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PHOTOGRAPHY GETS BORN
ART 100UNDERSTANDING VISUAL CULTURE
Module 4.1
The origins of the “camera”
These diagrams are two early depictions of the workings of the “camera obscura” (dark room”), in which an external image enters a darkened chamber through a pinhole opening and appears upside down on the opposite wall.
The original “camera” is as big as a walk-in closet!
Slowly the camera obscura gets smaller and more portable. Here it has contracted to the size a small cabinet with legs.
The origins of the “camera”
Gradually it shrinks to a tabletop apparatus, and finally, to the size of a small box.
The origins of the “camera”
With the room-size camera obscura now contracted into a small box, the pinhole replaced with a lens that permits focusing, and a mirror installed to reverse the image, all that remains is to find a way of making the reflected image permanent.
The physics and optics of the camera are put together first, but the chemistry remains to be cracked.
As often happens in the history of technology, multiple competing solutions appear at more or less the same time.
It turns out that a number of alternative chemical solutions to the problem are developed.
Use these links to see some of the possibilities that were explored by early photographers: http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/1_early/1_early
_photography_-_processes.htm http://photographymuseum.org/primer.html http://www.birrcastle.com/history/photograp
hicTechniques.asp#
Today some photographers still enjoy experimenting with different techniques from the 19th century.
http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes
http://imsc.usc.edu/haptics/LostandFound/early.html
This link shows how the different kinds of 19th photographs have aged differently, detailing how these photographs (which are stored in many libraries and archived collections) may appear today and can be properly classified. This is the kind of information that people who work closely with historical objects have in mind.
http://www.lib.ua.edu/libraries/hoole/collections/PhotographTypesatTheW.S.HooleSpecialCollectionsLibrary.htm
The dominant technology is France is invented by Niepce in conjunction with Daguerre.
Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, View from the Window at Le Gras, c. 1826, heliograph
“the first photograph”
Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, View from the Window at Le Gras, c. 1826, sketch by Helmut Gernsheim
Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826, 1952 print
Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826, 2002 print
HTTP://WWW.HRC.UTEXAS.EDU/EXHIBITIONS/PERMANENT/WFP/
“daguerreotype”
Early daguerreotypes
View of San Francisco,1848
Early daguerreotypes
Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, 1848
Early daguerreotypes
The Barton family dog, Nero, 1848Group of 10 unidentified boys,Date unknown
In England, a competing process was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. He called his process the “calotype.”
Talbot, Bust of Patroclus, 1839
Talbot, Articles of Glass, 1839
Books in a Library
Talbot, “The Haystack,” 1839
Nadar’s studio, 35 boulevard des Capucines
Gaspard Félix Tournachon, “Nadar”
Daumier, “Nadar, elevating the status of photography to an art,” May 1862
Nadar, Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt
Disdéri, Portrait of Rosa Bonheur, c. 1871
Disdéri and the carte de visite, uncut sheet of cartes-de visite of Sarah Bernhardt
Queen Victoria in carte-de-visite format
Disdéri, Unidentified Ballerina, uncut sheet of carte-de-visite photographs
Disdéri, Self Portrait