
public by the inventor in London in February, 1839, only after the news of
Daguerre's discovery had been relayed from across the Channel. For most
people, the potential value of replication may have seemed too abstract an
idea at the time, while the actual process of turning negative into
positive was perceived as rather complicated. Most important, however, was
the fact that—even to Talbofs most ardent supporters—the fuzziness of his
earliest results was demonstrably less pleasing than the finely detailed
daguerreotype image. Furthermore, the French invention, sponsored by
scientist-politicians, had received official government sanction while
Talbot had to steer his discovery himself through the quicksands of the
British scientific and patenting establishments, at the same time pursuing
improvements and attempting to realize a commercial return.
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20. WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT. Latticed Window at Lacock Abbey, 1835.
Photogenic drawing.
Fox Talbot Collection, Science Museum, London.
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A patrician background and university training had
enabled Talbot to become involved with the most advanced thinking of his
time. This resourceful scientist was drawn more to astronomy, mathematics,
and optics than to chemistry (which in any case was barely a discipline
at the time), and his interests also embraced linguistics and literature.
For a man of science he was a somewhat romantic and antisocial figure who
traveled incessantly; it was while sketching on a honeymoon trip to Italy
in 1833 (pi. no. 18) that he conceived the notion of making permanent the
image visible on the translucent ground-glass surface of the camera
obscura. Taking up this idea on his return to England, Talbot managed
first to expose and thereby transfer leaf forms directly onto chemically
sensitized paper (pi. 0. 21). Then, in the summer of 1835, with treated
paper nserted in small specially constructed cameras, he succeeded in
producing a number of negatives of his ancestral tome, Lacock Abbey,
including a tiny postage-stamp-size Lmage of a latticed window (pi. no.
20) with diamond panes initially distinct enough to count.

21. WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT. Botanical Specimen, 1839. Photogenic
drawing. Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England.
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In common with Daguerre, Talbot first used a
solution of ordinary table salt to stop the continuing action of light on
the silver deposits, but it was not until both inventors had switched to
hyposulphite of soda (hypo, as it is still called even though its
scientific name is now sodium thiosulphate) that the unexposed silver
salts were completely removed and the image satisfactorily stabilized.
This characteristic of hypo had been discovered in 1819 by lohn Herschel
(later knighted), a prominent astronomer, physical scientist, and friend
of Talbot, who informed both inventors of this fact. Herschel's
contributions to the chemistry of photography reveal both scientific
brilliance and distinterested generosity. Returning in 1838 after several
years as an independent researcher in South Africa where he had himself
made drawings with optical devices (pi. no. 19), Herschel learned of the
experiments in England and France to produce images by the action of
light. He proceeded to conduct his own intensive researches to discover
the effectiveness of different silver halides and other chemicals, among
them ferric salts from which cyanotypes, or blueprints, are made.
Herschel's suggestions with regard to terminology were especially
effective in that he convinced Talbot to consider, instead of photogenic
drawing, the broader term photography—light writing—a term believed to
have been first used by both the Brazilian Hercules Florence and the
German astronomer Johann H. von Maedler. Herschel also coined the terms
negative and positive to refer to the inverse and reverted images that
were basic to the system. Had he wished, he probably could have arrived at
a patent-able process at the same time as Talbot, but his interests lay
elsewhere. His intellectual openness has been contrasted with Talbot's
more secretive attitudes, but the two were mutual admirers, with Herschel
refreshingly liberal about sharing the experimental results of his genius.
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18. WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT Melzi, October 5, 1833.
Camera lucida
sketch on paper.
Fox Talbot Collection Science Museum, London.
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19. JOHN HERSCHEL. Cape Town and Table Bay from Just Above Platte Klip
Gorge,
Table Mountain, February 7,1838. Camera Iucida sketch on paper.
Special Collections, South African Library, Capetown.
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The report in January, 1839, of Daguerre's discovery forced Talbot to make
public his process even though he had done little work on it since 1837.
His initial announcements, made to the
Royal Society, the Royal Institution, and the French Academy of Sciences
at the end of January and in February were received with interest and
evoked a small flurry of excitement among a few individuals in the
scientific community and in Talbot's circle of family and friends.
However, in comparison with the verisimilitude of the finely detailed
daguerreotype, this image, incorporating the texture intrinsic to its
paper support, was too broad and indistinct to have wide appeal despite
Talbot's description of the effect as "Rembrandtish."
Another disadvantage at first was the length of
time required to make an exposure. Talbot had not then discovered the
possibility of latent development, a procedure Daguerre had stumbled on,
whereby the image, invisible on the exposed plate or paper, was made to
appear by treatment with a chemical solution (developer). When he did
discover this in the fall of 1840, his exposure time was decreased from
about half an hour to as little as 30 seconds on a very bright day, making
possible portraiture and a much broader selection of subjects and
atmospheric effects, as seen in one of the inventor's early views of
London (pi. no. 22).
In 1841 Talbot took out the first of his patents,"
using the word calotype to describe the resulting image, which he also
referred to as a Talbotype. This action initiated a ten-year period during
which English scientific and artistic endeavor in photography became
entangled in problems of commercial exploitation. Both during his lifetime
and long afterward, Talbot was accused of obstructing the development of
photography because of his intransigence with regard to the four patents
he held on the calotyping process. Critics have suggested that he regarded
them as covering all advances in photographic technology occur-ring
between 1841 and 1851 and that he included as his own the contributions of
others, in particular Herschel's suggestion of hyposulphite of soda as a
fixer. However, Talbot's biographer, H. J. P. Arnold, notes that a close
reading of the language indicates that the patents protected methods of
utilizing substances rather than the chemical agents themselves.
Talbot himself was caught up in a controversy over
the moral and practical effects of patenting inventions, a dilemma that
occupied the British from mid-century on. While some individuals
maintained that patent fees were too high and rules too lax for
protection, others argued that patents were indefensible because
inventions "depended less on any individual than on progress in society."
Talbot may have agreed, but he patented his processes because, like
countless others in Britain, France, and the United States at the time, he
considered that those who had invested considerable effort should reap the
material rewards of their genius and industry. That he did not benefit
financially was because he was an indifferent businessman with a more
compelling interest in intellectual matters—an attitude bolstered by the
fact that he could count on income from his landed estate. Neither the
surge of amateurs photographing in calotype for their own plea-sure nor
the utilization of the process for commercial portraiture materialized.
Among the well-to-do who did take up calotyping were Talbot's wife
Constance, his Welsh relatives Emma and John Dillwyn Llewelyn, and two
friends, the Reverends Calvert Richard Jones and George W. Bridges, both
of whom conceived the idea of making a calotype record of their travels
abroad (see Chapter 3).
Paper photography occasioned a more significant response in Scotland where no licensing arrangements were necessary. With
the help of Sir David Brewster, an eminent scientist who corresponded
frequently with Talbot, Robert Adamson, a young Scottish chemist, was able
to perfect the calotype technique and open a studio in Edinburgh in 1841.
Two years later, he and painter-lithographer David Octavius Hill began to
produce calotypes; these images, mainly portraits (see Chapter 2), still
are considered among the most expressive works in the medium.
Talbot, though disinclined to pursue the
commercial exploitation of his discovery actively, was keenly concerned
with the potential uses of the medium. In setting up a publishing
establishment at Reading under the super-vision of Nicolaas Henneman, an
assistant he personally had trained, Talbot promoted the use of the
photographic print itself in book and magazine illustration. The Pencil of
Suture, issued serially between 1844 and 1846 with text and pictorial
material supplied by Talbot, was the first publication to explain and
illustrate the scientific and practical applications of photography. One
of the plates, The Open Door (pi. no. 23) was singled out in the British
press for its exceptional tonal range and textural fidelity, its
"microscopic execution that sets at nought the work of human hands."
Talbot regarded photography as important primarily
for its role in supplying visual evidence of facts, but this "soliloquy of
the broom," as Talbot's mother called The Open Door, reveals a telling
interest in the artistic treatment of the mundane. Along with the theme,
the careful attention to the way light and shadow imbue a humble scene
with picturesque dimension suggests the inventor's familiarity with
examples of Dutch genre painting of the 17th century—works that enjoyed
considerable esteem in Victorian England and, in fact, were specifically
mentioned in the Pencil of Nature. Several other calotype images in the
same style bear witness to Talbot's conviction that photography might
offer an outlet for artistic expression to those without the talent to
draw or paint.
Other publications by Talbot included Sun Pictures
of Scotland, for which he made 23 photographs in 1844, and Annals of
Artists in Spain, the first book to utilize the photograph for reproducing
works of art. However, he disposed of the Reading firm in 1848 because of
managerial and technical problems in running a large-scale photographic
printing enterprise, not the least of which was the fact that calotypes
were subject to fading. This instability was to trouble photographers who
worked with paper prints throughout the next 25 years.
In France, where the daguerreotype held the
general populace enthralled, artists were greatly interested in the
calotype. In their view, the paper process offered a greater range of
choices within which one might fashion an affective image. In addition to
view, pose, and lighting—the sole aesthetic decisions for the
daguerreotypist—the calotypist could exercise interpretive judgment in
the production of subsequent prints from the same negative. Aesthetic
decisions concerning tonality and coloration could be made by adjustments
in the toning and sensitizing baths and by the choice of paper itself,
while retouching on the negative (or print) could alter forms. In this
respect, the paper process called to mind traditional procedures in etching
and engraving, lending the calotype greater esteem among those interested
in photography as a creative pursuit.
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22. WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT. The Nelson Column, Trafalgar Square,
London, under Construction, c. 1843.
Salted paper print from a calotype
negative. Fox Talbot Collection, Science Museum, London.
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23. WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT. The Open Door, 1843. Salted paper print
from a calotype negative.
(Plate VI, The Pencil of Nature, 1844-46.) Fox
Talbot Collection, Science Museum, London.
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Other Developments in Paper
Photography
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Actually, a paper process had been discovered
independently in France. Early in 1839, Hippolyte Bayard, a civil servant
in the Ministry of Finance, had made and exhibited both photogenic
drawings and direct positive paper images exposed in a camera (see A Short
Technical History, Parti), among them a view of a rural enclave in Paris
in the process of being urbanized (pi. no. 24). These works were produced
soon after the first reports of Talbot's process reached France but before
the official announcement in August of Daguerre's process. However,
political pressure, especially from Arago, who had committed himself to
the promotion of the daguerreotype, kept the discover)' from the public.
Bayard expressed his indignation at this shabby treatment by the French
establishment by creating an image of himself as a suicide victim (pi. no.
25); nevertheless, he soon went on to become a prominent member of the
photographic community in Paris.
Aware of Bayard's discoveries and concerned that
this other paper process might achieve precedence on the Continent,
Talbot sought to promote the calotype in France. Although he signed a
contract for its promotion with Joseph Hugues Maret (known as the Marquis
de Bassano), and traveled to Paris in 1843 to demonstrate the procedure,
his associates in France turned out to be incompetent and the project a
fiasco. Loath to purchase franchises directly from Talbot in England,
French artists and photographers preferred to wait until 1847 when Louis
Desire Bianquart-Evrard, a photographer in Lille who was to become an
influential figure in book publication, announced a modified paper
process based on Talbot's discoveries. One of the most ardent champions of
paper photography in France was the painter Gustave Le Gray, who in 1851
described a method of waxing the negative before exposure to improve
definition and tonal sensitivity. The calotype, employed by Le Gray and
other French photographers in an 1851 project to document historic
monuments (see Chapter 3), enjoyed spirited acclaim by French critics
before it was made obsolete by the new collodion technology discussed
below.
Early in 1839, two Munich scientists, Carl August
von Steinheil and Franz von Kobell, had experimented with paper negatives
as a result of a report on Talbot's discoveries given at the Bavarian
Royal Academy of Sciences, but even though successful results were
exhibited in July, on hearing of the wonderful detail possible with the
daguerreotype Von Steinheil switched to metal plates. In the United
States as in England, the soft forms of the calotype appealed mainly to a
small group of intellectual lights (many of whom lived in Boston), but on
the whole reaction to paper photography was cool. Following an
unproductive business arrangement with Edward Anthony, a prominent figure
in the photographic supply business in New York, Talbot sold the patent
rights to the Langenheims who, in turn, expected to sell licenses for the
process throughout the United States. The calotypes made by the
Langenheims were admired in the press, but the firm soon was forced into
bankruptcy as the American public continued its allegiance to the
daguerreotype.
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24. HIPPOLYTE BAYARD. Excavation for rue Tholoze.
Paper negative. Societe Francaise de Photographie, Paris.
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25. HIPPOLYTE BAYARD. Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man, 1840. Direct
paper positive.
Societe Francaise de Photographie, Paris.
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Introduction of the Glass Plate and
Collodion
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Lack of definition and fading were considered the
two most pressing problems in paper photography, especially by
portraitists and publishers with commercial interests. To improve
sharpness, efforts to replace the grainy paper negative with glass—a
support that both Niepce and Herschel had already used—gained ground. The
first practicable process, using albumen, or egg white, as a binder for
the silver salts, was published in France in 1847, while in the United
States Whipple and the Langenheims also had succeeded in making finely
detailed glass negatives with these substances, from which they made
prints called crystalotypes and hyalotypes, respectively. Glass also
provided a suitable material for experimentation undertaken by the
Langenheims to produce stereographic images and positive
slides for projection. But while albumen on glass resulted in negatives
without grain, the procedures were complicated and the exposure time was
longer than that required for the daguerreotype.
An effective alternative materialized in 1850 when
Frederick Scott Archer, an English engraver turned sculptor, published a
method of sensitizing a newly discovered colorless and grainless
substance, collodion, to be used on a glass support (see A Short Technical
History, Parti). Because exposure time decreased dramatically when the
plate was used in a moist state, the process became known as die wet plate
or wet collodion method. Today one can scarcely imagine the awkwardness of
a procedure that required the user to carry a portable darkroom about in
order to sensi-tize each plate before using it and to develop it
immediately afterward. Still, the crisp definition and strong contrast
afforded by sensitized collodion on glass proved to be just what many in
the photographic profession had hoped for in a duplicatable process. Its
discovery initiated an era of expanded activity in professional
portraiture, in the publication of views, in amateur photographic activity
around the globe, and led to numerous collateral photo-graphic
enterprises. The introduction of collodion also signaled the end of
Talbot's exasperating efforts to litigate his patent rights against those
who had taken up calotyping for commerce without purchasing a franchise.
The gift of the collodion process to the public by Archer (who was to die
impoverished in 1857) was in noticeable contrast to Talbot's attempts to
cover all his inventions. When he claimed in 1854 that collodion, too, was
protected by his 1843 calotype patent, the outrage expressed in the press
made a favorable decision on his pending infringement cases impossible.
Talbot gave up his photography patents in 1855, but by then the calotype
had faded from sight, in many cases quite literally.
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Developments in the Paper Print
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Besides the soft definition, the other problem
that plagued calotypists involved the quality of the print. Un-even and
blotchy tonalities and, of greater concern, the tendency for rich-looking
prints to fade and discolor were nightmares, especially for those in
commercial enterprises. In addition, satisfactory salt prints—positives
produced by exposing sensitized paper in contact with a negative until the
image appeared—were thought to look lifeless by a public enticed by
superior contrast and clarity. Because the problems were perceived as
intrinsic to paper manufacture, an emulsion consisting of albumen and
light sensitive silver salts was proposed as a surface coating to keep
the image from penetrating into the paper structure itself.
Coming into use at about the same time as the
collodion negative, the albumen print rapidly became part of a new
photographic technology. Lasting some 30 years, it promoted a style that
featured sharp definition, glossy surface, and strong contrasts. In
response to this prefer-ence, Blanquart-Evrard's Imprimerie Photographique
(Photographic Printing Works) at Lille, the first successful photographic
printing plant to employ a substantial labor force of men and women, began
to process prints for the dozen different publications issued during the n
years of its existence. Similar firms soon appeared in Alsace, Ger-many,
England, and Italy, as photographically illustrated books and portfolios
became popular.
However, despite the optimistic scenario for the
future of the albumen print, problems with stability continued to haunt
photographers, making large-scale production a de-manding undertaking. At
times the unappealing yellow-brown tonality of faded albumen prints was
likened to that of stale cheese. Again, sizings were blamed, and it was
determined that impurities in the water used in paper man-ufacture also
left a residue that caused the discoloration; only two mills in
northeastern France were thought capable of producing paper free from
such mineral contamination. Stock from these mills was shipped to nearby
Dresden to be albumenized, establishing this German city as the main
production center for photographic paper throughout the collodion era.
Other causes of fading, among them imperfect washing,
inadequate fixing with hypo baths, interaction with mounting adhesives and
air pollution, were confirmed by individuals and by committees set up to
study the situation by the two most prominent photographic organizations
of the era—the Photographic Society of London and the Societe Frangaise de
Photographic. A two-part prize offered in 1856 by an eminent French
archeologist, Honore d'Albert, Due de Luynes, testified to the fact that
the solution would be found in two spheres of activity related to
photography. In offering a larger sum for photomechanical procedures and
a smaller one for the discovery of a truly permanent method of chemical
printing, De Luynes and other French industrialists recognized the
importance of mechanical over hand methods for reproducing photographs.
Alphonse Louis Poitevin, a noted French chemist who was recipient of both
parts of the prize, worked out a photolithographic process called the
collotype (see A Short Technical History, Part II) and a non-silver
procedure for printing collodion negatives. Based on researches
undertaken in 1839 by the Scottish scientist Mungo Ponton that
established the light-sensitivity of potassium bichromate, this process,
called carbon printing, used a mixture of bichromated gelatin and powdered
carbon instead of silver salts to effect a positive image.
During the 1860s, the results obtained by printing
with carbon were greatly admired for their deep, rich tonalities as well
as their resistance to fading. The technique was actively promoted in
Europe, especially after Joseph Wilson Swan, the holder of numerous
British patents in the photochemical field (and the inventor of the
incandescent light bulb), simplified manipulation by manufacturing carbon
tissues in various grades and tonalities. Called Autotype in England, the
Swan carbon process was franchised to the Annan brothers in Scotland,
Hanfstaengl in Germany, and Braun in France, rendering these large-scale
photographic publishing firms more productive than formerly. However,
despite a campaign to promote the carbon method by a leading American
publication, The Philadelphia Photographer, no great interest developed
in the United States, per-haps because efforts already were underway to
find a method of printing photographs on mechanical presses through the
creation of a metal matrix. Another process that utilized similar chemical
substances—the Woodbury-type, named after its English creator Walter
Woodbury— began to supplant carbon production printing in the early 1870s.
It, too, produced a richly pigmented permanent image, but because it
incorporated elements of mechanical printing technology it was more
productive. Despite these improvements in positive printing materials,
albumen paper continued in use for portraits and scenic views until the
1880s when significant new developments in both negative and printing
materials made it obsolete. The pigmented carbon process was used less
frequently in commercial photographic printing after the 1880s; however,
it then became a means of individualized artistic expression for
pictorialist photographers.
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The Stereograph and Stereoscope
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One final element in this inaugural period of
photography helped assure the medium's incredible popularity. This was the
invention of the stereograph and stereoscope —an image and a device that
fused photographic technology with entertainment. Stereographs—two almost
identical images of the same scene mounted side by side on a stiff
support and viewed through a binocular device to create an illusion of
depth—held Iate-i9th-century viewers in thrall. Early examples, which had
used daguerreotypes to create this effect, were not entirely successful
because reflections from the metal surfaces interfered with the illusion;
but after collodion/albumen preempted other technologies, stereograph
views became more convincing and immensely salable. Produced in large
editions by steam-driven machinery and mounted on cards using
assembly-line methods, they reached a substantial clientele, especially in
the United States, through mail-order and door-to-door sales. Stereograph
publishers offered an unparalleled selection of pictorial material;
besides the landscapes, views of monuments, and scenes of contemporary
events that often were available in regular format photographs also, there
were educational images of occupations and work situations around the
globe, reproductions of works of art, especially sculpture, and
illustrations of popular songs and anecdotes—all of which provided
middle-class viewers with unprecedented materials for entertainment.
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26. Holmes-Bates Stereoscope with stereograph. Keystone-Mast
Collection, California Museum of Photography, University of
California, Riverside.
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Histories of the medium have acknowledged this popular appeal, but the stereograph should be seen as more than a faddish
toy. After Queen Victoria had expressed her approval at the Crystal Palace
Exhibition of 1851, where stereographs were on public display for the
first time, the purchase, exchange, and viewing of stereographs became a
veritable mania. It was promoted in the United States as a significant
educational tool by Oliver Wendell Holmes in two long articles in the
Atlantic Monthly, in 1859 and 1862. Besides envisioning "a comprehensive
and systematic library . . . where all ... can find the special forms
they desire to see as artists ... as scholars,... as mechanics or in any
other capacity," Holmes suggested that in the future the image would
become more important than the object itself and would in fact make the
object disposable. He also designed an inexpensive basic viewer (pi. no.
26) to enable ordinary people of little means to enjoy these educational
benefits. In the latter part of the 19th century, stereography filled the
same role as television does in the 20th, providing entertainment,
education, propaganda, spiritual uplift, and aesthetic sustenance. Like
television, it was a spectator activity, nourishing passive familiarity
rather than informed understanding. Long viewed as a pleasant household
pas-time, its effect on attitudes and outlook in the 19th century only
recently has become the subject of serious study.
Looking back at the evolution of the medium during
the first half of the 19th century, it is obvious that photography's time
had come. Industrialization and the spread of education mandated a need
for greater amounts of comprehensible pictorial material encompassing a
broader of subjects—a necessity to which only the camera image was
able to respond. Besides the figures mentioned in this chapter, other
all-but-forgotten individuals were attempting to produce images by the
means of light. And as soon as the glimmers of success were hinted at in
London and Paris, people in outlying areas of Europe and the Americas
began to embrace the new technology, hoping to expand its possibilities
and, in the process, to make or improve their own fortunes.
Within 25 years of Niepce's first successful
image, enough of the major technical difficulties had been worked out to
insure that both daguerreotype and photograph could be exploited
commercially. This activity, which centered on two areas—portraiture and
the publication of scenic views—created a photographic profession with its
own organizations and publications. Amateurs employed the medium for
documentation and for personal expression, while graphic artists came to
rely on photography as an indispensable tool for providing a record of
appearances and, eventually, for suggesting different ways of viewing
actuality. As will become apparent in the chapters that follow, the
traditional divisions separating amateur from professional, art from
commerce, document from personal expression were indistinct from the
earliest days of the medium, and any boundaries that did exist became even
more indefinite as camera images increased their authority and scope.
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Profile:
Louis Jacques Mande
Daguerre
(see collection)
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Nothing in Daguerre's early career as a successful
scenic designer hinted that eventually he would become trans-fixed by the
problems of producing permanent images by using light. He was born in 1787
into zpetit bourgeois family in Cormeilles-en-Parisis; when his natural
artistic gifts became apparent he was apprenticed to a local architect.
Paris beckoned in 1804, the year of Napoleon's coronation, so Daguerre
served another apprenticeship in the studio of the stage designer Ignace
Eugene Marie Degotti. His intuitive sensitivity to decorative effect
enabled him to rise quickly, and in 1807 he became an assistant to Pierre
Prevost, who was renowned for his realistically painted panoramas. During
the nine years that Daguerre worked for Prevost, he occasionally submitted
oils to the Paris Salon and made sketches and topographical views for the
20-volume Voyages pittoresques et romantiques en I'ancienne France
(Picturesque and Romantic Travels in Old France), a work to which the
painters Gericault, Ingres, and Vernet also contributed.
In 1816, Daguerre's exceptional skill and
imagination were recognized by his appointment as stage designer to one of
the best-known small theaters in Paris; three years later he also was
designer for the Opera.. The audience for these entertainments was drawn
from the new urban middle class, whose taste ran to verisimilitude in
execution and romanticism in content. When, in 1821, Daguerre under-took
to promote a new entertainment, The Diorama, he was convinced that the
public would pay for illusionistic deception on a grand scale. The
Diorama, which opened in July, 1822, with his own deceptively real-looking
representation of 'The Valley of the Sarnen" (and one of "The Interior of
Trinity Chapel, Canterbury Cathedral," painted by his partner Charles
Marie Bouton) achieved its striking effects by the manipulation of light
that transformed the scene from a serene day to one of tempestuous
storminess, underscoring the desolation of the painted landscape. De-spite
a temporary setback during the political troubles of 1830, The Diorama
continued to offer romantic subjects until 1839, when it was entirely
destroyed by fire.
To achieve the perspective effects on the large
scrims, and on the easel paintings that he sometimes painted of the same
subjects, Daguerre used the conventional tool of his trade—the camera
obscura. At what point he began to consider how to make the view on the
translucent glass surface permanent is not known, but in 1824 he started
to frequent the shop of the Chevalier brothers, well-known Parisian makers
of optical instruments. The result was an association with Niepce, through
the Chevaliers, that led first to an agreement to perfect Niepce's process
and finally to the daguerreotype.
After the French government had acquired the
process, Daguerre occasionally demonstrated its methods and entered into
arrangements to supply cameras and manuals of instruction, but he was
considerably less active than others in perfecting his discovery. He
preferred creating scenic effects on his estate in Bry-sur-Marne and in
the local church where he painted a large trompe l'oeil perspective scene
behind the altar. Although at Bry he made a small number of daguerreotypes
of family and scenery, no further discoveries issued from his workshop
nor did he develop artistically between 1839 and his death in 1851.
On the whole, Daguerre's output in the new medium
reveals the influence of his artistic training and experience as the
creator of picturesque yet convincing-looking scenes. His earliest
surviving metal-plate image, an 1837 still life of plaster casts (pi. no.
27), discloses a subject dear to Romantic artists, one to which he
returned on a number of occasions. These works, and views made in Paris
and Bry, demonstrate sensitivity to tonal balance, feeling for textural
contrast, and a knowledge of compositional devices such as diagonal
framing elements to lead the eye into the picture, but from Daguerre's
complete output—some three dozen plates according to Helmut and Alison
Gernsheim—it is difficult to credit him with exceptional perception
regarding the stylistic or thematic possibilities of the new pictorial
medium.
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27. Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. Still Life, 1837.
Daguerreotype. Societe Franc.aise de Photographic, Paris.
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Profile:
William Henry Fox Talbot
(see collection)
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As an heir of the Enlightenment, Talbot was
concerned with practical application as well as with scientific theory,
with combining intellectual interests and commercial endeavor. A patrician
background, close and supportive family relationships, and the ownership
of a lucrative estate, Lacock Abbey, made it possible for him to pursue
his multifarious interests to successful conclusions. Besides inventing
the first duplicatable image system generated by light, be envisaged the
many uses to which photography has since been put, prophesying that "an
alliance of science with art will prove conducive to the improvement of
both."
Born in 1800, shortly after the death of his
father, Talbot was educated at Harrow and Cambridge and became learned in
several fields of science. Despite the paltriness of scientific
instruction in English universities of the time, he received satisfactory
grounding in mathematics and Optics, two areas that remained fundamental
to his inter-throughout his lifetime. Talbot augmented his formal training
by closely following the work of British and foreign scientists, including
Brewster, Herschel, Arago, Joseph von Fraunhofer, and Augustin Jean
Fresnel, and during the 1830s and '40s he traveled abroad almost yearly on
scholarly pursuits.
In 1839, events forced Talbot's hand with
reference to die researches in photography that he had commenced in
1834—efforts to make images appear on light-sensitive materials—which he
then had put aside to continue studies in optics and spectrology. In order
to establish the priority of his discovery, Talbot exhibited at the Royal
Society the photogenic drawings he had made in 1835 both by direct contact
and in the camera, although he apparendy had not considered them
especially significant prior to the French announcement. His pictures'
unflattering comparison with the daguerreotype's greater detail and
shorter exposure time, coupled with the realization that his system
pos¬sessed greater potential, caused Talbot to resume experimentation and
resulted shortly in his perfection of the negative/positive process that
he called calotype (a name derived from the Greek kolas: beautiful), which
he patented in 1841. Unlike Daguerre, Talbot continued to improve the
discovery, to envision its possibilities, and to devise practical methods
of reproducing photographic images by photomechanical means, at the same
time producing some 600 photographs, among them genre subjects,
landscapes, urban views, and portraits.
In the 1850s, following unsuccessful legal battles
to secure his patent rights, he turned again to studies in theoretical
mathematics and etymology, and to a new interest, Assyriology,
contributing substantially to the decipherment of Assyrian cuneiform.
After his death in 1877, the achievements of this fine, if somewhat
unfocused scholar were obscured for a long period despite the fact that he
had written seven books and more than 50 papers on a variety of scientific
topics, held 12 significant patents, and made at least eight comprehensive
translations from Assyrian literature, besides discovering the system of
photographic image-making that continues in use today.
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WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT
(b Melbury, Dorset, 11 Feb 1800; d Lacock
Abbey, Wilts, 17 Sept 1877).
English photographer, inventor and scientist. He was educated at
Harrow School and the University of Cambridge and was an outstanding
scholar and a formidable mathematician. His scientific interest in
nature and natural phenomena, including botany and horticulture, was
complemented by studies of Assyriology, etymology and the Classics.
Talbot published well over 50 scientific papers and took out 12
English patents; he became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical
Society at the age of 22 and a Fellow of the Royal Society when he
was only 31. Although a gentleman, he was neither a great landowner
nor exceptionally rich by the standards of the day. He took over the
ancestral home, Lacock Abbey, Wilts, in 1826 and married Constance
Mundy in 1832; they had three daughters and a son. Talbot briefly
became MP for Chippenham, but he did not pursue a Parliamentary
career. He was a shy and reticent man, but he was not the cold,
grasping figure portrayed by some historians. He was greatly admired
by those who knew him well, and he was loved and respected by family
and friends.
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William Henry Fox Talbot. Cloisters, Lacock Abbey.
1843
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William Henry Fox Talbot. Pantheon. 1843
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William Henry Fox Talbot. Courtyard Scene. c. 1844
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William Henry Fox Talbot. Ships at Low Tide. c.
1844
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William Henry Fox Talbot. The Haystack. 1844-45
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William Henry Fox Talbot. The Ladder. 1845
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William Henry Fox Talbot. Henrietta Horatia Maria
Feilding. c. 1845
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