Criteria 1

Understand the work and contribution to photography of photographers between 1825 & 1870

In the Beginning

From the very beginning, even before photography was even a thought, the idea of recording images on paper was extremely popular. These images were painted by artists; it was fashionable for wealthy people to have portraits painted of them to show off to others and to have their houses filed with framed painted images. These images were never exact as they were the image through the painter’s eyes and to create the painting it was very time consuming. This is what sparked the invention of the physionotrace, the ability to use light to project a temporary image that could be copied, these images were easier and faster to create and they were more realistic.

Physionotrace

The idea of using light to create a silhouette to copy predates to much earlier than when the physionotrace was created, according to (REF THREE) “Tracing shadows as a shortcut to accurate pictorial representation stretches back to ancient times.” As the demand for these silhouette images grew in 1784 Gilles-Louis Chretien created a piece of equipment to make it easier to make these pieces of art. The idea of using the candle behind the subject to create the silhouette did make the images more true to life.

IMAGE (REF THREE)

To use the physionotrace you had to be in a dark area and it could only create a silhouette of the object or person, it didn’t show any detail of the object or person and it couldn’t be used to create a larger image or to capture a full scene. The desire to find an easier way to create images of larger scenes and with true to life detail leads us onto the Camera Obscura.


Camera Obscura

The Camera Obscura started out as a large dark box that people could fit inside, with a small hole in one of the walls. When light passed through this hole it caused the scene opposite the hole to be projected on the parallel wall. This meant that full scenes or landscapes could be traced with ease rather than just an object. Later on portable versions of the larger Camera Obscura were made, these came with a lens that gave the image more clarity, another lens could also be used to change the focal length, according to (REF FOUR) “The lens, however, was simple, like a magnifying glass and produced an image that was dish-shaped and wasn't sharp. Eventually, two lenses were combined to combat this problem and lenses of different focal lengths could be used to alter the angle of view.”

IMAGE (REF FOUR)

The Camera Obscura opened up more options on what you could trace, but people artists and scientists were still waiting for a way to capture the image projected by the Camera Obscura permanently.

Cyanotype

The cyanotype process is carried out by making a print by coating paper or fabric in a UV sensitive solution and then exposing it to UV light with an object or negative over the top of the coated paper. First of all the paper or fabric was coating in chemicals, according to (REF FIVE) “The cyanotype is made up of two simple solutions. Potassium ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate (green) are mixed with water separately. The two solutions are then blended together in equal parts.” Once the image had been exposed the chemicals were washed off in water, this left the image white where it had been covered up and a Cyan colour where it had been exposed to the UV light.

Image (REF SIX)

This was like the Silhouette of photography, it may have been the first way to capture a permanent image but it could only be used to capture a silhouette of an object at this point as the negative had not been invented. Scientists and photographers still wanted a more detailed way to capture images.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

In 1826 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce created the very first photograph. He conducted many experiments with light sensitive substances but after much trial and error he used a mixture of bitumen of Judea and water. He painted this onto a pewter plate and put the plate into a small Camera Obscura and left it to sit facing outside his window. He left the plate there for eight hours and then the any excess chemicals were washed away with a mixture of lavender oil and petroleum. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce called this process Heliography. (REF SEVEN)

 IMAGE (REF SEVEN)

As you can see the image wasn’t very clear and it took far to long to create but once the process had been discovered it meant that they only needed to start tweaking what they already had rather than start from scratch.

Daguerreotype

In 1829 Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre started to work with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce on experimenting with different chemicals and different materials to print the images onto to try to get the best results. According to (REF EIGHT) "Niepce later abandoned pewter plates in favour of silver-plated sheets of copper and discovered that the vapour from iodine reacted with the silver coating to produce silver iodide, a light sensitive compound." In 1833 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce died, but Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre still carried on experimenting using the silver iodide coated copper plates. When testing different chemicals he discovered that the fumes off mercury could develop the image in twenty or thirty minutes rather than the eight hours.

IMAGES (REF EIGHT)

According to (REF EIGHT) "In 1837, Daguerre found a way of "fixing" the photographic images with a solution of common salt. Two years later, he followed the suggestion of Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) and adopted hyposulphate of soda (now thiosulphate of soda ) as the fixing agent." He named this process and the images Daguerreotypes, and these became extremely popular for wealthy people to have portraits made in this style and framed like the
image above.


Negative

In 1835 William Henry Fox Talbot invented the Calotype process, this was where a sheet of paper was covered with silver chloride and the placed in the camera obscura. The process was very similar to the Daguerreotype where the paper is left to be exposed to the light, where the light had been exposed it turned dark and where the light had been covered by an object it stayed lighter. According to (REF NINE) "The revolutionary aspect of the process lay in Talbot’s discovery of a chemical (gallic acid) that could be used to “develop” the image on the paper—i.e., accelerate the silver chloride’s chemical reaction to the light it had been exposed to." This chemical meant that the same process of exposing the first image for eight hours would now only take minutes.

IMAGE (REF NINE)

Once the image had been exposed it was them placed into sodium hyposulfite, this chemical set the image. Once this had been done it meant that the image could be copied by contact printing it onto a piece of sensitized paper. This was the very first negative and meant that mass copying
of one image was now available.


Collodion Process

In 1851 Frederick Scott Archer invented the Wet-Collodion process, this was according to (REF TEN) "The process involved adding a soluble iodide to a solution of collodion (cellulose nitrate) and coating a glass plate with the mixture. In the darkroom the plate was immersed in a solution of silver nitrate to form silver iodide." The wet glass is the exposed using the camera obscura and then it is immediately developed with sodium thiosulfate, This needed to be done immediately because once it had dried it became waterproof.

IMAGE (REF ELEVEN)

The importance of the collodion process is because the image is printed onto a glass plate it means the image will have much more clarity. This is because the paper has many fibres which caused the images to loose their exactness, where as because the glass had no fibres it meant that the image was exact. 

Photographers 1825 - 1870

Even though the first photograph was taken in 1826 many people were fascinated by the discovery and many people started to take up photography and start creating their own photographs. 

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll is most famously know for writing Alice in wonderland, but in 1850's he took up photography, one of his favourite subjects was Alice Liddell whom he wrote Alice's adventures underground for. 

 IMAGES (REF TWELVE)

Lewis Carroll seemed to favour young female portraits, I find his portraits most captivating by the way he takes very young girls but almost makes them look like small women with the way that he poses them and their facial expression. He also favoured the wet collodion process to produce his images, so much so that according to (REF THIRTEEN) " It is thought that he gave up photography when the dry developing process came to the fore, because he felt it made photography so easy that almost anyone could do it (like the introduction of digital photography in our own time?)." Lewis Carroll obvious understood the art of photography, as you can see above in the first image his composition is just perfect, the way he has the model positioned, the way he's left a larger gap to one side, everything about the photo is beautiful. From the way he has the children in his images posed it shows he prefers to take photos with a serious almost moody atmosphere to them. There would have been many limitations to Lewis Carroll's images, using the wet collodion process would have meant that he would only have fifteen minutes to take and develop the images, it also meant that he would have needed a dark room with him to process the images in. This would have limited him to when and where he could take these images, but as said before Lewis Carroll obviously enjoyed the challenge as it made him more unique and he was a man that liked to take his time, according to (REF THIRTEEN) " He was a man of infinite patience and one who paid attention to the smallest detail. These qualities were mandatory to be a photographer in the 1850’s." His contribution to photograph may not have been as large as others, but the fact that he was a well known figure would have meant that others would have followed and been inspired by his style of photography.

William Henry Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot is famously known for creating the Calotype process, this was a massive contribution to photography and made a massive impact on the photography industry. This is because he made photography more accessible, before the Calotype process the creation of one photograph took so long that you had to get the exposure time exactly right or you would have to recreate the image which would take hours and hours. Where as with the calotype process images were created in minutes which meant that if an image wasn't correctly exposed recreating it only took minutes rather than hours. He also created the Negative and the ability to develop and copy images by contact printing, this was a massive contribution to the photography industry. Printing meant that one image could be copied repeatedly and sold, which created mass marketing aspects of photography. The ability to mass print one image also changed the way newspapers, magazines and leaflets were created, now that they had images on them it meant that photographers could push their work further and becoming a well known photographer was easier. Everywhere you look in modern day pictures are mass produced and printed, even though we have computers and the internet, so it shows that his contribution is still going strong now despite the fact we have easier and more available alternatives. 

IMAGES (REF FOURTEEN)

The images above are just a selection of Willam Henry Fox Talbot's, as you can see photographed landscape, architectural and still life and because these images were taken so early on and close to when printing images was developed, these would have been some of the first images mass produced. Therefore the very first photographers looking for inspiration would have been looking at these images, as many photographers still are today. All three images are similar to photographs you would see today and all three are from genres of photography that is still popular today. 

Influence

I haven't researched or looked at the work of the two photographers above, but already I can seen that small elements of my work that I have been inspired to create, by other photographers will link back to the work of these two. 

Lewis Carroll

I absolutely love Lewis Carroll's photography work and I feel that it already has influenced my work through the type of photographers that inspire me. I prefer natural none smiling images when I am photographing portraits of children, I love the innocence in a child's eyes to shine through and their natural beauty without a forced smile. Below is one of my own images that I feel is similar to some or Lewis Carroll's, it's the relaxed face, the absence of a forced smile that I love.  

I do feel that in the future I will be influenced by Lewis Carroll more, as seeing how beautiful and perfect his images are have given me more confidence in not conforming to the natural smiley children's portraits. I find that a lot of client's ask for the posed smiling images but don't realize how beautiful and perfect children look when they are not. 

William Henry Fox Talbot

Although William Henry Fox Talbot's photography work isn't the style that I prefer to photograph in I can still appreciate the beauty of it. I have tried in the past to photograph in the same style and again I feel that the photographers that I got inspiration from would have linked back to his works somewhere down the line. Below is an image of some still life leaves which links to the still life leaf above.

I do feel that I will be influenced in the future by his work, I have not tried any landscape or architectural photograph in a long time and I feel now I have developed my skills of using my camera that maybe I should. I would like the photograph in the same black and white style that he has used with his bridge photograph in the images above.


Own Images


Here are three of my own images in the style of Lewis Carroll's natural none smiling children photography.