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But the breakthrough came when The continuing fascination of the
camera obscura image is borne out by
portable box.
Convincing the public that an invisible
image existed ... was initially difficult.
IDEA No 2
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One-step photography
IDEA No 3
Seeing the lively coloured image cast by the of light with a solution of his own devising,
camera obscura, the French inventor Talbot held in his hands a direct positive
Joseph Nicphore Nipce inserted light- image, which, he would soon come to
sensitized paper into his portable camera recognize, could be used as a negative to
obscura, and managed to record a vague make tonally reversed reproductions of the
tonal display of light and dark in the early image. This technique, renamed the photo-
nineteenth century. Learning from other ex- gram in the twentieth century, has never
periments, he selected a flat piece of pewter lost its appeal.
and smeared it with bitumen of Judea, a Despite the overwhelming use of
tarlike substance that hardens in the negatives to produce multiple prints, the
presence of light. The prepared metal was idea of a direct positive print persisted.
placed in a camera obscura that rested in a Ambrotypes, an inexpensive substitute for
window in an upper story of his home. After the daguerreotype, required a slightly
about eight hours, the bitumen that was underexposed glass negative and a black
exposed to the most light had hardened. backing, which would turn the negative to
Nipce washed away the softer, less positive. Another direct positive process,
exposed bits, and increased the contrast the popular lightweight tintype, used a
TOP: View from the Window at Le Gras (c. between dark and light by exposing the similar notion of reversing tones.
1826) by Nipce is the worlds oldest
surviving photograph. It was made by
plate to iodine fumes. At the end of the Before the digital age, the post-World
exposing light-sensitive material to process, he held in his hands a direct War II development of what was called the
sunlight for about eight hours.
positive image, now considered to be the Polaroid process came closest to an instant
ABOVE: The ambrotype was a negative worlds earliest surviving photograph. one-step photog-raphy. The camera came
printed on glass. Its tones were reversed from Nipces image was unique: it had no packed with negative film and positive
negative to positive by placing a black
backing behind the glass plate. negative from which to make copies. paper sandwiched together with chemicals
Eventually, his work became the basis of the to develop and fix the image.
daguerreotype, a much more visually
detailed image.
Another of photographys inventors
produced what he called photogenic
drawing, that is, one-of-a-kind, camera-less
images produced through the agency of
light. W.H.F. Talbot sensitized paper with
solutions of silver, which made the paper
darken in sunlight during the mid-1830s. He
then placed small objects such as leaves on
the paper and exposed both to sunlight.
In those areas where the sunlight failed to
penetrate, a silhouette of the object
appeared. After having stopped the action
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Hippolyte Bayard developed his own
direct-positive printing technique.
Using himself as a model, he taunted
the belief that a photograph cannot lie
by posing as a dead man in his
Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man (1840).
Reverse logic
to scale
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Film-based photography emphasized Forest (1951), shown here in the
the production of complex negatives hands of curator Dianne Nilsen at the
with many expressive gray tones that University of Arizonas Center for
could yield a rich visual experience for Creative Photography in Tucson, where
viewers, as in Wynn Bullocks Child in the glass negative is kept.
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The daguerreotypes silver surface
often gave the light areas of a
photograph a shimmering effect, as in
Alexandre Clausels Landscape near
Troyes, France (c. 1855).
The mirror with a memory
THE DAGUERREOTYPE
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To boldly go ...
IDEA No 6
EXPLORATION
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The Romance of the Orient ... roused in
armchair travellers a demand for photographs.
ABOVE: A student of Near Eastern
architecture, archaeology, and Islamic
art, de Prangey photographed ancient
buildings in Greece, Egypt, Turkey,
Lebanon and Palestine. This
photograph, The Dome of the Rock
and the Wailing Wall, was taken in
Jerusalem in c. 1850.
LEFT: Talbots photographic ABOVE: D.O. Hill not only explored the
print-making facility shows how evocative qualities of the calotype, but
IDEA No 7 quickly the industrialization of also the negatives capacity to be
photography began to take place. retouched. The area in front of the
Taking its name from the Greek words for beautiful and The soft look and large patches of dark
and light that the calotype produced, along
impression, the early photographic process called the calotype with the apparent texture of the paper on
not only made a good impression, it also made many such which it was printed, proved attractive to
artists, who found the itemizing detail and
impressions, enlarging the scope of photography by making it hard lines of the daguerreotype inelegant
possible to generate multiple images. and ugly. Comparing the calotype and the
daguerreotype, Scottish painter and early
W.H.F. Talbot, whose early venture into pasted at the corners to the page. Twenty- photographer David Octavius Hill
originating a photographic process resulted four calotypes, with accompanying text, proclaimed that the calotype looked more
in the cameraless photogram, soon realized documented various uses of the medium, like the imperfect work of man and not
that such negative images could be used to including its ability to record collections of the much diminished perfect work of
make positive prints. In 1841, he not only art objects and china, as well as reproduce God. Although it was superseded
patented the calotype method, but also sketches and image architecture. Talbots by later, industrially produced photographic
helped to set up a studio and printing ingenuity was equally apparent in his means, such as those involving albumen
establishment where he could produce awareness of photographys potential to printing, the calotype remained a favourite
images for himself and others. In effect, create sequences of images. As French of artists, making a nostalgic comeback at
Talbot foresaw and participated in the painter Claude Monet would do decades the turn of the century as part of the
industrialization of photography. later, Talbot studied the effects of light on Secession movements (see page 120).
The calotype process required paper geometric shapes in both natural and built
sturdy enough to withstand wetting with environments.
chemicals and water. In the beginning, Calotype work appealed to amateurs,
writing paper, prepared by individual who often ignored Talbots patent rights
photographers, was used. There were no and later pressured him to grant them an
standard sizes for photographs, only camera exception to the law. The worlds first
dimensions that had to be dealt with. Talbot photographic club, the Edinburgh Calotype
and other early photographers cut their Club, was formed in the early 1840s, soon
own paper and devised types of holders to after the calotype was invented (see
support the sensitized paper in the camera. Photographic Societies). As happened
In the mid-1840s, Talbot published one with the daguerreotype, exposure times of
of the earliest photographic books, with the calotype decreased as more people
actual photographs tipped in that is, experimented with it.
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Gods versus mortals
IDEA No 8
THE NUDE
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Callahan made many photographs
of his wife, Eleanor, including erotically
suggestive nudes. His Eleanor, 1947,
blends cool abstraction with warm
flesh.
Specially designed weights or
impromtu inventions were
attached to the shutter to create
timed lens exposures.
Lights, camera, direction!
THE LENS
of lenses gives the feeling that all eyes
are on the proceedings.
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Open wide!
THE SHUTTER
that one can see traces of the
movement of the stars in the sky.
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Quick shutter speeds created images
in which actions not easily sensed by
the human eye were visualized.
IDEA No 11
AESTHETICS
the heart of nineteenth-century aesthetic make images slightly out of focus. Several
theory and practice. Photography was thus pointed out that photography might be
invented at a time when art academies and improved if more people of taste and
public intellectuals taught theories and cultural acumen made photographs, or if
techniques that bolstered the creation of they aimed to instruct, purify and ennoble
fine art. In addition, artists were advised to viewers through their work
travel to Italy to see masterworks upon (see Moralizing).
which they could model and perfect their In the 1880s, Dr Peter Henry Emerson
own artworks. Could this established tried to devise an aesthetics based on the
tradition also physiology of human sight. He proposed
be applied to camerawork, the product of a taking images in which one small area was
machine? sharply focused, while the remaining areas
Numerous nineteenth-century critics who were somewhat blurry, mimicking human
scrutinized the exactitude of the peripheral vision. Even though Emerson
daguerreotype image were not inclined to ultimately rejected his own aesthetic
think of it as an art medium. Indeed, to theory, the vogue for blurry images
many, all photography seemed to be an persisted and emerged as Pictorialism, the
automatic process geared toward such first international photography movement.
strict verisimilitude that it eliminated the Knocked for being fuzzygraphs,
artists role as creator and interpreter. Pictorial photographs were popular
Painters such as Eugne Delacroix in France because they promised room for aesthetic
and Rembrandt Peale in the USA. insisted expression. Lyrical private life and quiet
that the exactitude of the photograph was landscapes were prime subjects. The rapidly
not only untrue to human perception, but industrializing world did not enter the
also worked against the ability of art to picture.
speak soul to soul. Even some of It was not until the era between the
photographys advocates considered the World Wars that the aesthetics of the
medium to be a lesser art form. machine, which so many earlier critics had
The wave of negative criticism that scorned, was revisited in art and
flooded popular journals provoked varied photography. The ability of the camera to
responses about how to create an aesthetics objectify human vision now emerged as a
of photography. Some suggested that the benefit, not a fault. So-called neutral seeing
very earliest photographs had been more played a major role in European art
artful than more recent ones, which had movements such as Constructivism, the
greater detail, because faulty images were New Objectivity and Surrealism, with
more suggestive than defining. Taking up deadpan, uninflected images being reborn
this idea, others proposed that and retheorized many times since (see New
photographers should lessen detail and Topographics).
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In Clarence Whites 1906 interpretation
of Morning, dawn is indicated by
bright light filtering through the fog.
ABOVE: The cyanotype allowed builders BELOW: Anna Atkins was one of the first
and engineers to create durable and scientists to use the cyanotype to
detailed drawings. record delicate specimens, as in
Himanthalia Iorea, from her 1843
IDEA No 12 book on algae.
THE CYANOTYPE
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