By the turn of the Twentieth Century, Norfolk County had many thriving towns and villages bustling with activity. Each community had postcards produced for descendants and tourists visiting from all over North America.

Over time these rare pictures of Norfolk town and village life from the 1860's to the 1930's will be posted in this area. Click on the link to the left to view the pictures for a particular community or individual.

Background to the Collection

In the 1860’s my grandmother’s grandmother Helen Marr Dease Woodward started a collection of family and friends photographs. This wasn’t long after photography went mainstream. The collection continued in the old family farmhouse at St. Williams and was added to by her son Charles Hallum Woodward around the turn of the twentieth century and then by his daughter Madeline Woodward Mutrie. Over the years, I have been sent more nineteenth century pictures by other Norfolk County researchers. Watch “Norfolk Portraits and Scenes” for early pictures of our pioneer ancestors. The links are in the column to the right. More are invited for this area. You may email a copy of your pioneer portrait to R. Robert Mutrie. The following is a primer on the development of photography from my research at the Eastman Kodak Museum in Rochester, New York.

Pioneer Photography

by R. Robert Mutrie

Introduction

While attending high school, I snapped and printed pictures with our Camera Club. The magic of images being picked up by such a small box and then reproduced on paper kept me enthralled and sometimes late for supper at home. I took and developed hundreds of photos at school events and even made a hilarious “Super Eight” movie spoof of school life. During her lifetime, Grandma Mutrie gave me a collection of nineteenth century Norfolk County family photos with names written on the back of many and nothing on others. Dating pictures of our ancestors is an important element of genealogy.

Having an idea of when certain types of picture processes held popularity in particular periods enables us to identify better a subject, or at least their probable generation. When did photography begin? A few decades before the Long Point settlers of Norfolk County started clearing their land in the 1790’s, scientists in Europe theorized on the possibility of photo imaging. They could project the image and worked diligently to “fix” it on leather, paper or metal for half a century prior to 1838 with mediocre success. Most of our original Norfolk ancestors died before the process became perfected and marketed in the 1840’s, but we have a legacy of undated photographs of their children and grandchildren.

During a visit to Rochester, New York, the world headquarters of Kodak cameras, I toured the mansion built by founder George Eastman, now an international museum dedicated to photography and film. The George Eastman House stands on an extensive estate along fashionable East Avenue, furnished and appointed as the photograph innovator kept it around the turn of the twentieth century. The restoration and archives development has required the meticulous attention of the supporting Society and is ongoing. A recent large addition to the back includes a theatre, galleries for displaying artists’ work, and a room dedicated to the evolution of photography.

On a more recent visit, I returned to the history room to study the displays. In writing this article, appreciation is given to the assistance of the staff of George Eastman House, particularly exhibit guide Jim Sucy, whose anecdotes and descriptions of complicated scientific processes in layman’s terms made the history of photography understandable and enjoyable. The following synopsis is written from examination of the exhibits and descriptions in the George Eastman House.

Early Imaging

The background of imaging is as old as mankind, dating back in prehistory to the Neanderthal depictions of hunts on cave walls. The ancient Egyptians inscribed elaborate scenes of their pharaohs’ lives on the stones of the pyramids. The medieval and renaissance nobility of Europe hired gifted artists to paint their portraits and favourite scenes. This required considerable expense and lengthy sittings that could run for weeks. A more practical solution for portraiture came in 1759, introduced by Etienne de Silhouette, the French Finance Minister and notorious penny-pincher of his day. He employed an artist to produce his portrait in profile showing the outline only, and then filled with black ink. This type of portraiture became popular as a cheap method for people on both sides of the Atlantic in Europe and America.

The Camera Obscura

As early as the sixteenth century, artists employed a curious device called a Camera Obscura as a drawing aid, the progenitor of artificial direct copying. This large tabletop wooden box with an inner sliding box combined lenses, a darkened environment, light exposure and focusing to allow an ultimate hand traced copy. The slider box within its larger enclosure included a periscope lens moved in and out to focus the original on a glass plate at the rear of the apparatus over which the artist placed a piece of drawing paper to trace the picture. Another innovation, the Anamorphic Mirror and Drawings, gained popularity in the 1600’s

During the eighteenth century, major strides in the sciences, particularly the study of light, chemistry, colour, and vision, made the concept of mechanical imaging feasible. In 1727, Johann Heinrich Schulze proved that light rays cause chemical reactions separate from the heat of the rays. He placed paper cut outs over a bottle filled with a solution of silver nitrate and ground chalk. The exposure by a light source produced darkened duplications of words and shapes in the chemical solution. This vital discovery of silver’s imaging capabilities served as a giant step towards photographic reproduction. A book called “Giphantia” published in 1761 first discussed the idea of photography.

While the Long Point Settlers constructed their crude log cabins in the wilderness of Norfolk County, Upper Canada at the turn of the nineteenth century, scientists in Europe searched for a method of permanently “fixing” a photographic image on a background, but while projection continued to develop, fixing eluded them. In the 1790’s, famed English porcelain and glass manufacturer Thomas Wedgwood (1730-1795) used paper and leather coated with silver nitrate to copy profiles and paintings on glass. The Camera Lucida in 1806 developed from the Camera Obscura. This apparatus did not require a darkened environment and employed a prism instead of a lens. Both the scene and the drawing paper could be viewed while sketching.

“Moving pictures” also made a debut during the late eighteenth century. Athanasius Kircher and Johannes Zahn introduced their “Magic Lantern” with several features of modern projectors, including a lens, light source, and image holder. The system used light projected through a slide with two images. The original moved manually on the apparatus by levers or a crank to give an illusion of final image motion. Belgian born scientist Etienne Gaspard Robert (1763-1837), known as Robertson, experimented with optics and chemistry. His Phantascope employed an Argand oil lamp to provide a brighter flame than previous magic lantern salons in Paris.

Peep Shows provided a popular diversion in the streets and fairgrounds during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The showman brought a large wooden box on wheels with a covering blanket attached to provide a darkened background, under which the viewer looked through a lens at scenes let down by strings. The showman provided a lively commentary along the way for his patron’s entertainment. These views usually depicted sensational contemporary events.

The First Photographs

French chemist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1767-1833) experimented with lithography in an attempt to reproduce permanent images on a medium through photochemical methods as early as 1816. Within his wooden camera, he developed landscape scenes on plates coated with light sensitive materials after an exposure that lasted for many hours. The processing included bitumen of Judea, chloride of gold, and copper and glass plates. A landscape made from the window of his house in 1826 is the world’s earliest surviving photograph. Niépce’s search for better lenses to reduce exposure time led him to Daguerre, a contemporary innovator.

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), a gifted creator of illusionist stage sets and decorations opened his Diorama in the popular Paris theatre district on July 11, 1822. His scenic painting and ingenious lighting effects gave an illusion of a living picture. Transitions of time, weather, and other pictorial elements unfolded in front of the audience to musical accompaniment. The silently rotating viewing salon provided a new scene after each completed cycle.

Daguerre began photographic experiments with phosphorescent paints to augment the illusions of his Diorama. He improved on the optics of the centuries old Camera Obscura with the aid of Charles Chevalier, a Parisian optician. In the course of their acquaintanceship, Chevalier brought Daguerre and Niépce together in 1829, starting a brilliant partnership that eventually rocked the world with its revolutionary results. The partners made their avowed goal the development of a commercially viable photographic process. Niépce did not live to see its fruition but Daguerre went on to discover the first practical photographic method using iodine and mercury on metallic silver-surfaced plates. The image transferred directly onto the final plate without the intervening negative that we know today.

Working independently in England, philosopher and European traveller William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) invented negative to positive photography about 1833. Unsatisfied with the Camera Obscura for reproductions of scenes viewed during his travels, Talbot drew on the earlier work of Wedgwood to begin his study of light sensitive chloride on paper. He had his estate carpenter construct a tiny two-inch cubic wooden box dubbed by Fox’s wife a “mousetrap”. In this, he installed the lens and imaging paper. The Mousetrap Camera took hours to expose the negative. Removing a small cork on top enabled Talbot to periodically check its progress. The resulting negative, when exposed in direct contact with a piece of sensitized paper, produced a positive print. The developing process involved a glass tray, a horsehair brush, silver nitrate salt, a balance scale, and writing paper on which the negative developed. The earliest surviving negative is an image of Talbot’s latticed window. The inventor called his reproductions “photogenic drawings”, the progenitor of photographs on paper. He presented a dissertation on “Some Account of the Act of Photographic Drawing” to the Royal Society at London in 1839.

Global Reaction

In Paris, Daguerre’s first attempt to sell his direct-print invention privately in 1838 proved unsuccessful. He then approached influential physicist Dominique Francois Jean Arago and revealed the secret details of his process. On January 7, 1839, Arago reported on the invention to the French Academy of Sciences without stating all the details of Daguerre’s camera. General word of the invention spread instantaneously throughout the world sometimes drawing disbelief, and at other times claims of prior invention. The French Government acquired Daguerre’s process, providing the inventor and Niépce’s son with lifelong pensions, then on August 19, 1839 France beneficently revealed the details of photographic reproduction as a gift to the world, prompting feverish global experimentation and entrepreneurship to develop and market the product. The day of international interest in photography had begun, but it took a decade for wide dispersal.

The Daguerreotype

During this earliest era of photography from the 1840’s to the 1860’s, the pictures all went by the name of daguerreotypes named for the inventor. Photographers employed the Daguerre process of a direct print on a copper plate coated with a layer of polished silver, sensitized immediately before the exposure with iodine vapour creating light sensitive silver iodide. After taking the picture, the plate developed with mercury vapour then formed a white amalgam with the liberated silver. The image fixed on the plate with sodium thiosulfate removing any undeveloped silver oxide. The most popular quarter-plate size measured 3-1/4 by 4-1/4 inches. A magnet held to the back identifies this type.

In 1839 the French Giroux Daguerreotype Camera held the distinction of being the first commercially manufactured and marketed camera. This wooden box measured about 18” square by 12” high. The lens held by a copper casing projected the image directly onto the chemically coated metal plate inside. The manufacturer marketed this camera and complete developing system as a package in a portable trunk. An accompanying instruction manual provided schematic drawings of the camera and its use.

About 1840, the first all-metal cased camera came from Voigtlander & Sohn of Braunschweig, Germany. This sleek cigar-shaped copper casing that looks somewhat like a telescope, stood on a one-foot tripod of the same metal. The camera came with the first lens allowing sufficient light for portraits, acting fifteen times faster than Giroux’s. This lens invented by Joseph Petzeval became the standard for portrait photography for nearly fifty years. The pictures from the Voigtland camera printed on circular daguerreotype plates, but the Petzeval lens used later in other cameras produced standard straight-edged copies.

In 1840, Parisian optician Charles Chevalier, Daguerres’s associate, improved on the Giroux Camera making his collapsible to just under four inches. He fitted the lens with a prism that reversed the orientation of the image and the glass could be reconfigured for either near or distant landscapes or portraits. The Nouvel Appareil Gaudin came onto the market about 1841, and was sold as a complete system for producing daguerreotypes and packaged to be portable for field work. This had a fixed-focus recessed lens, and a disk with various sized apertures. A patch of black cloth served as the shutter when draped over the lens.

Enterprising manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic rushed to supply photographic equipment. The immediate extensive commerce in hardware and chemicals became the newest exports and imports between countries.

American Cameras

The first United States patent for a camera went to Alexander W. Wolcott of Boston, Massachusetts in 1840. Instead of a lens, this featured a concave mirror to focus the image on a daguerreotype plate. About 1842, John Plumbe, of Boston invented his Plumbe Daguerreotype Camera, a wooden, sliding box focus apparatus that produced pictures measuring 2-3/4 by 3-1/4 inches. He set up the first chain store operation in America by hiring studio operators for branch locations in many cities. Plumbe provided each with a complete kit for taking and developing the picture.

Another camera came onto the market with a sloping bevelled body producing the popular size of picture and smaller as desired. This first camera with a focusing bellows came from W. & W. H. Lewis Company of New Windsor, New York about 1851. In a further innovation, special paints appeared on the market for hand colouring the daguerreotypes.

The Family Picture

Studios sprouted up in the major cities of Europe and North America in short order during the 1840’s and the horse-and-buggy drive to the photographer became a popular outing. A considerable number of the younger Long Point Settlers born in the 1770-1800 period survived into this age of popular picture taking.

For the occasion, the family primped and polished then dressed in their Sunday best for the occasion. Often they brought to the studio their favourite object to hold during the sitting—a fan, a book, or a Bible. Later, some even held a picture of a deceased family member. A proud grandparent had their first grandchild in their lap.

In the first decade of the camera, the sitting time for a portrait took about sixty seconds, a rather long period for the subjects to remain absolutely still. To steady the sitters, the studio operator provided a headrest behind the chair. Another interesting studio standard came about to draw the wandering attention of children. The photographer had a “birdie” on his camera that tweeted and even fluttered its tail when he squeezed an air bulb attached to a slender tube. This gave rise to the expression “watch the birdie” in a picture taking session.

If more than one copy was desired, the subjects had to continue to sit for each, making the process tedious. In the later 1850’s, professional photographers switched quickly from daguerreotypes to the talbotype negative later described, which allowed multiple prints from a single exposure.

Pictures on Paper

English inventor William Henry Fox Talbot’s processes of taking a negative then printing the picture on paper developed more slowly than Daguerre’s. In 1841, Talbot applied for a patent on the invention he called a “calotype”, calo being the Greek word for beautiful. These pictures also gained the appellation of “talbotypes” named for the inventor. The image exposed on a paper negative which then made direct contact with chemically coated writing paper for the final print. Over time, Talbot improved his chemicals to reduce the necessary exposure from the previously required long hours. In 1843, he began waxing the negative to increase transparency and used “hypo” fluid to fix the negative image on the paper. These early photographs lacked detail and appeared rough. In 1844, Talbot wrote “The Pencil of Nature” to promote his work, and this volume provided a model for future photographically illustrated books. Others improved on Talbot’s methods as a highly advantageous method of book illustration during the late 1850’s.

Improving the Negative-Positive System

Experimentation with optics improved the camera lens during the 1840’s. The Achsomatic Landscape Lens introduced by Jamin, a Paris optician in 1845 became the standard French landscape lens. This sported an aperture stop a short distance in front of the optical glass to remove coma, the spherical aberration of non-axial rays. To be less technical, this controlled the diameter of the dots making up the image.

In 1850, Louis Désiré-Evrard made an advance in printing paper with coatings that overcame the porosity. This allowed better image detail for the talbotype method. A year later, Fred Scott Archer published practical directions for using collodion on glass as a negative. His innovation produced a direct positive ambrotype, with the advantage of faster exposure and higher quality. Evrard’s albumen coated paper used in combination with the collodion glass (wet-plate) negative caught on as the predominant system used by professional photographers for multiple copies of a single picture. Later used in a superior negative process, collodion became the preferred emulsion material. Sometimes the ambrotype itself was backed with black cloth or paper and framed.

Tintypes

The more known tintypes, also called ferrotypes came from the French laboratory of Adolph Marten in 1853 as a variation on the Daguerreotype collodion positive process, using a black enamelled tin plate coated with silver. Made readily available, and reasonably priced, this achieved worldwide popularity by 1860. The relatively simple procedure enabled an itinerant photographer to prepare, expose, and finish a positive within a matter of minutes, and with no need of a studio.

Photographers began travelling into the field with their kit of camera, tripod, plates, processing equipment, chemistry, and portable darkroom set-up. For a quarter of a dollar, anyone could have his or her portrait taken. The photographer placed his outfit on a stand or rock, then put his hands inside the “darkroom” box to sensitize the plate, after which he quickly transferred it into the camera while still moist for optimum exposure speed. After the sitting, the picture developed rapidly.

Carte-de-Visite

This small 2-1/2” by 4-1/2” paper photo on cardboard back found vogue from 1860 to 1900, frequently inscribed with the photographer’s name and city on the back. Rounded cornered cartes began about 1865. It’s larger cousin measured 4-1/4” by 6-1/2” and ran from 1866 to the turn of the century. Narrow gold borders and a lightweight white backing mark the early period down to 1880 after which the borders became wider and the mount heavier with variations in colour.

The Triumph of Photography on Paper

Improving and simplifying the whole photographic process so that anyone could take a picture became the object of several innovators including Rochester’s George Eastman (1854-1932), but the labour and materials for developing the negatives then printing the positives on paper, kept the whole process as the preserve of the professionals. Eastman endeavoured to separate the actual taking of the picture from the developing process. In June 1888, he introduced his “amazingly simple” Kodak camera and priced it at a level affordable to most. People took their own pictures on the supplied roll of film negatives then sent the entire camera to Kodak for developing and printing. The pictures on coated paper, negatives, and camera replenished with more film came back for more photo sessions.

After fifty years of development in the industry, entrepreneur George Eastman finally made photography available to everyone, revolutionizing the process. Soon corner drug stores started acting as Kodak representatives. Later the film rolled into casings to be taken out of the camera for developing. Cameras, reduced in size, and rolls of film became a household fixture and a “must pack” item for vacations.

The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film is located at 900 East Avenue, Rochester, New York 14607-2298. The Society sponsors films, tours, exhibits, lectures, newsletters, archives, and displays relating to the history of photography. Memberships are available by writing to the George Eastman House.