Seeing is believing. But what is ‘seeing’? Images Before and After the Age of Technology

Falls of the Kaaterskil, Thomas Cole, 1826 “the most influential canvas ever produced in America” (PJ)

Joseph Nicephore Niepce 1765 – 1833 And Henry Talbot

View from the Window at Gras – 1827 the world’s First photograph

Henry Talbot began with very crude photographs in the late 1830s. Above, one of his earliest efforts The Oriel Window is a tiny image about the size of a postage stamp. It was made by putting a camera on a table, point it at the window and leaving the lens open for several hours. Within a few years he had dramatically improved his technique. In 1843 he published a collection of photographs – The Pencil of Nature. This photo of classical statue from the British Museum was one of the photos in the collection. Unlike Niepce, Talbot gave detailed instructions on how his methods worked to many correspondents, some of whom repeated his methods.

Robert Fenton – Self portrait

1. Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade! "Charge for the guns!" he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. 2. "Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. The Charge of the British Cavalry at Balaclava in October 1854 was one of the great scandals of military history. About 650 riders charged into a Russian artillery site – only 195 rode back. This painting of the scene is by R.C. Woodville. The poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson became one of the classics of English poetry.

Not surprisingly many of the canonical images of early war photography turn out to have been staged, or to have had their subjects tampered with. After reaching the much shelled valley approaching Sebastopol in his horse-drawn darkroom, [Roger] Fenton made two exposures from the same tripod position: in the first version of the celebrated photo he was to call “The Valley of the Shadow of Death”(despite the title, it was not across this landscape, that the Light Brigade made its doomed charge), the cannonballs are thick on the ground to the left of the road, but before taking the second picture – the one that is always reproduced – he oversaw the scattering of the cannonballs on the road itself. (Susan Sonntag in Regarding the Pain of Others)

It is insane, but I would like to make the claim that the meaning of photography is contained in these two images. By thinking about the Fenton photographs we are essentially thinking about some of the most vexing issues in photography — about posing, about the intentions of the photographer, about the nature of photographic evidence — about the relationship between photographs and reality. (Errol Morris)

Joe Rosenthal News photographer, Iwo Jima, 1945

Within a few years after the popularizing of photography, there was an active practice and market for ‘spectral’ photographs. This became especially popular at about the time of the Civil War when many families were understandably interested in the concept of communicating with the dead – a whole movement called “The Spiritualists” evolved. This photo by Eugene Theibault was done about 1865 and is an intentional parody of such ‘spectral’ photos. The subject is Henri Robin, a French magician who made a career out of debunking and showing up fake Spiritualists…

Spectral and spiritualist photos did not have to be very high tech to gain an audience. In the 1920s when there was a strong revival in Spiritualism (due to the tragedy of WW I) two women in the Cotswald region of England began a publicity campaign based on their photographs which claimed to show the women meeting and interacting with fairy people. The women became famous, sold many thousands of copies of their photos, and staged several successful lecture and public appearance tours.

Mary Todd Lincoln with the spectral appearance of President Abraham Lincoln’s ghost behind her. An intentionally degraded version of an art photo created by a legitimate photo-artist. In the original the figure of Lincoln is much sharper and is clearly intended to be allegorical. But this photo is intended to suggest an accidental photo-capture of a mysterious spectral presence.