Early Photography

Context The invention of photography had an enormous impact on the art world, especially the world of painting. The word photography comes from the Greek words “photo” (light) and “graphy” (writing). When photography became popular in the 19 th century, some painters embraced the new technology, recognizing in it a tool to help them translate the three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional plane. Other painters felt threatened, and worried that photography would replace the tradition of painting. The lower cost of buying photographic images (compared to paintings) made them popular amongst the growing middle class. The camera closely depicts the world it records, presumably showing the viewer what is real, true, and factual. It was utilized in recording buildings from antiquity and important current events (where “staging” the event sometimes lead to inaccurate representations of what really happened). Photographers looked to painting to learn to artistically arrange and light their compositions. Draped Model (Back View) Eugene Durieu and Eugene Delacroix. c Albumen print, 7.5” x 5”

Daguerreotype 1826 – Joseph Niépce (“nyeps”) (died 1833) made a permanent picture of the cityscape outside his upper-story window by exposing, in a camera obscura, a metal plate covered with light- sensitive coating (8 hour exposure). Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre ran the Diorama, an entertainment theater of “living paintings” created by changing the lighting effects on several layers of painted curtains. Daguerre was introduced to Niépce, and continued his work after Niepce’s death, improving it in two ways: 1. Latent development – bringing out the image through treatment in chemical solutions – considerably shortened the length of exposure time 2. Learned to “fix” the image by chemically stopping the action of light on the photosensitive chemicals, which would otherwise continue to darken until it was all black. January 7, 1839 – Daguerre’s new photographic process, the daguerreotype, was unveiled to the Academy of Science in Paris. The French government paid Daguerre a large annuity, and made the information on the daguerreotype process available to anyone interested for free, helping to spread the popularity of the art form. Daguerreotypes could not be duplicated, but were highly detailed. Still Life in Studio Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, Daguerreotype, 6” x 8”.

Calotype Only a couple of weeks after Daguerre unveiled the daguerreotype, William Henry Fox Talbot presented a paper on his calotypes (from Greek “kalos” meaning beautiful) to the Royal Institution in London (January 31, 1839). Talbot made “negative” images by placing objects on sensitized paper and exposing the arrangement to light, creating a design of light-colored silhouettes. Re-exposing onto a second sheet created a new positive print of the original image. He improved his technology by using more light-sensitive chemicals to achieve more details. The advantage over the daguerreotype: multiple copies could be made The disadvantage: the prints took on the texture of the paper, and were thus were grainy and blurry, and did not achieve the tonal range of a daguerreotype. Furthermore, Talbot patented his process, and charged stiff licensing and equipment fees to those who wanted to use it, discouraging the technique from becoming popular. Talbot attempted to create artistic, meaningful arrangements of objects. Open Door Henry Fox Talbot, Salt-paper print from a calotype negative.

Hawes & Southworth Within only two months of Daguerre introducing his daguerreotype to the public, the first daguerreotypes were made in the United States. josaih Hawes was a painter, and Albert Southworth was a pharmacist and teacher. Together they ran a daguerreotype studio in Boston specializing in portraiture, then popular due to the shortened exposure time required for the process (although it was still long enough to need head braces to hold the subjects still). They also took their equipment outside of the studio to record special events, such as this early use of ether as an anesthetic during surgery. The viewer is looking on from the viewpoint of a medical student in the gallery above the surgical floor. This image predates Eakins’s Gross Clinic by almost 30 years. The elevated viewpoint flattens the spatial perspective and emphasizes the relationships of the figures in ways that interested the Impressionist painters. Early Operation under Ether, Massachusetts General Hospital. Josia Hawes and Albert Southworth. C Daguerreotype.

Nadar By the 1850s, the daguerreotype and calotype were replaced with wet plate (or collodiol) photography, invented by Frederick Scott Archer and Gustave le Gray. Plates of glass were coated in photosensitive chemicals, then placed in a camera and exposed to light while still wet. The negative on the plate also had to be developed immediately, giving the photographer only about 15 minutes for the whole process. The photographer needed a portable darkroom, making the process inconvenient in the field. Combined duplication ability of calotypes with high detail level of daguerreotypes. Wet plate photographs were well suited to portraits, as they had a fast exposure time. Gaspar-Felix Tournachon, known simply as Nadar, was a French novelist, journalist, balloonist, and caricaturist, who opened a photography portrait studio. He strove to capture the essence of his subjects (some of whom were famous artists, such as Delacroix, Manet, Daumier, and Courbet), and encouraged his subjects to pose in the way that best showed their personality. Daumier depicted Nadar in his balloon Le Géant, taking the first aerial photographs & figurative “rise” of photography. Eugene Delacroix Nadar, c Modern print from original negative.

Julia Margaret Cameron Julia Margaret Cameron did not take up photography until age 48, when her daughters gave her a camera for her birthday. She rose to prominence photographing friends, some of whom were notable figures in British arts and sciences. Among her famous subjects are Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, and Alfred Tennyson. She also frequently photographed women, often depicting her female subjects as characters in literary or biblical narratives. Her creative and characteristic style was to deliberately leave her subjects slightly out of focus, creating a dreamy, ethereal quality. Her Ophelia seems to have the mysterious, fragile quality reminiscent of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. By blurring the details, she sought to call attention to the light that suffused her subjects and to their thoughtful expressions, conveying more of their personality and inner self. Ophelia, Study No. 2 Cameron, Albumen print, 1’1” x 11”. Portrait of Thomas Carlyle Cameron, 1867.

O’Sullivan Although most commonly used in the studio, wet-plate photography could also be used in the field. The photographer needed a portable darkroom, complete with various beakers of chemicals, making the process inconvenient in the field. Timothy O’Sullivan used the new medium of photography to record the horrors of war. In “Harvest of Death,” looted bodies litter the landscape as far as the eye can see, impressing upon the viewer the huge number of casualties of the war. The directness of photography made the horrors of war real to viewers in a way that drawings/paintings could not. Although photographs could not yet be printed in newspapers, photographers did publicly display their photographs of war. In Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter, O’Sullivan created a scene where it appears the sharpshooter has been killed in his hiding spot. However, a sharpshooter would have had a higher hideout. Instead, O’Sullivan dragged the body from the field and posed it, along with his own rifle, for dramatic effect. Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter: Battlefield at Gettysburg Timothy O’Sullivan Albumen print. A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Muybridge Muybridge was a Realist photographer and scientist who moved from England to San Francisco in the 1850s. In 1872, the governor of California, Leland Stanford, sought Muybridge’s assistance in settling a bet about whether, at any point in a stride, all four feet of a horse are off the ground. Through the use of sequential photography, Muybridge proved that they were. This began Muybridge’s photographic studies of the successive stages of human and animal motion, which he published in his book Animal Locomotion (1887). Muybridge presented his work to the public using a zoopraxiscope, which he invented to project his sequences of images (mounted on special circular glass plates) onto a screen. The plates would spin in front of the projection lens, creating the illusion of animation. Horse Galloping Eadweard Muybridge, Calotype print, 9” x 12” zoopraxiscope