The History of PhotographyPart 1Early Beginnings – 1920

We owe the name "Photography" to Sir John Herschel , who first used the term in a lecture before the Royal Society on March 14, 1839, the year the photographic process became public. The word is derived from the Greek words for light and writing.

Camera Obscura The Camera Obscura (dark room) had been in existence for at least

four hundred years. There is a drawing, dated 1519, of a Camera Obscura by Leonardo da Vinci; about this same period its use as an aid to drawing was being advocated.

Chemistry of PhotographySeveral Means of recording light discovered

Robert Boyle reported that silver chloride turned dark under exposure.

Angelo Sala noticed that powdered nitrate of silver is blackened by the sun.

In 1727 Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that certain liquids change color when exposed to light.

Thomas Wedgwood successfully captured images, but his silhouettes could not survive.

Light Made Permanent The first successful picture was produced in June/July 1827 by

Niépce, using material that hardened on exposure to light. This picture required an exposure of eight hours.

The Mirror with a Memory Niépce agreed to go into partnership with

Louis Daguerre .

Daguerre made images permanent by immersion in salt.

The French government bought the rights to it in July 1839.

Details of the process were made public on 19 August 1839, and Daguerre named it the Daguerreotype.

DaguerreotypeThe Daguerreotype process was:

Good - High quality representation

Expensive Each picture was a once-only

affair – Not reproducible

Growing need for a means of copying pictures which daguerreotypes could never satisfy.

Daguerreotype Process This was a positive image on a metal support. The process consisted of:

exposing copper plates to iodine, the fumes forming light-sensitive silver iodide. The plate would have to be used within an hour.

exposing to light - between 10 and 20 minutes, depending upon the light available.

developing the plate over mercury heated to 75 degrees Centigrade. This caused the mercury to amalgamate with the silver.

fixing the image in a warm solution of common salt (later sodium sulphite was used.)

rinsing the plate in hot distilled water. Images were left milky white His first plates were 8 ½” by 6 ½”

Daguerreotype DrawbacksThe quality of the photographs was stunning. However, the process

had its weaknesses:

the pictures could not be reproduced and were therefore unique;

the surfaces were extremely delicate, which is why they are often found housed under glass in a case;

the image was reversed laterally, the sitter seeing himself as he did when looking at a mirror. (Sometimes the camera lens was equipped with a mirror to correct this);

the chemicals used (bromine and chlorine fumes and hot mercury) were highly toxic;

the images were difficult to view from certain angles.

Reactions to PhotographyA newspaper report in the Leipzig City Advertiser stated:

"The wish to capture evanescent reflections is not only impossible... but the mere desire alone, the will to do so, is blasphemy. God created man in His own image, and no man- made machine may fix the image of God. Is it possible that God should have abandoned His eternal principles, and allowed a Frenchman... to give to the world an invention of the Devil?"

Reactions to PhotographyIn a book written in 1844 Marc Gaudin gives us an eyewitness account of the

excitement with which the announcement of the Daguerreotype process five years earlier had been greeted: "The Palace...was stormed by a swarm of the curious at the memorable sitting on 19 August, 1839, where the process was at long last divulged. Although I came two hours beforehand, like many others I was barred from the hall (and) was...with the crowd for everything that happened outside. At one moment an excited man comes out; he is surrounded, he is questioned, and he answers with a know-it-all air, that bitumen of Judea and lavender oil is the secret. Questions are multiplied but as he knows nothing more, we are reduced to talking about bitumen of Judea and lavender oil. Soon a crowd surrounds a newcomer, more startled than the last. He tells us with no further comment that it is iodine and mercury... Finally, the sitting is over, the secret divulged... A few days later, opticians' shops were crowded with amateurs panting for daguerreotype apparatus, and everywhere cameras were trained on buildings. Everyone wanted to record the view from his window, and he was lucky who at first trial formed a silhouette of roof tops against the sky. He went into ecstasies over chimneys, counted over and over roof tiles and chimney bricks - in a word, the technique was so new that even the poorest plate gave him unspeakable joy....."

Reactions to PhotographyMushrooming of photographic establishments A mere handful in the mid 1840s The number had grown to 66 in 1855 Establishments grew to 147 two years later

In London, a favorite venue was Regent Street where, in the peak in the mid 'sixties there were no less than forty-two photographic establishments!

In America the growth was just as dramatic: in 1850 there were 77 photographic galleries in New York alone.

The demand for photographs was such that Charles Baudelaire (1826-1867), a well known poet of the period and a critic of the medium, commented: "our squalid society has rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gloat at its trivial image on a scrap of metal."

Calotype Completely different process than the Daguerreotype

Was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot the idea of photography came to Talbot (1800-1877) while on

holiday at Lake Como in Italy, using the Camera obscura and the Camera Lucida as aids to drawing.

He wrote: "How charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably and remain fixed on the paper!"

His paper to the Royal Society of London, dated 31 January 1839, actually precedes the paper by Daguerre

it was entitled "Some account of the Art of Photogenic drawing, or the process by which natural objects may be made to delineate themselves without the aid of the artist's pencil.“

Calotype – the First Negative The earliest paper negative was produced in August 1835

Depicts the now famous window at Lacock Abbey, Talbot’s home.

The negative is small (1" square), and poor in quality, compared with the striking images produced by the Daguerreotype process.

This is a print from that negative.

The Pencil of Nature By 1844 Talbot was able to

bring out a photographically illustrated book entitled "The Pencil of nature.“

Contained 24 plates

Was the first book with photographs to be published commercially

The Pencil of Nature Photograph of the boulevards at Paris: page 2 from The

Pencil of Nature by William Henry Fox Talbot London: 1844

Calotype Process The Calotype was a positive/negative process introduced in 1841

A piece of paper was brushed with weak salt solution and dried.

It was then brushed with a weak silver nitrate solution and dried, making silver chloride in the paper.

This made it sensitive to light, and the paper was now ready for exposure.

Exposure might take half an hour, giving a print-out image.

It was fixed in strong salt solution - potassium iodide of hypo.

To make a print, the negative was placed on top of more photo paper, laid flat in a glass frame, and allowed to develop in sunlight.

The Latent Image In 1842 Fox Talbot discovered that if he added gallic

acid, the paper became more sensitive to light, and it was no longer necessary to expose until the image became visible.

With further treatment of gallic acid and silver nitrate, the latent image would be developed.

Because of this exposure times were reduced greatly.

Calotype Drawbacks The Calotype process was not as popular as its rival one, the

Daguerreotype. There were various reasons for this:

its popularity was to a great extent arrested by patent restrictions;

the materials were less sensitive to light, therefore requiring longer exposures;

the imperfections of the paper reduced the quality of the final print; Calotypes did not have the sharp definition of daguerreotypes.

the process itself took longer, as it required two stages (making the negative and then the positive);

the prints tended to fade.

One might also suggest that the fact paper was used as a negative lessened the detail of the picture, though from an artistic point of view some would regard this as a desirable feature.

Calotype Advantages The calotype also had its advantages compared with the

daguerreotype:

it provided the means of making an unlimited number of prints from one negative;

retouching could be done on either negative or print;

prints on paper were easier to examine, and far less delicate;

the calotype had warmer tones.

When the Collodion process was introduced in 1851, the calotype became obsolete.

However, the negative-positive process was one day to become the photographic standard, which is still used today.

CalotypeWilliam Henry Fox Talbot

Calotype, 6-3/8" x 8-1/4"

The FootmanOctober 14, 1840

The earliest photograph of a human figure on paper.

Progress of Photography Progress in this new art was slow in England,

compared with other countries. Both Daguerre and Fox Talbot were partly responsible, the former for having rather slyly placed a patent on his invention whilst the French government had made it freely available to the world, the latter for his law-suits in connection with his patents.

Albumen Talbot's negative was on paper

When printed the imperfections of the paper were printed alongside with the image

Several experimented with glass as a basis for negatives

The problem was to make the silver solution stick to the shiny surface of the glass

In 1848 a cousin of Nicephore Niépce, Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor, perfected a process. He coated a glass plate with white of egg Sensitized it with potassium iodide And washed it with an acid solution of silver nitrate. This new ( albumen ) process made for very fine detail and much higher

quality. It was very slow Photographs produced on this substance were architecture and landscapes Portraiture was simply not possible.

Albumen Prints Blanquart-Evrard's contribution to photographer was the application of albumen to the problem of making prints on paper.

Prints that had greater depth and contrast than the old salted paper

They had greater intensity to the image

Greater sharpness

In a good albumen print the shadows show a greater transparency

By the end of the 1850s most had gone over completely to albumen paper.

The first factory made albumen paper appeared in 1854 in Germany, and Dresden later became the world centre for its production.

Large factories was using six million eggs a year to coat its paper.

Albumen Prints

Collodion In 1851 a new era in photography was introduced by

Frederick Scott Archer, who introduced the Collodion process. This process was much faster than conventional methods, reducing

exposure times to two or three seconds. The collodion process required that the coating, exposure and

development of the image should be done while the plate was still wet.

The wet collodion process, though in its time a great step forward, required a considerable amount of equipment on location.

There were various attempts to preserve exposed plates in wet collodion, for development at a more convenient time and place, but these preservatives lessened the sensitivity of the material.

Collodion The collodion process had several advantages: being more sensitive to

light than the calotype process, it reduced the exposure times drastically - to as little as two or three seconds. This opened up a new dimension for photographers, who up till then had generally to portray very still scenes or people.

because a glass base was used, the images were sharper than with a calotype.

because the process was never patented, photography became far more widely used.

the price of a paper print was about a tenth of that of a daguerreotype.

Collodion Drawbacks The process was by no means an easy one.

First, the collodion had to be spread carefully over the entire plate. The plate then had to be sensitized, exposed and developed while the plate

was still wet; the sensitivity dropped once the collodion had dried. It is often known as the wet plate collodion process for this reason.

The process was labor-intensive enough in a studio's darkroom, but quite a feat if one wanted to do some photography on location.

Some took complete darkroom tents. Fenton took a caravan

It is no mere coincidence that many photographs taken in this period happened to be near rivers or streams!

At this time there were no enlargements, so if one wanted large prints there was no alternative but to carry very large cameras. It is such limitations of the process that make the work of people like the

Bisson brothers, Fenton, and others so remarkable. The safety factor.

The collodion mixture was not only inflammable but highly explosive. It is reported that several photographers demolished their darkrooms and

homes, some even losing their lives, as a result of careless handling of the photographic chemicals.

Dry Plate The next major step forward came in 1871, when

Dr. Richard Maddox discovered a way of using Gelatin (which had been discovered only a few years before) instead of glass as a basis for the photographic plate. Dry plates could be developed much more quickly than with any

previous technique. Initially it was very insensitive compared with existing processes, but it

was refined to the extent that the idea of factory-made photographic material was now becoming possible.

Dry plates are sheets of glass coated with a gelatin emulsion containing light sensitive silver salts, more properly called gelatino-bromide plates.

Dry Plate The introduction of the dry-plate process marked a turning point.

No longer did one need the cumbersome wet-plates

No longer was a darkroom tent needed.

One was very near the day that pictures could be taken without the photographer needing any specialized knowledge.

Within a couple of years, suitable emulsions were on sale for photographers to coat their own glass plates, but it was only in 1878 it became possible to buy plates ready for use

They became popular in 1880

Most photographs after this date were taken on Dry Plates until photographic films came into use.

Stereoscopes Stereoscopic, or 3D photography, works because it is

able to recreate the illusion of depth. Human eyes are set about two-and-a-half inches apart, so each eye sees an image slightly differently. If one takes two separate photographs that same distance apart, with a suitable viewer it is possible to recreate that illusion of depth.

The stereoscope took off in a big way when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert observed one at the exhibition at the Crystal Palace, and Brewster presented her with a stereoscope made by Duboscq. This signaled the beginning of a huge trade in stereoscopes and images; it is estimated that by the mid eighteen-fifties over a million homes owned one. One of the most successful salesmen of stereoscopic cards was George Nottage, later Lord Mayor of London, his catalogues listing over one hundred thousand views.

Stereoscopes The most common process for making stereoscopic

cards was the Albumen one, daguerreotype images being very rare.

The London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company came into being in 1850 and continued for some seventy years. Their output was colossal; they listed over a hundred thousand stereo photographs in their 1858 catalogue. In general they tended to be views, plus some portraits of comic scenes.

Photography for the Masses Celluloid had been invented in the early eighteen-

sixties, and John Carbutt persuaded a manufacturer to produce very thin celluloid as a backing for sensitive material. George Eastman is particularly remembered for introducing flexible film in 1884. Four years later he introduced the box camera, and photography could now reach a much greater number of people.

George EastmanIn 1880 George Eastman, age 24, sets up

Eastman Dry Plate Company in Rochester, New York. First half-tone photograph appears in a daily newspaper, the New York Graphic.

On March 14, 1932, George Eastman, aged 77, writes suicide note -- "My work is done. Why wait?“ -- and shoots himself.

Kodak 1888: First Kodak camera, containing a

20-foot roll of paper, enough for 100 2.5-inch diameter circular pictures.

1889: Improved Kodak camera with roll of film instead of paper.

1900: Kodak Brownie box roll-film camera introduced.

Photo Secessionalists 1902: Alfred Stieglitz organizes "Photo

Secessionist" show in New York City

Autochrome 1907: first commercial color film, the

Autochrome plates, manufactured by Lumiere brothers in France

Modern Film 1914: Oscar Barnack, employed by

German microscope manufacturer Leitz, develops camera using the modern 24x36mm frame and sprocketed 35mm movie film.

Nikon 1917: Nippon Kogaku K.K., which will

eventually become Nikon, established in Tokyo.

1924: Leitz markets a derivative of Barnack's camera commercially as the "Leica", the first high quality 35mm camera.

Medium Format Film 1928: Albert Renger-Patzsch publishes

The World is Beautiful, close-ups emphasizing the form of natural and man-made objects; Rollei introduces the Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex producing a 6x6 cm image on rollfilm.

Strobe Lighting 1931: development of strobe

photography by Harold ("Doc") Edgerton at MIT

Group f/64 1932: inception of Technicolor for

movies, where three black and white negatives were made in the same camera under different filters; Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Edward Weston, et al, form Group f/64 dedicated to "straight photographic thought and production".; Henri Cartier-Bresson buys a Leica and begins a 60-year career photographing people;

Fuji 1934: Fuji Photo Film founded. By 1938,

Fuji is making cameras and lenses in addition to film.

Hasselblad 1948: Hasselblad in Sweden offers its

first medium-format SLR for commercial sale; Pentax in Japan introduces the automatic diaphragm

Pentaprism 1949: East German Zeiss develops the

Contax S, first SLR with an unreversed image in a pentaprism viewfinder

Films 1963: first color instant film developed

by Polaroid; Instamatic released by Kodak; first purpose-built underwater introduced, the Nikonos

1972: 110-format cameras introduced by Kodak with a 13x17mm frame

1973: C-41 color negative process introduced, replacing C-22

Films (continued) 1983: Kodak introduces disk camera,

using an 8x11mm frame (the same as in the Minox spy camera)

Autofocus 1985: Minolta markets the world's first

autofocus SLR system (called "Maxxum" in the US)