PHOTOGRAPHY GETS BORN

ART 100UNDERSTANDING VISUAL CULTURE

Module 4.1

The origins of the “camera”

These diagrams are two early depictions of the workings of the “camera obscura” (dark room”), in which an external image enters a darkened chamber through a pinhole opening and appears upside down on the opposite wall.

The original “camera” is as big as a walk-in closet!

Slowly the camera obscura gets smaller and more portable. Here it has contracted to the size a small cabinet with legs.

The origins of the “camera”

Gradually it shrinks to a tabletop apparatus, and finally, to the size of a small box.

The origins of the “camera”

With the room-size camera obscura now contracted into a small box, the pinhole replaced with a lens that permits focusing, and a mirror installed to reverse the image, all that remains is to find a way of making the reflected image permanent.

The physics and optics of the camera are put together first, but the chemistry remains to be cracked.

As often happens in the history of technology, multiple competing solutions appear at more or less the same time.

It turns out that a number of alternative chemical solutions to the problem are developed.

Use these links to see some of the possibilities that were explored by early photographers: http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/1_early/1_early

_photography_-_processes.htm http://photographymuseum.org/primer.html http://www.birrcastle.com/history/photograp

hicTechniques.asp#

Today some photographers still enjoy experimenting with different techniques from the 19th century.

http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes

http://imsc.usc.edu/haptics/LostandFound/early.html

This link shows how the different kinds of 19th photographs have aged differently, detailing how these photographs (which are stored in many libraries and archived collections) may appear today and can be properly classified. This is the kind of information that people who work closely with historical objects have in mind.

http://www.lib.ua.edu/libraries/hoole/collections/PhotographTypesatTheW.S.HooleSpecialCollectionsLibrary.htm

The dominant technology is France is invented by Niepce in conjunction with Daguerre.

Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, View from the Window at Le Gras, c. 1826, heliograph

“the first photograph”

Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, View from the Window at Le Gras, c. 1826, sketch by Helmut Gernsheim

Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826, 1952 print

Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826, 2002 print

HTTP://WWW.HRC.UTEXAS.EDU/EXHIBITIONS/PERMANENT/WFP/

“daguerreotype”

Early daguerreotypes

View of San Francisco,1848

Early daguerreotypes

Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, 1848

Early daguerreotypes

The Barton family dog, Nero, 1848Group of 10 unidentified boys,Date unknown

In England, a competing process was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. He called his process the “calotype.”

Talbot, Bust of Patroclus, 1839

Talbot, Articles of Glass, 1839

Books in a Library

Talbot, “The Haystack,” 1839

Nadar’s studio, 35 boulevard des Capucines

Gaspard Félix Tournachon, “Nadar”

Daumier, “Nadar, elevating the status of photography to an art,” May 1862

Nadar, Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt

Disdéri, Portrait of Rosa Bonheur, c. 1871

Disdéri and the carte de visite, uncut sheet of cartes-de visite of Sarah Bernhardt

Queen Victoria in carte-de-visite format

Disdéri, Unidentified Ballerina, uncut sheet of carte-de-visite photographs

Disdéri, Self Portrait