CHAPTER 1
THE EARLY YEARS: TECHNOLOGY, VISION, USERS 1839-1875
1. In 1839 two remarkable processes revolutionized our perceptions of reality:
a. Where: London and Paris;
b. Challenge: The challenge of permanently capturing the fleeting images
reflected into the camera obscura
c. What is a Camera obsura? A device that projected distant scenes onto a
flat surface. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura
d. The two systems revolutionized our perceptions of reality were:
i. Daguerreotype:
1. A unique, unduplicatable, laterally reversed monochrome
picture on a metal plate
2. It was called a daguerreotype after one of its inventors,
Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (pi. No1).
ii. Calotype, or Talbotype:
1. The other system produced an image on paper that was also
monochromatic tonally as well as laterally reversed.
2. This Calotype or Talbotype was made from a negative.
3. When placed in contact with another chemically treated
surface and exposed to sunlight, the negative image was
transferred in reverse, resulting in a picture with normal
spatial and tonal values.
4. The result of this procedure was called photogenic drawing
which evolved into the calotype, or Talbotype.
5. This process was named after its inventor, William Henry
Fox Talbot (pi. no. 2) (see Profile).
iii. Popularity: For reasons to be examined later in the chapter,
Talbot's negative-positive process initially was less popular than
Daguerre's unique picture on metal, but it was Talbot's system
that provided the basis for all substantive developments in
photography.
2. What prepared the way for photography's acceptance?
Photography appeared and remained viable because:
a. Photography filled cultural and sociological needs that were not being met
by pictures created by hand.
b. Photography was the ultimate response to a social and cultural appetite for
a more accurate and real-looking representation of reality, a need that
had its origins in the Renaissance.
c. Realistic depiction in the visual arts was stimulated and assisted also by
the climate of scientific inquiry that had emerged in the 16th century
and was supported by the middle class during the Enlightenment and the
Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century. Investigations into plant
and animal life on the part of anatomists, botanists, and physiologists
resulted in a body of knowledge concerning the internal structure as well
as superficial appearance of living things, improving artists' capacity to
portray organisms credibly. As physical scientists explored aspects of
heat, light, and the solar spectrum, painters became increasingly
aware of the visual effects of weather conditions, sunlight and
moonlight, atmosphere, and, eventually, the nature of color itself.
3. The artistic evolution toward naturalism in representation:
a. Derived initially from a romantic (Romanticism) view of the wonders of
the universe
b. Art became more scientific as painters began to regard clouds, trees,
rocks, and topography as worthy of close study
c. What better means than the accurate and disinterested "eye" of a
machine, i.e., the camera?
d. The aims of graphic art and the need for photography converged
i. John Constable
1. Observed that "Painting is a science and should be pursued
as an inquiry' into the laws of nature"
2. Voiced a respect for truth that brought into conjunction
the aims of art and science
ii. Gustave Courbet (French Realist)
1. Courbet said it was necessary "to be of one's time," many
artists rejected the old historical themes for new subjects
dealing with mundane events in contemporary life.
2. Renounced traditional subject matter
3. Sought new ways to depict figures in natural and lifelike
poses
4. Capture ephemeral facial and gestural expression
5. To represent effects of actual conditions of light
(illumination)—information that the camera image was
able to record for them soon after the middle of the
century.
4. Subject Matter -- Photographs increasingly came to depict the same kinds of
imagery as:
a. Engravings and lithographs
5. Photography superseded the handmade product because:
a. More accurate in the transcription of detail
b. Less expensive to produce
c. Photography was important in providing factual information
d. Unremitting efforts during the remainder of the century to improve its
procedures and expand its functions.
6. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (March 7, 1765 – July 5, 1833)
a. Most noted as the inventor of photography and a pioneer in the field
b. He is well-known for taking some of the earliest photographs, dating to
the 1820s.
c. He created the first permanent photograph, of the exterior of his home,
around 1826.
d. It was said that he made the first long lasting images in 1824.
e. In 1827, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced the world's first permanent
photograph (known as a Heliograph).
f. His experimentation in photography began in the 1820s
g. Niepce had endeavored to produce an image by exposing a treated metal
plate to light that he subsequently hoped to etch and print on a press.
i. The First Image:
1. An image of a dovecote (pi. no. 6)
2. Exposure that took more than eight hours
ii. When his researches reached a standstill, he formed a partnership
with the painter Daguerre
7. Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
a. Daguerre was a Dioram-ist (The Diorama became one of Europe's most
popular entertainments) and a shrewd entrepreneur.
b. Daguerre's fascination with the problems of Diorama’s, and with the
effects of light in general, is understandable in view of his activities
b. Daguerre obsessed with the idea of making the image seen in the camera
obscura permanent.
c. Achieved a practicable process that he offered to sell in 1838
8. The Daguerreotype
a. Process:
i. Basically, "exposing" a silver-coated copper plate sensitized in
iodine vapor and "developing" its latent image by fuming in
mercury vapor)
9. Daguerreotype Subject Matter
a. The making of inexpensive portraits
ii. Time required to obtain a daguerreotype image ranged from five to
60 minutes —a factor making it impossible to capture true human
appearance, expression, or movement.
iii. The process immediately attracted devotees
b. Monuments and scenery
10. Unprecedented qualities of the Daguerreotype
a. Detail: camera images on close inspection yielded minute details of which
the observer may not have been aware when the exposure was made
b. The seeming fidelity of "the mirror with a memory" to explore its
limitations.
11. Drawbacks of Photography
a. Artistic (Goya, All Paintings & Fragonard, The Swing)
12. Photography’s technical difficulty (at the time)
a. More easily written about than executed
b. The difficulty of transporting unwieldly cameras and equipment to
suitable locales
c. Great expenditure of time and money
13. Photography’s effect on the artworld
a. Photography inventors knew that they were working on a process that
would revolutionize the art world.
b. Within ten years of the introduction of photography, camera images had
taken the place of the etchings, engravings and lithographs of ruins that
tourist traditionally had purchased.
c. During this time there was major in art patronage through the emergence
of a large new audience for pictorial images: The growing middle class
i. This group preferred immediately comprehensible images of a
variety of diverting subjects. Photography appealed enormously to
the public imagination from the start.
ii. The church and noble families diminished in patronage, power
and influence
14. Printmaking:
a. What is Printmaking?
b. To supply the popular demand for such works, engravings and (after 1820)
lithographs portraying anecdotal scenes, landscapes, familiar structures,
and exotic monuments were published as illustrations in inexpensive
periodicals and made available in portfolios and individually without texts.
c. When the photograph arrived on the scene, it capitalized on this
iconographic course, both literally and figuratively, among these graphic
images designed to satisfy middle-class cravings for instructive and
entertaining pictures.
15. Photography’s Effect upon Popular Culture:
a. The Grand Tours which were so popular were illustrated by drawings of
scenes and the "photographic" process would improve the quality and ease
with which these popular holiday memories could be produced.
16. Daguerreotypes
a. Daguerreotypes were the Polaroid of the day, producing a single image
which was not reproducible (unlike the Talbot process)
b. Daguerreotyping remained the process of choice for 20 years
c. Daguerreotype Subject Matter:
i. Usually portraits; the rarer views are much sought-after and
are more expensive.
ii. Documentary images mundane in subject matter and artlessly
organized hastened the renunciation of romantic themes and
bravura treatment of topographical scenes in the graphic arts
iii. Continental landscape was to have for a great many
photographers working between 1850 and 1880, many of
whom continued the tradition begun in the late 18th century of
publishing landscape views.
iv. The rapid commercialization of scenic views and genre
subjects became possible
v. Exotic Places: Little early photography in distant realms
reflected the absence of a large and stable middle class.
d. Process:
i. The portrait process took several minutes and required the
subjects to remain stock still.
ii. Cityscapes did not show any humans due to the long
exposure times all moving objects became invisible.
2. The Daguerreotype in America
a. America quickly proceeded to turn it to commercial advantage.
b. Contributing factors:
i. The sparkling North American light, envied by fog enshrouded
Londoners, was said to have been partly responsible
ii. Popular Culture considered a mirror of reality, the crisp,
realistic detail of the daguerreotype
iii. US society distrusted handmade art as hinting of luxuriousness
iv. US was enamored of almost everything related to practical
science.
1. A picture made by machine could be trusted to never
provide too great artifice
2. Photography would not demonstrate the obvious
provinciality of outlook and training that often
characterized native graphic art at mid-century in the
USA
v. The daguerreotype posed an appealing challenge to a populace
that was upwardly and spatially mobile
vi. Photography was assumed to be a practicable occupation while
on the move.
Photography General Notes
• The most important single development in the 19th C was the discovery and
exploitation of photography and the photographic process.
• Lineage: From the photograph to the stereoscopic image and the moving picture.
• The moving picture: the impact of which is enormous precisely because it unfroze
the 'still' (i.e. still image) .
Novelty
• Photography brought about the awareness between the difference between pictorial
expression and pictorial fact.
◦ Why? Took over the business of visual reporting, the artists suddenly found
themselves absolved from any need of verisimilitude in their expression and
design.
• Presentation and Reevaluation of the Notion of the Past:
◦ Through photographs, it revealed to the public for the first time something of the
actual arts of the past...A reconsideration about the ambiguous notion of the
masterpiece which caused many famous things to fall from grace and visa versa
• Transformation of the Western Notion of 'Beauty'
◦ A re-evaluation of the basic questions about hard-shelled and firmly entrenched
doctrines about both Art and Beauty. This turned mere 'curiosities' or primitive
works into Art.
◦ Beauty, became to be seen in the Western European sense, as no longer the
absolute standard - that it was no more than a peculiarly local prejudice.
• Value to Science and Technology
Photographic forms played an operational role of the greatest importance in the
development of modern science and technology of every kind.
Conclusion
• At last, thanks to the photograph, in art the 'dream' and 'expression' were no longer
required to conform to the informational reportorial demands of the ordinary business of
life.
ROMANTICISM: C. 1750/1815 - 1848
• In England, in particular, a distinction became clearer between those established artists
like West and David, and a new breed of fervently introspective artists, who seemed to
be one-person revolutionaries, probing in the intense truth of their personal beliefs
against what they considered the falsehoods of publicly acceptable traditions.
• Romanticism is a term loosely used to designate numerous and diverse changes in the
arts during a period of more than 100 years, changes that necessarily were in reaction
against Neoclassicism (but not necessarily the classicism or Greece and Rome) or
against what is variously called the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, or 18th century
materialism. In the sense of a personal temperament Romanticism had always existed,
but in the sense of an aesthetic period it meant works of art whose prime impulse and
effect derived form individual rather than collective reactions. The genius whom the
Romantics celebrated was one who refused to conform, who remained defiantly
independent of society, and whose chief virtues were novelty and sincerity. This led
sometimes to bizarre and extravagant projects in which the intention to shock, excite,
and involve struck a melodramatic, almost hysterical note that failed to convince by its
very lack of restraint.
Artist
• The novel figure of artist as alienated individual
Term
• Comes originally form 'romance', meaning a type of long Medieval narrative poem or
story.
• Was adopted from literature - the literary Romantics, i.e., Rousseau ("the father of
Romanticism"), Keats, Poe, etc.
Opening Remarks
• Chronology
Romanticism reached its height in the 1820s.
• Difficulty of Stylistic Characterization
Since the main artistic value was the integrity of personal feelings, every artist was
expected to have a personal style hence, in this period, there is no homogeneity of
style.
• Re-evaluation of Nature
It was discovered that Nature is not a fixed ideal, but a thing to be reconstructed
according to the personal vision of the artist. With this thought begins modernity.
And with this thought modernity ends. Where the pre-modernists had pursued nature
in terms of its omniscience (i.e., that to become one with nature one had to paint like
a god), modernity found its omniscient metaphor in process.
• The many-sided problem of visual truth remains one of the truly fundamental
activities of the 19th C.
• Romanticism has one firm conviction at its center: reality has its identity in the self,
and not in the external man-made world.
• Imagination
Imagination played the dominant role.
Prestige of Romanticism
• Derives first and foremost from its unique power to convey individual feelings.
Aesthetic Debate
• The conflict between the traditional demands upon the artist to make official,
public statements and the personal need to explore a private, irrational world
became ever more acute in the late 18th & early 19th century. It was a dilemma,
which was especially intense in the milieu of British Art. Such a search beyond the
traditional canons of pictorial experience accelerated in the late 18th century and early
19th century.
Difference from Neoclassicism
• Expression
Works are judged not by predetermined rules, but according to the sensibility
conveyed by the individual.
• Imagination
Takes the dominant role from historicism.
• Style
Neoclassicism sought a style of impersonal clarity for the expression of universally
applicable and eternally valid truths - the Romantics sought to express only their
feelings, belief, hopes and fears in all forms.
Relation to Classical Antiquity
• The reputation of the Greeks suffers because of the 19th C reaction against the worship
of things Greek.
Patrons
• Artists worked increasingly for the Middle class audience.
Artists
• Claim artistic autonomy
Novelty
• Artistic Works
◦ Artworks are recognized (once again) as unique individual creations.
• Emotionalism
◦ Romanticism more direct and unrestrained than any other time....sometimes reaching
the over-exaggerated.
• Individuality
◦ Accentuated personal attributes and proclivities
◦ Great insistence on individuality
• Technique
◦ 'Process': the act of making, becomes paramount.
◦ Sketch: new importance given to it.
◦ Free handling of the materials to convey in the most direct manner possible artistic
individuality.
• Independence of Color, Surface, and Form
The main development in painting in the 19th C is toward the independence of these
things.
Themes
• Romantic love.
• Cult of individual feelings.
The call for individual fulfillment.
• Rebellion.
Against established orders (social and political).
• Pursuit of the 'dark-side'.
Nightmares, fantasies, the supernatural, irrationality, general weirdness.
• Nostalgia
◦ Dissatisfaction with the real world.
◦ Fascination with the past, especially the Middle Ages.
Artistic Goals
• Transcendence
◦ Everyday life seems dull and meaningless, repressed and over-rational. They strove
for a better, higher, ideal state of being.
◦ Artists thought that they could transcend logical processes of thought to break
through to states of mind beyond or below conscious control.
• Striving for (artistic) Freedom
Free exercises and expression of individual will and feeling.
• Breaking of Artistic Barriers
◦ Innovation is paramount.
◦ Resisted all rules and regulations.
◦ Preconceived notions 'beauty' or 'decorum' were eliminated - conflicted with
individual 'spontaneity'.
Characteristics
• Color and Technique
Expansion of the role played by color and technique.
• Style:
Highly personal, even eccentric.
• Expression
Paramount
Chapter 2
Antoine Francois Claudet
D. F. Millet
Hermann Gunther Biow
Carl Ferdinand Stelzner
Gustav Oehme
John William Draper
John Plumbe
Francois D'avignon
Albert Sands Southworth And Josiah Johnson Hawes
Thomas Easterly
Henry Collen
William Henry Fox Talbot
David Octavius Hill And Robert Adamson
A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
1839-1890
From that moment onwards, our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus, to contemplate
its trivial image on a metallic plate. A form of lunacy, an extraordinary fanaticism took
hold of these new sun-worshippers.
Charles Baudelaire, 1859
It is required of and should be the aim of the artist photographer to produce in the
likeness the best possible character and finest expression of which that face and figure
could ever have been capable. But in the result there is to be no departure from truth in
the delineation and representation of beauty, and expression, and character.
Albert Sands Southworth, 1871
1. From its inception, photography has been involved with portraiture
a. Portraiture
i. Goal:
1. to represent human form
2. provide quickly made and inexpensive likenesses
ii. Provided: the basis for flourishing commercial enterprises
iii. Satisfied: the needs for public and private likenesses
iv. Range:
1. Amateur
2. Commercial purposes
3. Documentary
4. Artistic
5. Materialistic
v. Primary Conviction: that an individual's personality, intellect, and
character can be revealed through the depiction of facial
configuration and expression.
vi. Primary Advantage: photography reveals a degree of particularity
entirely lacking in the paintings.
vii. History of Portraiture:
1. Background History
a. The painted portrait had historically been largely
the privilege of aristocrats and the very wealthy
b. From the 17th century, recent portraiture was
developed by artists to respond to the demand for
portraits from a new clientele emerging as a result
of the rise of bourgeois societies in England,
France, Holland, and America.
c. By the mid-19th century, the (i) miniature, the
silhouette, the physionotrace, the camera lucida
drawing, and finally the (ii) photograph had arrived
to accommodate the needs of new patrons for
likenesses.
2. Renaissance Portraiture
a. esteemed when they portrayed not only the sitter's
physical appearance but inner character as well.
3. 18th Century Portraiture
a. the concept that pose, gesture, and expression
should reveal the inner person became codified
b. the portraitist to rise above merely mechanical
graphic representation of the human features -"discover the interior of Man by his exterior—of
perceiving by certain natural signs, what does not
immediately attract the senses."
2. Daguerreotype Portraits
a. Initially the photographic process was capable of being used to make
portraits.
i. Portraiture sittings would have required about 15 minutes of rigid
stillness in blazing sunshine
1. owing to the primitive nature of the lenses used
2. the insufficient sensitivity to light of the chemically treated
plates and paper.
3. many efforts developed progress to improve the process for
all kinds of photographic documentation. Among the means
used to accomplish this goal were:
a. the reduction of plate size
b. the improvement of lenses
c. the use of mirrors to reverse the plate's laterally
inverted image back to normal
d. the shortening of exposure times by the addition of
chemical accelerants in the sensitizing process
e. the toning of the plate.
4. Because of the arduous process to make the portraits, most
Daguerreotype portraits seem inordinately solemn and
unbending.
5. Because the daguerreotype's principal drawback was
thought to be its "ghastly appearance... like a person seen
by moonlight, or reflected in water," the portrait would
have been hand-colored by a method Beard patented in
1842
6. The most common portrait sizes were "quarter plate," 31/4
x 41/4 inches
3. The business of making portraits by camera -- where the photographers would be
found?
i. A large number of miniature and landscape painters, in France
especially, realized during the 1840s that their experiences as
craftsmen might fit them for making camera portraits (and other
documents).
ii. French author Charles Baudelaire's contention that the
photographic industry had become "the refuge of failed painters
with too little talent"
iii. Unemployed and poorly paid miniaturists, engravers, and
draftsmen turned to portrait photography for the livelihood it
seemed to promise.
iv. Watchmakers, opticians, tinkers, and other artisans also were
intrigued by the new technology and the chance it offered to
improve their material well-being.
4. Daguerreotype Portraits in the USA
a. Characteristics
i. absolute frontality in
ii. taken generally in the photo studios
iii. centrally posed
iv. or no attempt at artistic pose
v. occasional dramatic lighting
vi. no grandiloquent props such as the drapery swags and statuary
found in European daguerreotype portraits.
vii. the absence of artistic pretension
viii. Result
1. An almost scientific intent
2. Most likenesses were simply records
3. remarkably similarity:
a. unrelieved straightforwardness
b. the solemn, almost frozen demeanor of the sitters.
ix. the unrelieved seriousness of expression in daguerreotype
portraiture was in part the result of
1. the lengthy process of arranging the sitter
2. head in clamp
3. hand firmly anchored
4. spontaneity not only was technically difficult to achieve, it
also was considered inappropriate to the ceremonial nature
of an undertaking that for most sitters required proper
deportment and correct attire.
5. Portraits on Paper: The Calotype
a. Calotype portraiture initially did not achieved the commercial popularity
of the daguerreotype.
i. Calotype photographers were able to convince the public that the
duplicatable paper image with its broad chiaroscuro style was
preferable to the fine detail of the daguerreotype
b. calotype likenesses were so indistinct that considerable retouching was
necessary.
c. commercial paper portraiture in England languished until the era of the
glass negative.
Chapter 3
DOCUMENTATION:
LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE
1839-1890
To represent. . . the beautiful and the sublime in nature... demands
qualities alike of head and of heart, in rapt accordance with the Infinite Creative
Spirit.
Marcus Aurelius Root, 1864
There is only one Coliseum or Pantheon; but how many millions of potential
negatives have they shed,—representatives of billions of pictures,—since they were
erected! Matter in large masses must always be fixed and dear; form is cheap and
transportable. . . . Every conceivable object of Nature and Art will soon scale off its
surface for us.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859
Appeal and Lure of Congenial Photographic Subjects:
Landscape, Nature and Architecture
● Ease of access
● Immobile Subject
● Easy target for accurate graphic transcription of scenery of all kinds
●
●
●
Camera:
o The chemical fixation of reflected images
o Brought about new concepts of how to understand and represent the material
world
o A device believed would faithfully record actuality
Photographers approached the landscape with the conviction that the camera might
o Reveal form and structure accurately
o Present the information in an artistically appealing fashion
o Serve as remembrances of places visited
o Encapsulate a sense of the sublime
o The romantic taste for ruins
19th-century scenic views evolved along several directions
o Souvenirs for the new middle-class traveler
o Brought (images of) the world into the homes of those unable to make such
voyages
o Provided botanists, explorers, geologists, and naturalists with the opportunity to
study previously undocumented specimens and locations.
o
o
Urban awareness
Results:
o The camera image itself became part of the shifting relationship between
traditional and modern perceptions of nature and the built environment.
History of Landscape Imagery
● Renaissance up until the middle of the 18th century
o Landscape painting was a background for historical and religious events
o Landscape as such occupied a low position in the hierarchy of artistic subjects
● Romantic era
o Large public appetite for scenic views esp lithographs of topographical views
o A more sensuous depiction of nature
o Artists turned to a wider range of motifs from the material world
 Pastoral landscapes, seen from afar
 Specific depictions of singular formations—water, skies, trees, rocks, and
fruits of the field.
o After 1820 Landscape Photography
 The landscape or view photograph was welcomed not only because
• Extension of popular lithographs of topographical views
• Supposedly more faithful representation of topography, historic
monuments, and exotic terrain
 The overlap of Fine Art and Photography
• Many projects / views, including these, were made with publication in
mind
• The camera supplied the engraver or lithographer with detailed
information at a time when inexpensive methods of transferring the
photograph directly to the plate had not yet been developed.
Important objectives to many 19th-century scientists and intellectuals
● Truthful representation of the real world
● Representation without sentimentality
o Convinced that a scientific understanding of material reality was the key to
economic and social progress.
o The camera image was regarded as a fitting visual means for just such an
impersonal representation of nature.
The difficultly determining the full extent of daguerrcotyping activities with
reference to views of nature, architecture, and monuments.
● Many plates have been lost or destroyed
● Many hidden away in archives or in historical and private collections, have been
surfacing in recent years
● No overall catalogs of such images exist
Daguerreotypes
● Unparalleled clarity of detail
●
●
●
Became indispensable both for travelers who could not draw and artists who did not
have the time to make drawings
Reveal attitudes about nature and art of which neither the photographer nor the viewer
may have been aware at the time.
o Attests to not only a firmer grasp of technique
o A greater sensitivity to the manner in which the traditional canons of landscape
composition were handled
Difficulties with regard to landscape genre made it an inefficient technology with
respect to views
o The difficulties in making and processing exposures in the field
o The problems of viewing an image subject to reflections
o Replicating the image for publication
Daguerreotype in Landscape Photography
● Daguerreotype was supremely suited to recording architectural features while
somewhat less useful for pure nature.
Landscape photography evolved as a commercial enterprise
● Taking of views of well-known or extraordinary natural formations for the benefit of
travelers.
● Favorite photo sites in the United States
o Nature: ie, Niagara Falls, The World's Most Remarkable Scenes and Monuments
 The problem of the nonduplicatable metal plate was solved by employing
artists to translate the daguerreotype into engravings, aquatints, and
lithographs.
 Most landscape imagery projects was designed for a broad market—the
buyers of engraved and lithographed scenes— by affluent individuals who
hired guides and followed safe routes.
o Urban scenes
 The problem of visually unrelated rectangles of light and dark areas that the
actual land- or cityscape frequently presented (buildings & cubism)
Panoramic Views
● Panoramic views— images that are much wider than they are high.
● Panoramas with minutely rendered landscape detail were among the most popular
entertainments of the early 1800s in Europe and the United States.
● Soon after the announcement of the daguerreotype, photographers attempted to
capitalize on the appetite for this kind of encompassing yet accurate visual experience.
Calotypes (Chairoscuro)
● Because of their broad delineation, calotypes resembled graphic works such as
aquatints
● Calotypes tended to increase their appeal to both artists and elitists in the intellectual
community who preferred aesthetic objects to informational documents.
The new collodion (glass negative) technology/albumen print (1855 – 1885)
●
●
●
●
●
The promise of sharper and more predictable results in less time
The glass negative with its coating of collodion and silver-iodide preempted all other
processes for the next 30 years
Collodion made the mechanization of the landscape view possible, turning the scenic
landscape into an item of consumption, and landscape photography into photobusiness.
Limitations in the sensitivity of the collodion material
o Undifferentiated foregrounds were not un-common
o Unable to represent the tonal gradations that the eye accepts as denoting spatial
recession
o Lack of atmosphere
o Too great precision
o The image showed both too little and too much
o Lack of realism in the extreme contrast between dark and light areas
Photographers concerned with artistic landscapes avoided these problems with what
was called "artifice."
o Combining two negatives on the same print—one for the sky and one for the
ground—-or employing hand-manipulations to remove un-attractive mottled and
gray areas.
o Composite landscapes of this period could be and often were unconvincingly pieced
together is apparent from contemporary criticism that complained of pictures with
clouds that were not reflected in the water or of foregrounds taken in early morning
joined to skies taken at noon.