Technological Advances and Political Impact of

Photography1840- 1900

Lecture #2

Heliography

• Joseph Niepce’s Heliographs were taken using first pewter, then silver, plates coated with an emulsion made of bitumen of Judea and iodide fumes.

Window At Le Gras, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, 1826

Daguerreotypes• Louis Daguerre realized

that the silver iodide created by the fumes were themselves sensitive to light.

• He also discovered that a latent image on the plate could be developed out by exposing the plate to mercury fumes.

• He finally succeeded in fixing the image by soaking it in salt water to rinse out the remaining light sensitive silver iodide

Still Life, Louis Daguerre, 1839

Commercial Success• Their exquisite detail and

relatively short sitting times (compared to a painting) made Daguerreotypes very popular with those wanting their portraits, or “likenesses”, made. The French government bought Daguerre’s process and gave it to the people as a gift. This allowed the Daguerreotype to become extremely popular and widely practiced.

Ethan Allen Hitchcock, 1851-60

Augustus Washington, Liberian Woman.1850s

Oldest known photographic portrait. Robert Cornelius, quarter plate Daguerreotype. 1839

Fox Talbot’s Calotype

• William Henry Fox Talbot devised a way to create a negative image on a sheet of paper.

• The advantage of the negative image was that, unlike the positive image created with a Daguerreotype, the Calotype, or Talbotype, could be reproduced as long as the original negative held up.

Lacock Abbey, William Henry Fox Talbot, c. 1835

Courtyard Scene, William Henry Fox Talbot1844

From the oldest existing photographic negative. William Henry Fox Talbot, South transept of Lacock Abbey. 1835

Albumen Printing

• In 1844, Louis- Desire Blanquart- Evrard obtained Fox Talbot’s formula and rapidly made advancements in speed of exposure, ease of development and reliability.

• Blanquart- Evrard invented the albumen process for coating “printing- out” paper with a mixture of salted egg whites and silver nitrate.

• This resulted in a much more even and durable print.

Collodion• In 1849, Englishman Frederick

Scott Archer introduced the collodion process, which used a glass plate coated with collodion (a mixture of guncotton dissolved in alcohol and ether) to make either a glass negative, an ambrotype (underexposed negative on glass backed with a black tarry substance called japan) or tintype (on metal). The process was called, “wet plate” because the collodion emulsion had to be exposed while it was still slightly wet.

• After exposure, the plate has to be developed immediately in a silver nitrate solution and fixed in a bath of potassium cyanide.

• Glass negatives were better than paper ones because they were smoother and held more detail.

Roger Fenton, The Crimean War, 1850s Carleton Watkins, Yosemite Valley fromThe best general view. 1866

SallyMann

Sally Mann is a contemporaryphotographerwho uses the wetplate process.

The World’s Fair

• In 1851, the World’s Fair, or Grand Exhibition, came to London. Photography was one of the biggest sensations of the Fair.

• One of the most popular photographic subjects of the time were the iron and steel structures that were beginning to gain popularity with the emergence of the Industrial Revolution.

Cartes de Visite

• Introduced in Paris in 1854 by Adolphe Eugene Desderi, the Carte de Visite became a sensation in one European country after another. The small format reduced costs, which made photography more available to the masses. Millions of people loved to collect photographs of famous people. The sensation was so strong that by 1867, celebrities like Charles Dickens started demanding payment to have their pictures taken. This was the beginning of the paparazzi.

War Photography

• The Englishman, Roger Fenton, was one of the men who was commissioned as the first government photographers for a war.

• Here he is seen with his traveling photographic studio, or van.

Strategy• In 1855, the Crimean War

became the first war to be photographed. Since exposures were still recorded in seconds, not fractions of seconds, battle scenes were too fast and furious to capture with a camera. Most photographs are of battlefields, corpses or officers or soldiers resting in their camps.

• Although many images were manipulated for artistic reasons, these images were more for strategic use by the military and government- scouting battle fields, recording losses- than for public consumption.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death by Roger Fenton

Propaganda and The American Civil War

• From 1861 to 1865, the American Civil War was recorded with more intensity than the Crimean War.

• For the first time, photographic images played a major part in affecting the outcome of a war by showing the average American exactly what their brothers and uncles and fathers and sons were going through. The brutality of the images made public sentiment turn towards finding a peaceful solution.

• Many photographers posed their subjects to make a more pleasing composition and a more powerful poetic statement about the horror of war.

Above left: Alexander Gardner, Confederate SharpshooterLeft: Timothy O. Sullivan, Dead Union Soldiers

Documents of Destruction

• Particularly after the brutal slash and burn tactics of Sherman’s March, captured on glass plates by George N. Bernard, both Northerners and Southerners were more and more prepared to sign a peace treaty.

Destruction of Hood's Ordnance Train and Ruins of Rolling Mill, Atlanta, Georgia1864

Ruins in Charleston, South Carolina

Westward Expansion

• Photography also played a large part in the opening of America’s western frontier. By showing the beauty of the frontier, photographers helped expand the reach of American culture and fed the American ideals of hard work, fortitude and national pride.

Carlton Watkins. Yosemite Valley, Best General View. 1865

Problems RemainIn 1870, there were still some

major problems with the photographic processes:

• Complex processes made it necessary to have a portable studio in the field and several very skilled workers to run a studio.

• Shutter speeds were still at least one second.

• Big, heavy cameras made photography a very strenuous activity. Mules and crews of men were used to haul photographic equipment in the field.

• Images could not be made in more than one color.

Simplifying the Process- Silver Bromide and Silver Gelatin

• The biggest advancement toward modern photography since Talbot’s calotype came in 1871 when Dr. R.L. Maddox introduced the silver bromide/ silver gelatin process. This was a “dry” process, which meant that the paper negative could be prepared long before the image was to be captured. This process also eliminated the need for portable field darkrooms because the paper could wait to be developed hours or even days later.

• This “dry” process also meant that manufacturers could produce large quantities of sensitized paper and sell it. By 1879, the process had been improved so much that a vastly larger number of people could practice photography without having to go through the process of sensitizing the glass or paper negatives themselves.

High Speed Exposures

• Starting in 1872, Eadweard Muybridge began experimenting with ways of capturing images in fractions of seconds.

• In 1878, he succeeded in capturing on collodion a horse in full gallop. This was the first time that motion phenomena previously unobservable by the human eye could be proved. These images shattered the conventional ways of depicting horses in art.

• Faster exposures opened the door for a better scientific understanding of body mechanics. This was extremely helpful to doctors as well as artists.

George Eastman and the Kodak• In 1884, the Eastman Kodak

company patented roll film. He came up with the idea of coating silver emulsion onto a new substance called cellulose- a form of a new substance called plastic. Roll film made motion pictures possible because it could be wound onto reels and passed in front of a projector.

• Roll film also made it possible to fit the film into much smaller cameras that were easier to use than the big bulky wooden cameras needed for glass or metal plates.

Invasion of the Snapshot• In 1888, the Eastman Kodak

company patented its first hand held camera. Each camera came with 100 preloaded shots. The photographer simply snapped the pictures, sent the camera to Kodak for processing and received the prints as well as a newly loaded camera.

• In addition to being easier to use, the Brownie made the photographic processing even easier by eliminating it altogether for the photographer.

• Photography as we know it was on its way!

The Last Major Problem- Color

• In 1868, Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros both independently hit upon the idea of using three separate colored negatives- made by using colored filters and colored papers- to make a full spectrum color image.

Autochrome

• Du Hauron and Cros’ processes were not commercially viable, but it lead to the development of “Autochrome” by the Lumiere brothers in the early 1900s.

• Autochrome became the first commercially available color photographic process in 1903.