#1 BEGINNING OF PHOTOGRAPHY

BEGINNING OF PHOTOGRAPHY

As you know, art can take on many forms. Ancient cultures began working with various mediums to create art and as they became more sophisticated, so did their work. You most often think of art as consisting of paintings, sculptures, and architecture. These were just about the only art forms until around 150 years ago when advances in photography made it possible to duplicate images that once were only enjoyed by the human eye.

OBJECTIVES

Explain the origins of photography.
Explain the role of painters in the development of photography.
Identify stages in the development of early photography.
Discuss the role of photography in war journalism.

VOCABULARY

PRECURSOR TO PHOTOGRAPHY

The word "camera" in Latin means room or chamber. And "obscura" means dark or obscure, so the camera obscura was a dark room or a small dark box.

As far back as ancient China, people knew how to project an image of the world onto a flat surface. This is because light rays travel in a straight line. When those rays bounce off a bright subject outside and then pass through the small hole in thin material they cross and are transformed into an upside down image on a flat surface held parallel to the hole.

In the 1600s, artists such as Jan Vermeer (remember the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring) may have used a device called the camera obscura that operated on this principle to help them more accurately depict their subjects. The word "camera" in Latin means room or chamber, and "obscura" means dark or obscure, so the camera obscura was a dark room or a small dark box.

Read the article at the following website: Camera Obscura

Do you believe Vermeer used the camera obscura as an aid in his painting?

The Development of the Camera

The problem with the images created by the camera obscura was that they weren't permanent. In 1816, a man named Niépce needed a way to make lithographs. He placed sheets of silver salts coated paper, which would blacken with daylight, at the back of a camera obscura. In this manner he managed to produce the first image of nature, but the image vanished because the coated paper eventually becomes completely black in broad daylight. It took him another ten years to work out this problem. Below is a link to the image of what scholars believed to be the first photograph ever, taken from Niépce's window.

First photograph ever taken

In 1839, "two remarkable processes that would revolutionize our perceptions of reality were announced separately in London and Paris; both represented responses to the challenge of permanently capturing the fleeting images reflected into the camera obscura."(Naomi Rosenblum, A World History of Photography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1997.) The first of these processes was developed by a French artist named Louis J. M. Daguerre, who had worked with Niépce to perfect his techniques. His process was "a unique, unduplicatable, laterally reversed monochrome picture on a metal plate that was called a daguerreotype." (Rosenblum, 1997)

Here is an example of a daguerreotype, made between 1851 and 1860.

"The other system produced an image on paper that was also monochromatic and tonally as well as laterally reversed — negative." (Rosenblum, 1997.) This system, developed by William Henry Talbot, involved placing the negative against a chemically treated surface that was then exposed to sunlight. The negative image was transferred in reverse. The final result was a picture that looked like the real thing. Although Talbot's negative-positive process was initially less popular than Daguerre's method because of high fees resulting from a patent of his product, Talbot's system ultimately proved to be "the basis for all substantive developments in photography." (Rosenblum, 1997.)

LOUIS DAGUERRE, INVENTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Louis Daguerre (1789-1851)

This photograph is of Louis Daguerre (1789-1851), the inventor of the first practical process of photography. Daguerre sold his invention to the French government, and it was made public in 1839. Almost immediately, "daguerreotypes" were being made worldwide. The photograph above was made from a daguerreotype.

Visit the website Invention of Photography and go to page four to learn more about Daguerre.

While Daguerre made "daguerreotypes", William Henry Talbot's photographs were called "calotypes".

Notes

Go to the American Museum of Photography website and read the entries on the following processes. Make notes on each of the processes in your online notes. Don't forget to save your work:

albumen prints
calotypes
daguerreotype
tintypes
wet plate

Study the History of Photography Timeline to trace the development of photography.

PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART

Photography represented a new way of looking at reality. Two things immediately set photography apart from other arts:

immediacy — a sense of capturing a single moment in time
details — including those not planted by the photographer

Do you remember the attention to detail that Renaissance artists paid in their works of art? For them, the accurate representation of reality was extremely important. This is why they studied anatomy, perspective, proportion, and the play of light and shadow. Remember the term "verisimilitude," meaning truthful? Verisimilitude was the goal of these artists. Although styles changed, this desire for realistic representation did not disappear.

As interest in science and exploration increased, realistic depictions became even more important. In order to study botany, biology and natural phenomena, accurate representations were necessary. The landscape artists may have romanticized their landscapes, but you can be sure that the topography and other natural elements were portrayed in a recognizable manner.

Look at the details of the tree, the water and the land in this painting by English painter John Constable from 1831. In spite of the Romantic elements, much attention has been paid to a realistic depiction.

Notes

Review this image, Constable, and describe the aspects that have verisimilitude.

By the 1800s, society was ready for the advent of photography. There were artists who looked down upon photography as an inferior art, but others found it useful as a memory aid for their painting, and photographers certainly looked to painters for guidance on how to compose their pictures. In addition, explorers, scientists, archaeologists, and many others enthusiastically responded to this new technology.

Photographic Portraits

Union soldiers guarding the Potomac River in 1861 by George Barnard (Library of Congress)..

Today we are used to having our pictures taken in the blink of an eye — sometimes it even happens without our even realizing it has happened. In the nineteenth century, however, taking a picture, or having one's picture taken, was a laborious process. The photographer had to prepare the plate, arrange the subject, take the photo, and then develop the plate right away. Cameras were big and bulky, and photographers had to bring their own darkroom with them.

Exposure time took almost a half an hour. No wonder people never smile in those old pictures!

Notes

Go to the website Historic Photographs read the introductory text, and then choose two of the portraits to review further.

WARTIME PHOTOGRAPHY

The real power and potential of photography was finally realized when it was used to document two nineteenth century wars: The Crimean War in Europe and The Civil War in the United States. Before these wars, photography was mainly a medium for taking portraits.

"Battle of Antietam — Army of the Potomac: Gen. Geo. B. McClellan, comm., Sept. 17' 1862 …”

by Kurz & Allison (Library of Congress)

It is difficult for us to imagine the carnage that ensued during the Civil War. One battle in particular, the Battle of Antietam, was the deadliest day in the Civil War. In our memory, we have the tragedy of September 11, 2001, when about 3,000 people died. But in the Battle of Antietam, nearly eight times as many soldiers were killed or wounded in that one day. More men died in that battle than in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish American War combined.

The casualties at the Battle of Antietam totaled more than 26,000 Union and Confederate men. And that's only about half of the casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg, which lasted three days.

Mathew Brady

Matthew Brady (Library of Congress)

Mathew Brady was the foremost photographer of the Civil War. He learned about photography from Samuel Morse (inventor of the telegraph), who had introduced photography to America. In 1844, Brady opened a studio in New York where he was widely admired for his portraits of famous people. In 1856, he moved to Washington, D.C., so that he could photograph the nation's leaders and foreign visitors. He had a strong sense of history, so when the Civil War began, he left behind his comfortable living and took a corps of photographers to document the war.

The photograph Mathew Brady of Company "A" 9th Indiana Infantry shows photographer Mathew Brady (at the nearest tree) with General Ambrose E. Burnside (reading newspaper).

With the onset of the war, photography became an important method for conveying information and emotion. War had never been recorded with such power and detail. At Antietam, the first battlefield photograph was taken before the dead were buried. Brady's exhibit of photographs, The Dead of Antietam, in New York shocked civilians. A reporter for the New York Times wrote:

"The dead of the battle-field come up to us very rarely, even in dreams. We see the list in the morning paper at breakfast, but dismiss its recollection with the coffee... Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it."

Another famous photograph from the Civil War is A Harvest of Death , Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863, by photographer Timothy O'Sullivan. It was printed by Alexander Gardner and appeared in his book Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War.

The ambrotype process was patented in 1854 and enjoyed great popularity for a few short years, and again during the Civil War. It produced pictures on glass instead of metal plates. Like the earlier daguerreotype, each image is unique, made one-at-a-time in the camera. The glass is flowed with a sticky material known as iodized collodion. It is then sensitized by being dipped into a bath of silver nitrate, and exposed in the camera while still wet. A chemical developer is used to bring out the image. The glass plate is then backed with black material-paint, cloth or paper-and furnished in a case similar to those used for daguerreotypes. The ambrotype process was marketed as an improvement, because the finished image lacked the glittery, elusive reflective quality of daguerreotypes and was therefore easier to view. The detail and tonal range, however, tend to be less impressive than in the earlier process. (" A Primer on Processes")

LET'S REVIEW!

Before going on to the practice problems, make sure you understand the main points of this lesson.

Photography was both an art form and a method for documenting people and events
Louis Daguerre developed the first widely used photographic process
Daguerreotypes were laterally reversed and unique, meaning that only one could be made at a time
William Henry Talbot's system, which involved making a negative first and then creating a positive image from the negative, is the system that came to be used later
Photography was used to make portraits throughout the nineteenth century, but it showed its real power and potential when it was used to document the death and suffering of war

Complete the Quiz before moving on.

#1 BEGINNING OF PHOTOGRAPHY

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