Part One: Photography s
Double Invention
The Second Invention
of Photography
(1839-1854)
•  1839- Daguerre s daguerreotype process
announced in France
•  Daguerre also patents his process in England
•  1841- Talbot patents his calotype process in England
•  Development of reliable technology- cameras,
equipment for making and developing the
photographs themselves
•  Mass market of consumers- there had to be
someone to buy or use these photographs once they
were taken.
•  A network for the production and consumption of
these images.
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Photography thought of as an art-science
Used for a variety of purposes including:
Record keeping (Talbot s Articles of China)
Biology (Anna Atkins)
Anthropology and medicine
Recording events (W. E. Kilburn, Southworth and Hawes)
War photography (Mexican American War)
Expeditionary and travel photography (Du Camp)
Historic Monuments Commission (von Martens,
Baldus, Le Secq)
•  Portraiture (Southworth and Hawes, Hill and Adamson,
post mortem portraits)
Anna Atkins cyanotype photogram British Algae October 1843
Anna Atkins, Poppy, c. 1852. Victoria and Albert Museum
Anna Atkins and Ann Dixon
Equisetum sylvaticum,
1853 From the book: Cyanotypes
of British and Foreign Ferns
Anna Atkins
Anna Atkins
•  We consider Anna Atkins to be one of, if not the first, woman
photographer.
•  She was in a unique position to learn these photographic
techniques.
•  She (1799-1871) was the daughter of a British scientist.
•  Anna received a scientific education from her father. This put her
in a unique position to have a career in the sciences as a woman.
•  She became a scientific illustrator.
•  She drew pictures of shells to illustrate a book cataloging all
different kinds of shells.
•  Her father was a friend of both Sir John Herschel and William
Henry Fox Talbot so Anna was aware of the advances in
photography that both of those men were involved in.
•  She used Herschel s cyanotype process to illustrate a book
about British algae
•  She made photograms
•  What is a photogram?
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photographer unknown, General Wool and Staff,
Calle Real, Saltillo, Mexico, c. 1847, daguerreotype
Unidentified photographer Amputation, Mexican American
War, Cerro Gordo 1847 Daguerreotype Amon Carter
Museum
•  The Mexican American War- 1846-48- was the first
photographed war
•  50 daguerreotypes remain today
•  No photos of battles scenes, mostly soldiers photographed
before they left for war or when they were in encampments.
•  After the battles, they photographed war heroes, still long
exposures.
•  During the Mexican American war there was no mechanism to
get the images back to the public in the United States...but after
this war when people saw the images, they started to want more
immediate information.
•  So within a decade mechanisms started to exist to transport
both text and images describing distant hostilities, wars and
battles, back to the people who cared.
•  Because of the length of the exposure this group had to pause
so that their picture could be taken- even so there is some
blurring on the left side of the image.
•  Today we expect to see events as they are happening.
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W. E. Kilburn, The Great Charist Meeting on Kennington
Common, April 10, 1848. Daguerreotype.
Recording Events
•  In the early days of photography both the calotype
and the daguerreotype were too slow to be able to
record rapid action, but that didn t stop people from
trying to show something of events that happened.
•  For instance they might show what a city looked like
after a big fire, the aftermath of a tragic event, or
before and after shots of a battle.
•  And here we see one of the limitations of early
photography.
•  Lithographers and illustrators could make it look more
dramatic by drawing an close up view or by making
the people in their image have a very dramatic or
emotional expression.
•  Early photographers couldn t capture that kind of
emotion or drama since they needed more time to
take a picture.
Recording Events
•  In 1848 a group of working class people called the
Charists met to seek political and economic reforms.
This would have been a very dangerous and
emotional event. These people were risking
retribution by the government who didn t want to
hear their list of complaints.
•  But what do we see when we look at this image?
•  Not much...just a big group of people, and mostly we
see their backs!
•  So we don t get the emotional impact of the situation.
Travel Photography
•  Another early use for photography that developed was for
expeditionary and travel photography.
•  Both American and European countries were expanding their
borders at this time, colonizing land to increase their colonial
holdings.
•  They sent out big expeditionary parties to explore foreign
territories.
•  Very quickly photographers became part of the teams sent out
to explore.
•  People recognized that photographers could make records of
places that were too dangerous or too far away for the average
person to travel to.
•  People were fascinated with Egypt at this time and Francois
Arago (remember him, the man who helped Daguerre announce
his process to the world) urged the government to use
daguerreotypes to document Egyptian hieroglyphs to study
them.
Travel Photography
•  What happened instead was that photographers
photographed the ruins in Egypt in the same way that
artists at this time had painted them, as picturesque
ruins. These views of foreign ruins and foreign lands
became wildly popular with European viewers.
•  Not all photographers emphasized this nostalgic
view of foreign places. Maxime Du Camp (18221894) was an amateur Egyptologist and he traveled
with the writer Gustave Flaubert to Egypt and the
Holy Land.
•  Du Camp had been hired by the French government
to record Egypt s monuments.
•  Again we see Du Camp turn to photography, still a
relatively new medium, as a way to scientifically
record the world he saw around him.
Maxime Du Camp,
Western most Colossus,
Great Temple, Abu Simbel,
1850.
Here is a quote from Maxime Du Camp:
•  "I had realized on my previous travels
that I wasted much valuable time trying
to draw buildings and scenery I did not
care to forget... I felt I needed an
instrument of precision to record my
impressions..."
Maxime du Camp the Colossus of Abu Simbel Nubia 1850
Du Camp comments on how difficult
photography was in those days:
•  "Learning photography is an
easy matter. Transporting the
equipment by mule, camel or
human porters is a serious
problem."
Maxime Du Camp, Egypte Moyenne, Le Sphinx
1849
Maxime du
Camp,
Second Pylon
of the Great
Temple of
Isis at Philae,
1849
Maxime du Camp Baalbeck (Héliopolis) Colonnade
du Temple di Soleil Colonnade of the Temple of
the Sun 1850
Maxime Du Camp, Colossus of Memnon,1850,
Salt print from paper negative.
(human figure gives sense of scale)
Maxime Du Camp
•  Du Camp chose more neutral views of the
Egyptian monuments than the other
photographers who were creating picturesque
or nostalgic views.
•  He also accurately measured the monuments
as well as photographing them.
•  He also photographed contemporary Arab
culture but these were not big sellers.
•  After this project he gave up photography and
turned to literature instead.
Frederick von Martens, Panorama of Paris, c. 1846, daguerreotype
Here Frederick von Martens (1809-1875) takes a
panoramic view of Paris- down the Seine to the
Cathedral Notre Dame.
Von Martens invented a rotating camera which would make
a long, thin daguerreotype image of as the camera
(called the Megaskop) rotated and recorded this
wide angle view of the city.
Historic Monuments Commission
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People were especially interested in recording old buildings in cities.
At this point, cities are expanding. The look of the countryside is radically changing with the
building of industrial factories, people are worried that things are changing in their world.
And so their thoughts turn to trying to preserve the past before it gets wiped out entirely.
A governmental group called the Historic Monuments Commission was formed in the
French government and their job was to make lists of all the historical buildings in France
and to see what kind of repairs they needed.
The French were very proud of these old gothic and medieval buildings- gothic cathedralsand they felt they represented France s cultural achievements.
The Historic Monuments Commission had a choice. They could have hired illustrators to
draw these monuments or they could hire photographers. They chose photographers, but it
is interesting that they did not choose the French form of photography- the daguerreotypebut instead they chose the British version- the calotype.
They did this for a number of reasons. They felt that the daguerreotype was too cold, too
metallic. They liked the softness and nostalgia of the prints produced from calotype
negatives.
The prints from calotype negatives are also bigger than daguerreotypes and you can make
multiple prints from the negative.
So the Historic Monuments Commission decided to hire several photographers to document
these famous architectural monuments.
Edouard Baldus, Hippolyte Bayard, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, O. Mestral
Hippolytye Bayard, Excavation for rue Tholoze, 1842, paper negative
Edouard Baldus (1813-1889) of the Cloister of Saint-Trophîme, Arles, 1851.
Partly hand-painted paper print
We will call this a combination print.
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Baldus wanted to take a photograph of a particular hallway in the
cloister.
However the camera could not cover all of what he wanted to shoot.
So Baldus came up with a clever way to solve his solution.
He made 10 negative images of the scene and then printed them.
Then he carefully joined them together and retouched the places where
the photographs came together so it looked all perfect.
For the ceiling he actually used a negative print which he joined with all
of the other prints.
So the end product was much larger than a normal photograph and it
covered much more area than a camera at that time could.
We call this combination printing...combining different negatives to
make one finished print, which is not representative of what the camera
sees of the world.
The photographer takes part of one negative and puts it with other
parts of other negatives or combines different negatives into one new
view of the world.
Combination prints
•  Combination prints bring up the idea of
truth in photography.
•  Should a photographer be restricted to
only photographing what he or she sees
through his or her lens?
•  Or can they be creative?
Portraiture
•  In 1839 when photography was invented most people
in North America or Europe had never seen a visual
representation of their own body.
•  By the mid-1850s photography was an accepted part
of everyday society.
•  By 1860 (just twenty years after photography was
invented) it is estimated that tens of millions of
daguerreotypes had been taken in the United States
alone.
•  Many of those were portrait photographs, taken of
members of middle class society.
Unidentified artist poses by a fellow daguerreotypist with the camera they used to ply their trade,
1850
Unknown photographer, Jabez Hogg Making a Portrait in Richard Beard’s Studio
1843, daguerreotype
La Daguerreotypomanie, December 1839, Lithograph by T. Maurisset
Honore Daumier, Nouveau procede employe puir obtenier des poses gracieuses, c. 1856,
Lithograph on paper, National Gallery of Canada/ Muses des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottawa.
Robert Cornelius, Seated Couple, c. 1840. Floyd and Marion Rinhart Collection,
Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus, Ohio.
Three Girls, Berlin. Daguerreotype, 1843
Jean-Francois- Antoine Claudet, the Geography Lesson, 1851,
stereoscopic daguerreotype.
The Franklin Fire Hose Co. Utica NY, hand colored ambrotype, 1858
Eugene Durier, Académie de l Album Delacroix réunissant, 1853-54,
paper print Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
Post Mortem Photography
•  Another market for portrait photographs was that of post-mortem
photographs (taking pictures of people after they die.)
•  In this interim period when photography was becoming an
ingrained part of our society, many people still did not have
photographs of all their loved ones.
•  So when a family member died people felt that it was better to
take a photograph of the dead body than to not have any image
at all.
•  And remember in these days, death was much more familiar to
people.
•  Back then, people usually died in their houses and the body was
prepared and taken care of in the home until it was time to bury
them, so people were used to being around death.
•  Infant mortality was very high in these times.
•  Many children died before they turned 5 and so many of these
post-mortem photographs are of children.
A. Le Blondel, c. 1850, post-mortem picture, daguerreotype
photographer unknown, Father and Mother Holding a Dead Child, c. 1850-1860s,
daguerretype, Strong Museum, Rochester, New York
African American Daguerreotypists
•  At this time daguerreotype studios were
popping up in every community in the
United States.
•  We see African American
daguerreotypists who photographed
both black and white customers.
•  We know of at least 50 black
daguerreotypists who worked between
the 1840s and 1850s.
Frederick Douglas, 1847, daguerreotype
Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement,
which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War.
Wilhelm and Friedrich Langenheim, African Youth, 1848
Slave and child, Montgomery, R. G. active 1840s 1848 sixth plate daguerreotype
This is a visual record of slavery, a slave holding a white child.
Portrait of an unidentified African Amercan Woman
The Daguerreotype Portrait
•  In the beginning daguerreotypes were preferred to calotypes.
•  The daguerreotypes had more detail and people enjoyed
looking at them with magnifying glasses to see the detail.
•  The first daguerreotype studio opened in the early 1841 in
England.
•  Soon these studios added painted backdrops and studio props
like furniture.
•  Photographers arranged their sitters in pleasing arrangements
and used props to create narrative scenarios in the
photographs.
•  So they might have columns, chairs, tables, rugs, books and
flowers.
•  Some studios offered clothes to rent so one could look one’s
best, also hair stylists to help create a pleasing public persona.
•  Although people were fascinated with the daguerreotypes, they
got tired of the metallic look and tried to apply color to the
images.
Southworth and Hawes
•  Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah
Johnson Hawes (1808-1901).
•  In partnership from 1843 through 1863, Southworth &
Hawes took artistic portraiture to a new level beyond
common commercial photography.
•  In service of an elite and famous clientele, they
worked with large 8x6-inch plate sizes, technically
more challenging but aesthetically more beautiful.
•  As their unique daguerreotypes attest, Southworth &
Hawes focused lavish attention on national and
international celebrities who traveled to their Boston
studio, capturing likenesses in picturesque fashion.
Southworth and Hawes
•  Southworth and Hawes were two photographers who
worked together to create daguerreotype portraits for
over 20 years.
•  They were known to create portraits of the highest
quality
•  They had an upper class clientele and their portraits
were more expensive than most
•  They were known for using skylights in their studios
to create pleasing lighting
•  Their wives worked in the studio helping with
costuming and makeup and retouching and adding
color to the images.
•  They used extra silver in the images to lower the
exposure time and their portraits look more relaxed
because of this.
Southworth and Hawes
•  In many instances, they made multiple exposures,
with significant changes in the position of the sitter
and camera.
•  The clients were given their choice of image, and the
other versions were often retained in the studio.
•  This practice accounts for the survival of such a large
body of Southworth & Hawes’s work and allows one
to appreciate their working method.
•  For their services, Southworth & Hawes demanded a
high fee and never lowered their prices as other
studios did to attract volume business.
•  They made a specialty of large-format plates, which
were the most expensive productions and required
the highest degree of technical and aesthetic skill.
Albert Sands Southworth self portrait 1848 daguerreotype
Writing in the Photographic and Fine Art Journal,
August 1855, the contemporary Philadelphia
daguerreotypist Marcus A. Root paid them this
praise:
•  "Their style, indeed, is peculiar to
themselves; presenting beautiful effects
of light and shade, and giving depth and
roundness together with a wonderful
softness or mellowness. These traits
have achieved for them a high
reputation with all true artists and
connoisseurs."
•  Working in the 8 ½ x 6 ½ inch whole
plate format, their images are brilliant,
mirror-like, and finely detailed.
•  Albert Sands Southworth expressed his
thoughts on what should be the goal of
every photographer: You want to make
a picture so that every time that you
take it up you will see new beauties in
it.
Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, c. 1850, Quarter –plate daguerreotype
Author of Uncle Tom s Cabin
Compare plant to cigarette in next photo….
Southworth and
Hawes, Lola Montez,
1851
Southworth and Hawes (1843 - 1862) (American)
Title
Portrait of a Woman in Nine Oval Views
Date
(1845 - 1861)
Medium Photograph, daguerreotype Medallion Portrait
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm (8.5 in). Width: 165 mm (6.5 in)
Southworth and Hawes, Miss Sarah Hodges of
Salem, Massachusetts ca. 1850.
•  "Learn to look and see the difference
under different lights in the same faces.
Learn to see the fine points in every
face, for the plainest faces in the world
are human faces, belonging to human
beings... "--A. S. Southworth, 1873
Southworth and Hayes
Rollin Heber Neal, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Boston, 1850,
daguerreotype, 8 1/2x 6 ½ inches
Southworth and Hayes
Donald McKay, c1850-1855
Southworth and Hawes
Southworth and Hawes, Post Mortem Child portrait
The Calotype Portrait
•  The calotype portrait never achieved the
commercial popularity of the daguerreotype.
•  Talbot was not able to convince people that
the softness and chiaroscuro style was
preferable to the sharpness and fine detail of
the daguerreotype.
Collen, Henry (1800-1875) Queen Victoria with her daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal,
1844-45. Calotype
Hill and Adamson
•  There were two Scottish photographers who became
very famous for their calotype portraits.
•  David Hill was a painter and in 1843 he decided to
make a huge canvas commemorating the separation
of the Church of Scotland from the Church of
England.
•  With the help of Robert Adamson, they made 400
calotype portraits to work from to include in his
painting.
•  They just kept going with portraits.
•  They posed their subjects outside either in an outdoor
studio in Edinburgh with furnishings made to look like
an interior to have enough light to shoot the photo.
David Octavius Hill standing at the gate to his studio
calotype by Hill & Adamson.
•  The Disruption painting shows the signing of the Act of
Separation and Deed of Demission by members of the Church
of Scotland and the creation of the Free Church of Scotland.
This painting by David Octavius Hill is over 11 feet long and 5 feet high
and includes 457 people, took more than 20 years to paint
This detail from the painting shows Robert Adamson and his camera
This is from a sketch for the painting by Hill
Calotype (salt print)
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Positive/Negative process
Calotype negative is made of paper
It produces a print that is soft
Not a lot of detail
Lots of dramatic shadows
You can see the texture of the paper in the
print, looks more painterly
•  They photographed both the higher society and also
working class people- like the fishermen in
Newhaven.
•  The exposures were as long as one to two minutes.
•  In artistic and literary circles in Britain and France,
these photos were considered the paradigm of
portrait photography.
•  They made use of traditional artistic concepts
regarding arrangement and employed atmospheric
effects to reveal character.
•  Hill and Adamson’s portraits inspired many other
portraitists of that time.
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The Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth
Hill and Adamson, Redding the line (Portrait of James Linton) 1846, calotype
Sandy Linton, His Boat and Bairns
Southworth and Hawes, Elizabeth Johnstone Hall
•  They took a series of portraits in the fishing village of
Newhaven.
•  The fishwives of Newhaven were a common site in
the streets of Edinburgh, walking the couple of miles
from the village with heavy loads of fish - usually
50-100lbs or even more - to sell around the hilly
streets of the city.
•  The fishing community was very much separate from
the rest of the people in the area.
•  They wore very distinctive clothes, with voluminous
striped skirts that protected them from the roughness
of their woven fish baskets and the drips from its
contents.
•  This is an unusual portrait of a working class
community
Hill and Adamson Dr. Alexander Keith c 1843
Hill and Adamson, The Misses Binny and Miss Monro, 1845, calotype
The Scott Monument, Edinburgh, under construction. Late 1844