January 27
Photographic Objectivity?
William
Fox Talbot. The Open Door. 1843. Salted paper print from calotype negative.
http://robtaborn.homestead.com/BroomTalbot.jpg
Romanticism
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William Henry Fox Talbot. The Game Keeper. c. 1843. |
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Picturesque
= suggesting a painted scene, quaint, charming and favoring the emotional experience |
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Sublime
= lofty, grand or exalted in thought, expression or manner; of outstanding
spiritual, intellectual or moral worth; tending to inspire awe |
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Charles Negre. The Vampire. 1853. Salted paper print.
Salted paper: |
Soaked in salt concentration |
Coated on one side with silver nitrate |
Dried |
Contact printed with negative image |
Unknown Photographer. Unidentified Landscape. c. 1851-55. Salted paper print.
Wet-Collodion
Process |
Preparing and processing a collodion wet-plate |
1848 Frederick Scott Archer exposes iodized collodion while it is wet |
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collodion
(pyroxylin) = a mixture of cellulose nitrates that is less explosive
than guncotton, soluble in a mixture of organic solvents, and used especially
in making plastics, coatings such as lacquers, as a coating for wonds
or for photographic films |
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Sally Mann. Last Light . 1989.
Mann, Sally. Immediate Family. New York: Aperture, 1992.
Commercial photographers quickly adopted the wet-collodion process |
transparency = a direct translation of reality in which subjects were not suggested, as in the calotype and daguerreotype, but were clearly stated adn defined without overt intervention |
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Wet-Collodion
Spin-Off Processes: |
Ambrotype |
Ferrotype
or Tintype |
Carte-de-Visite |
Ambrotype |
Unknown Photographer. Untitled
Portrait. c. 1858. |
Introduced in 1854 |
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Positive image on glass with an opaque black backing |
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One-of-a-kind image |
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Housed in Union Case, just like a daguerreotype |
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Unknown Photographer. Unidentified Family. c. 1858. Ambrotype.
Tintype/ Ferrotype |
Photographer unknown. Civil War
Soldier. c. 1862. Tintype. |
Ambrotype image made on a thin piece of metal instead of glass |
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Metal plate painted black with asphaltum, then coated with light sensitive collodion solution |
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One-of-a-kind image |
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Advantages |
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Inexpensive |
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Durable |
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Lightweight |
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Considered an instant process |
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Unknown Photographer. Fireman. c. 1865. Tintype.
1850 first practical prepared paper produced with albumen = egg white |
Paper is made light sensitive by 'floating' it on top of
a tray filled with silver nitrate solution (producing light sensitive
silver chloride in the albumen layer) |
Paper is hung to dry in the dark |
Exposed in contact with a negative image |
Daguerreotype |
Salted paper print from calotype negative |
Albumen print |
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Southworth and Hawes. Portrait of an Unknown Woman c. 1850. SFMOMA. Picturing Modernity. San Francisco: SFMOMA, 1998. |
David Octavius Hill. Miss Crampton of Dublin. c. 1845. SFMOMA. Picturing Modernity. San Francisco: SFMOMA, 1998. |
Nadar. Sarah
Bernhardt. 1865. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb /7/7f/Nadar_2.jpg/482px-Nadar_2.jpg |
Gustave Le Gray. Brig Upon the Water. 1856. Albumen print. |
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Albumen print advantages: |
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Smooth, glossy surface that looked modern |
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Provided sharper, better contrasted, more detailed print |
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Provided consistency not possible with calotypes |
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Carte-de-visite |
Carte-de-visite camera |
carte-de-visite
= visiting card |
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Collodion image created with a multi-lens camera and printed on
albumen paper |
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Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi. Portrait
of an Unidentified Woman. c. 1860 - 1865.
Uncut albumen print from a carte-de-visite
negative.
Andre Disderi. Supplicies (Heads of Executed Men). c. 1850s. Carte-de-visite.
other newsworthy carte-de-visites
Matthew Brady Studio. Abraham Lincoln. c. 1863. Albumen Cabinet Card.
Carte-de-visite (front and back).
http://www.ephemera-society.org.uk/images/cdv_6.jpg
The Sterescope
Three kinds of stereoscopes |
1832 Sir Charles Wheatstone discovers that an illusion of depth can be created by looking at two slightly different drawings of the same subject through a binocular device |
Unknown Artist. Pre-photography stereo cards. c. 1840.
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Two (originally) stereoviews of theGreat Exhibition.
1851. |
In 1851 Queen Victoria is presented a special stereoscope during the Great Exhibition and within 3 months, 250,000 stereoscopes and millions of cards are sold to the public |
By 1856, the London Stereoscopic Company had sold 500,000 viewers |
London Stereoscopic Company motto,
"No home without a stereoscope" |
Stereoscopic Camera
http://www.glowbox.demon.co.uk/4655oALL.jpg
Holmes-Bates Stereoscope with stereograph.
Rosenblum,
Naomi. A World History of Photography. Abbeville Press, New York. 1989.
Photographer Unknown. Untitled (Stereoscopes in Use). c. 1860s.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
William England. Views of Switzerland #30. Albumen stereo card.
J.F.A. Claudet. The Geography Lesson. 1851. Stereoscopic daguerreotype.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
“What an educational revolution is here… Why our Tommys and Harrys will know the world’s surface as well as a circumnavigator…What a stock of knowledge our Tommys and Harrys will begin life with! Perhaps in ten years or so the question will be seriously discussed… whether it will be any use to travel now that you can send out your artist to bring home Egypt in his carpetbag to amuse the drawing room with.” – 1858 issue of The Athenaeum |
Chinese woman with bound feet
http://content.lib.washington.edu/cgi-bin/docviewer.exe?CISOROOT=/stereo&CISOPTR=245
1851 Gustave Le Gray announces improved printing process
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Gustave Le Gray. Sun at Zenith. c. 1856. |
Waxed Paper Process: |
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Paper waxed before sensitization |
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Prevented collodion from sinking into paper |
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Advantages: |
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Improved sharpness and detail |
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Paper could be prepared ahead of time |
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Could be developed up to a week after exposure |
Three Kinds
of Travel / Landscape Photography: |
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Amateur |
Unknown Photographers,
Platt D. Babbitt |
Commercial |
Francis Frith,
Bisson Brothers |
Official |
Missions Heliographiques,
William Henry Jackson |
Amateur Travel Photos
Maxime Du Camp. The Colossus of Abu-Simbel, Nubia. 1850.
"I had realized upon my previous travels that I wasted much valuable time trying to draw buildings and scenery I did not care to forget. I drew slowly and not very correctly... I felt that I needed an instrument of precision to record my impressions if I was to reproduce them accurately." - Du Camp |
Maxime Du Camp. The Colossus
of Abu-Simbel, Nubia. 1850.
Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 1982.
Commercial Travel Photos
Francis Frith. The Sphinx and the Great Pyramid Geezah. c. 1862. Albumen print.
Mechanical Photography = a verbatim style of photography which featured maximum detail and sharpness |
Frith's trademark "mechanical picturesque" approach: |
Juxtapose
human figures with giant monuments |
Dense detail |
Sense of
mass and scale |
Avoided
expressive or dramatic effects |
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Maxime Du Camp. Egypte Moyenne,
Le Sphinx. 1852. Salted paper print. |
John Beasly
Greene. Bank of Nile at Thebes. 1854. Salted paper print. |
Francis Frith. The Pyramids
of Dahshur, Egypt. 1858.
Rosenblum,
Naomi. A World History of Photography. Abbeville Press, New York. 1989.
Bisson Brothers. The Garden.
1860.
Rosenblum,
Naomi. A World History of Photography. Abbeville Press, New York. 1989.
Bisson Brothers. Mont-Blanc.
1860.
Koetzle, Hans-Michael. Photo Icons: The Story Behind the Pictures . Volume 1. Koln: Taschen, 2002. 2 vols.
Official Travel Photos
Missions Heliographiques = formed in 1851 by the French government to record France's important monuments
Henri Le Secq. Cathedral at Laon, France. 1851. Calotype.
Charles Marville. La Porte Rogue, Notre Dame de Paris. 1851. Salted paper print.
19th Century Science and the Photograph |
Southworth and Hawes. Early Operation Using Ether for Anesthesia. 1847. Daguerreotype. |
“It is to science…that photography, the child of science, renders, and will unceasingly render, the most valuable aid. …Photography is never imaginative, and is never in any danger of arranging its records by the light of a pre-conceived theory.” – Robert Cecil, British Prime Minister |
Ways in
which photography met 19th century science's needs: |
Used to document and preserve visual data |
Used for identification purposes |
Charcot demonstrating his patient's hysteria |
Positivism supported the 19th century belief in photographic objectivity |
Positivism = popular philosophical approach during 19th century that proposed that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge and that all things are ultimately measurable |
The Scientific Portrait
Anonymous. Spurzheim’s Phrenological Head from Phrenology or the Doctrine of Mental Phenomenon. 1832. |
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Phrenology = the study of the shape and physical features of the skull and head that is based on the belief that these features can determine character and personality traits |
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Physiognomy = the study of facial characterisitcs based on the belief that these features can determine character and personality traits |
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Alphonse Bertillon. From Indentification Anthropometrique. 1893.
Bolton, Richard ed. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993.
Unknown Photographer. Twelve Boston Physicians and Their Composite Portrait. c. 1894.
Orwell, Miles. American Photography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Francis Galton. The Jewish Type. 1883.
Bolton, Richard ed. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993.
Time cover. The New Face of America. Fall 1993 special issue.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
