cMay 23, 2009
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce – View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce – View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826
Louis Daguerre, Boulevard du Temple, Paris 1839
Louis Daguerre, Boulevard du Temple, Paris 1839
This man is the first human being to be
photographed.
Because of the long exposure times the
busy street in Paris appears empty.
A single individual stopped to have his
shoes shined, and because he didn’t move,
he has been preserved for ever.
Louis Daguerre, Boulevard du Temple, Paris 1839
Louis Daguerre 1787-1851
Inventor of the Daguerreotype, the
first successful photographic
process, announced in 1839.
Daguerreotype of Louis Dageurre
Daguerreotype locket from about 1845
Millions of Daguerreotypes were made during the 1840s.
90,000 were made in the colony of New South Wales.
The Calotype process
William Henry Fox Talbot 1800-1877
inventor of the Calotype process, the
negative/positive process which modern
analogue photography is based on.
On holiday at Lake Como in Italy,
Talbot was trying to sketch the
views with the aid a Camera
Lucida,
… fairy pictures, creations of a
moment, and destined as rapidly
to fade away.
Talbot’s 1833 drawing, made with a
Camera Lucida, at the Villa Melzi.
It was during these thoughts
that the idea occurred to me
how charming it would be if it
were possible to cause these
natural images to imprint
themselves durably, and remain
fixed upon the paper!”
Talbot’s 1833 drawing, made with a
Camera Lucida, at the Villa Melzi.
Lake Como from Villa Melzi, From Google
Earth (photo by Narcissa Milano)
Just past that third lion statue
Fox Talbot sat and made his
drawing which led him to invent
photography!
Villa Melzi. From Google Earth
(photo by W. Buerskens)
Fox Talbot, latticed window negative 1835
Fox Talbot, latticed window positive image
Fox Talbot, The Open Door, 1844
“A painter’s eye will often be arrested where ordinary people
see nothing remarkable …
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2005.100.498
Fox Talbot, haystack at Laycock Abbey 1840s
“… a casual gleam of sunshine … may awaken a train of thoughts
and feelings, and picturesque imaginings.”
Hill & Adamson
In 1843, a painter and a chemist teamed
up to form a photographic partnership,
specializing in portraiture. They used
Fox Talbot’s Calotype process.
Hill & Adamson,
Newhaven Pilot c1845
Hill & Adamson,
Mrs Elizabeth Johnstone, , c1845
Hill & Adamson,
Newhaven Pilot c1845
Hypolyte Bayard’s Direct Positive
Process, 1840
There was a third inventor of
photography at the same time as
Daguerre and Talbot.
Hypolyte Bayard was a Paris office
worker who had been working
independently without knowing
anything about the other two.
Hypolyte Bayard self portrait, 1840
“The corpse which you see here is that
of M. Bayard, inventor of the process
that has just been shown to you …
Hypolyte Bayard self portrait, 1840
… The Government, which has been
only too generous to Monsieur
Daguerre, has said it can do nothing
for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor
wretch has drowned himself.
Hypolyte Bayard self portrait, 1840
Julia Margaret Cameron,
the beginnings of ‘art photography’
Julia Margaret Cameron was a wealthy
Victorian lady who took up photography
as an amateur in 1863.
"From the first moment I handled my
lens with a tender ardour, and it has
become to me as a living thing, with
voice and memory and creative vigour."
Henry Herschel Hay Cameron, portrait of
Julia Margaret Cameron, 1870
Cameron was one of the first to develop
fictional photography, the staging of
narrative for the camera.
From Tennyson's poem …
"O Lancelot, if thou love me get thee
hence,” And then they were agreed
upon a night to meet And part forever,
Stammering and staring; it was their
last hour, A madness of farewells.”
Julia Margaret Cameron, The Parting of Sir
Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, 1874
Julia Margaret Cameron, The Kiss of
Peace 1869
Julia Margaret Cameron, The Parting of Sir
Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, 1874
Cameron’s portraits are among the finest
in the history of photography.
She wanted to capture "the greatness of
the inner as well as the features of the
outer man.”
Julia Margaret Cameron,
Sir John Herschel, 1867,
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/L.1997.84.6
Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward John
Eyre, 1867, Australian explorer
Julia Margaret Cameron,
Sir John Herschel, 1867,
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/L.1997.84.6
COLLODION WET PLATE PROCESS
A new photographic process invented in 1850. It required
the photographic materials to be coated, sensitized, exposed
and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes. On
location, this required a portable darkroom to be set up
close to the camera
COLLODION WET PLATE PROCESS
Preparing the plate
1
Prepare the glass plate by polishing and
cleaning it
2
Mix collodion, iodide, Bromide ether and
alcohol and leave for one week
3
Pour the solution evenly onto the glass
4
In the darkroom, immerse the glass into a bath
of silver nitrate
5
Load glass plate into the film holder
6
Take the photo
Developing the plate
6
Develop the image by pouring
developer evenly over the glass
7
Pour water over the glass to rinse it
8
Put the glass in fixer
9
Rinse the glass
10 Dry the glass over a lamp
11 Seal the image by pouring warm
varnish over the heated glass
1850s Wet Plate field darkroom
Albumen Printing
The albumen print,was invented in 1850
and was the first commercial method of
producing a photographic print.
It used egg whites to bind the photographic
chemicals to the paper. It was the dominant
form of photographic prints from 1855 to
about 1900.
Albumen prints have warm reddish brown
colour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1RvahEPSk
Samuel Bourne, The Burning Ghat, Benares, India 1870
Timothy O’Sullivan, Incidents of the War: A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg 1863
Camille Silvy, Carte-de-Visite of Princess Leiningen,1860
Edward Muybridge, Animal Locomotion
In 1872, the photographer Edward
Muybridge was hired by Leland Stanford,
a businessman and race-horse owner to
settle a bet.
This was whether all four of a horse's feet
leave the ground at any one time during a
gallop. The movement is too fast for the
human eye.
Muybridge developed a scheme for
instantaneous capture of the galloping
horses. This involved an array of
cameras, an electrical trigger and
special chemical formulas for film
processing.
The experimental track used during the
production of The Horse in Motion (1881)
Before Muybridge’s photographs were
published, artists incorrectly painted
galloping horses. This Impressionist
shows shows the false “flying gallop.”
Edgar Degas, 1871
Edgar Degas, 1871
Edward Muybridge, Animal Locomotion 1878
The photographs clearly showed that a horse really does become airborne
during a gallop, but not in the way artists thought.
Edgar Degas, 1871
Edward Muybridge, Animal Locomotion 1878
Muybridgizer iPhone app
Edward Muybridge, Animal Locomotion 1878
http://www.muybridge.org/
Contemporary artists working with vintage techniques
John Coffer, Tin-Type of Civil War re-enactment, 1999
Jerry Spagnoli, daguerreotype of Twin Towers attack, 9/11
Matthew Brandt, La Brea, 2013.
Matthew Brandt, La Brea, 2013.
Matthew Brandt Heliographs
The La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles is a natural lake of tar.
Prehistoric bones were found preserved in it and are
mounted in a nearby museum.
Mathew Brandt photographed these displays of prehistoric
bones and made very large transparencies.
Then he collected tar from the tar pits, coated large sheets
of aluminium, laid the transparencies over them and left
them in the L.A. sun.
After washing them to remove the soft tar, only the sunhardened parts remain, “leaving an image of the fossil
created from its ancient remains”.
Getty Museum: The Wet Collodion Proces
Wet plate photographer Rob Gibson
http://www.goldstreetstudios.com.au/
San Francisco Tintype studio