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Nineteenth Century Origins of Photography (1826 - 1900) INTRODUCTION Photography or ‘drawing with light’ is a uniquely nineteenth century combination of art and science. The process was born out of a synthesis of physics and chemistry and presented to the art world, which received it with considerable misgivings. Photography attracted an extraordinary mixture of chemists and painters, sharp businessmen and dreamy romantics -colourful characters from all ranks of Victorian life. This article traces the early history of photography from the first permanent camera images of the 1820s until the turn of the century. It shows the steady technical improvements and the way these affected the aesthetic and social uses of the new medium. Wherever possible the actual original photographs are reproduced to convey their intrinsic qualities as well as content. This article is intended for students of 15 years and upwards. It includes topics of interest to groups studying Art, Science, and Social Studies, as well as Photography. It is hoped that these in turn will suggest worthwhile projects, such as exploring aspects of the inter-relationship of art and photography, or Victorian uses of photography and its social impact. The bibliography at the end of these notes includes some of the excellent collections of early photographs now available in book form, as well as photographic histories. Finally, remember that photography is still relatively young. The family albums of existing grand-parents may easily extend back into the era we are discussing. There is probably a wealth of interesting material still lying forgotten in our attics, waiting to be rediscovered. 1. Camera obscura. This simple device for forming images - the ‘camera obscura’ - has been used by artists for centuries as a sketching aid. Early camera obscuras were just darkened rooms with a small aperture in the window shutter. Later a converging lens was added to make the image brighter and clearer for tracing. It is the forerunner of the photographic camera we use today. Since the time of Aristotle (384-322 BC) it has been known that a small hole in the wall or window shutter of a darkened room can form an image of a brightly lit scene outside. A dim, upsidedown picture is projected onto the opposite wall or a suitable white screen. (You can make a small camera obscura from a cardboard tube using tracing paper over one end and kitchen foil with a pinhole at the other.) Later, in the sixteenth century, this camera obscura or pinhole camera novelty was improved by fitting a convex lens over the enlarged aperture. The image appeared brighter and clearer, provided it was properly focused. Portable camera obscuras - large like this one, or small hand models - were used by artists to make accurate tracings of scenes. Painters such as Canaletto and Guardi certainly used the device as an aid to perspective drawing. But it was not until the nineteenth century that attempts were made to record the camera’s image directly, by the action of light on chemicals. 2. Niepce Château, photographed by Nicéphore Niepce, 1826. Kodak Museum, Harrow. Until the nineteenth century it was not possible to record the camera’s image chemically. This is probably the world’s first photograph, taken by the Frenchman Nicéphore Niepce in 1826. He used white bitumen spread on a sheet of pewter. The exposure needed, in bright sunlight, was eight hours! In 1826 the French amateur scientist Nicéphore Niepce succeeded in ‘capturing’ the image formed by a camera obscura. This view, showing a stable block and part of his Chateau at Gras, was taken from his workroom window. It is probably the world’s first photograph (or ‘light drawing’) from nature. Niepce recorded the image on a sheet of polished pewter coated with white bitumen. Allowing this to expose for about eight hours in the camera, he then bathed the metal in lavender oil and petroleum to wash away bitumen in the areas unhardened by light. The result is this crude positive image. Niepce was really interested in lithography and was hoping to form a plate from which he could print pictures in ink, but the metal proved too soft and the bitumen much too insensitive to light. It did, however, prove that light-sensitive chemicals could be combined with the image-forming properties of the camera obscura. Photography was just possible. 3. Talbot, photographed by Claudet, 1844. Daguerreotype. Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock, Wiltshire Daguarre, photographed by Mayall, 1848. Daguerreotype. Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas. These people invented the first practical processes of photography. William Henry Fox Talbot (on the left) was the English inventor of a system using negatives and positives. His French rival, Louis Daguerre, used a system giving a direct result on metal. During the late 1830s and early ‘40s two people were working independently, in Britain and France, to perfect a practical photographic process. English landowner and scientist William Henry Fox Talbot (the one in the stovepipe hat) was experimenting with light-sensitive paper in the camera obscura. Unknown to him, in France the French artist and stage designer Louis Daguerre was devising an entirely different process to record the image. Talbot’s “Calotype” and Daguerre’s “Daguerreotype” processes were to rival each other for years. The Daguerreotype process was to be published first in 1839. As we shall see, it gave excellent quality direct positive pictures and became extremely popular; both these portraits are Daguerreotypes. However, Fox Talbot’s process, hastily patented in 1841, made use of negatives and positives. In this sense it leads more directly to the photographic materials we use today. 4. Paris boulevard, 1838-9. Daguerreotype. International Museum of Photography, Rochester, New York. Daguerre used a small silvered plate, made sensitive to light with iodine. Pictures like this one needed at least ten minutes’ exposure, and you then developed the metal plate to get a positive image. The Daguerreotype process was publicly disclosed in 1839 and created a sensation. Daguerre had long used the camera obscura to draw accurate perspective and detail for his stage designs. He learnt of Niepce’s experiments with pewter plates and went into partnership with him to improve this process. But by 1837, four years after Niepce’s death, Daguerre had devised a better quality image-recording method of his own. He used a small silver-coated plate of copper which was first exposed, in darkness, to the fumes of iodine. This formed creamy light-sensitive silver iodine on the plate surface. The daguerreotype plate needed an exposure of ten to thirty minutes in the camera. Its still invisible image was then intensified or ‘developed’ in the fumes of warmed mercury and the resulting positive picture made permanent in salt solution. This copy of an 1839 daguerreotype of a Paris boulevard shows the amazing detail which could be produced. Of course, the long exposure had failed to record the bustling carriages and pedestrians - except by chance the man on the street corner having his boots brushed. This unknown man is the first human being to be photographed directly with the ‘camera’. In August 1839 Daguerre publicly disclosed his process. There was consternation among established painters. From the time of Van Eyck the ability to accurately represent the everyday world had been greatly respected. Now this appeared possible by direct action of light, without need of an artist. Paul Delaroche exclaimed on seeing the daguerreotype, “From today, painting is dead.” 5. Daguerreotype camera, 1839, and daguerreotype portrait. Science Museum, London. Technical improvements soon reduced exposure times to forty-five seconds or so. Portraits like this could be made if the sitter had a neck rest and the arms were supported too. The detailed accuracy of these ‘drawings by the action of light itself’ seemed miraculous. At first the time exposures needed for daguerreotypes were far too long to take portraits, but people were content to make ‘light drawings’ of buildings and landscapes. Within a short time of its announcement improvements to daguerreotype camera lenses and to the process itself greatly reduced exposure times Provided the camera used was fairly small and the sunlight very bright, pictures could be given as little as forty-five seconds. Of course, sitters for portraits had to be seated, with arms rested and the head held by a neck support hidden behind the body. Often their blurred, watery eyes failed to record and had to be scratched in afterwards. Professional portrait studios were soon set up in France, Britain and America, using glasshouses on the roofs of buildings. Sitters were posed against painterly, ‘classical’ backdrops, often with a book or vase to suggest their good taste and affluence. The result, mounted behind glass, was sold in a little pinchbeck case suitably padded and decorated. As can be seen, daguerreotype portraits could even be hand-tinted. You can imagine the popularity of these images in an age before pictures in newspapers or books, television etc., and when only the rich could afford to have their portraits painted. The daguerreotypist was in most direct competition with the painter of miniatures. Many such artists were forced out of business, or turned to the new process themselves. This daguerreotype camera of about 1842 has its lens fitted just inside the camera, behind the adjustable metal aperture. The smaller apertures would be chosen for landscapes, to improve sharpness - the extra exposure time needed being unimportant. 6. Beard’s daguerreotype studio, by Crulkshank. Woodcut, 1842. Humanities Research Center, Austin,Texas Professional daguerreotype studios opened in glasshouses built on the roofs of buildings. Customers had to sit motionless in the hot sun, but it was quicker and cheaper than posing for a painting. Daguerre allowed his process to be used freely in France, and in return received a pension from the French government. But in Britain the process was patented and could only be practised upon payment of a licence fee. This 1842 cartoon depicts Richard Beard’s daguerreotype studio on the roof of 309 Regent Street, London. The assistant, bottom right, is buffing a silvered plate before sensitising it in the darkroom behind. Cameras are fixed to a shelf above the door, where the exposure is timed by another assistant. The sitter is enthroned just below the glass roof, a sheet of blue material above him helping to reduce the heat and glare, without much affecting the exposure. Note the head support. Beard made a vast fortune from what eventually became a chain of daguerreotype studios. Mostly the portraits were bought by sitters to for their loved ones. Every daguerreotype was unique and could not be printed from, so a separate exposure was required for each picture, although sometimes two cameras would be exposed together. 7. Fox Talbot’s Lacock window negative and camera, 1835. Science Museum, London. Fox Talbot meanwhile had been trying to take photographs using this small camera and writing paper treated with silver nitrate. In 1835 he managed to record this size image of a window from inside his house. To return to 1835, while Louis Daguerre worked secretly on his process in France, William Henry Fox Talbot was devising his own method of recording the camera’s image. At his country house, Lacock Abbey, near Chippenham in Wiltshire, Talbot experimented with silver salts which he knew darkened under the action of light. Using writing paper soaked in silver nitrate solution in this tiny camera made by the village carpenter he succeeded in producing a ‘negative’ of one of the windows of the abbey. The picture shown here is an exact size copy of the original. Exposure was several hours, and the image was then treated with salt solution to make it permanent. Talbot could make any number of ‘positives’ from his paper negative by placing it in face contact with another sheet of sensitised paper, pressing them together under glass and leaving them in sunlight to print. 8. Window of Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. Near Chippenham, Wiltshire. This is the actual window Talbot photographed, as it appears today in Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. The window is in the south gallery at Lacock Abbey. On Talbot’s original negative each one of these diamond panes could be counted with the aid of a magnifying glass. As soon a Fox-Talbot heard a preliminary announcement of Daguerre’s researches he took steps to publicise his own ‘photogenic drawing’ fearing that both were working on the same process. He hurriedly presented a paper to the Royal Society in 1839 and showed some of the pictures he had produced at Lacock. 9. Calotype, negative and positive, by D.O. Hill. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Talbot’s calotype process was sufficiently improved to rival the daguerreotype for portraits and views. Exposure in the camera gave a negative image in which light parts of the subject appeared dark. This needed contact printing onto similar paper to give a positive result. Numbers of prints could be run off but the fibres of the paper negative diffused fine image detail. In the event the daguerreotype and the Fox-Talbot’s photogenic drawings proved very dissimilar. This was mainly through Talbot’s use of a chemical which blackened under the action of light and so gave negative tomes, and Daguerre’s use of a substance which produced a white image. Other notable British scientists such as Sir John Herschel suggested improvements to Talbot’s process, and by 1840 he had discovered that an invisible image later formed into a negative by a developer (or ‘exciting solution’).
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