Revista Analele Banatului S.N. Arheologie-Istorie

Cristian Graure

„Argint şi soare”. Originile fotografiei prin evoluții tehnice între 1800 şi 1900 / “Silver and sunshine”. The Origins of Photography by means of Processes between 1800 and 1900

1 Ianuarie 2014

Abstract

As a result of the improvements made to the camera obscura and the study of light sensitivity of silver salts, photography is a product of the 19th century, and by definition an image produced by the effect of light on a foto-sensitized surface. The genesis of the term is closely related to the discovery of the journal of Antoine Hércules Romuald Florence, a French-brazilian painter and a few years later, to Sir John Herschel who for the first time proposed the term “Photography” for the image obtained in the camera obscura in his private correspondence of 28th February 1839. Around the year 1800, Thomas Wegdwood, son of the renowned manufacturer of potery, Josiah Wegdwood, conducted the first experiments which were completed by obtaining multiple images on paper or textiles, sensitized with silver salts in advance. The process of Wegdwood was revealed in 1802, along with the details necessary to achieve it, by the British chemist Humphry Davy in a paper presented to the Royal Society of Sciences in London. Regardless, a number of other researchers have addressed the issue to enthusiasts in other countries, particularly in France. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, son of a Royal Adviser, born in Chalon-sur-Saône, with numerous scientific pursuits was fascinated by the experiments with light-sensitive substances. His discovery has become an innovative technique for reproduction and the first photo-mechanical process that revolutionized the graphic arts, being known by the name of “heliography”. In the summer of 1827, Niépce manages to obtain the first image in the camera obscura, on a tin plate by 16,5 × 20,3 cm, with an exposure of over 8 hours which left a pale but identifiable image of the inner court of his estate, “Le Gras”. In September 1827, Niépce meets for the first time with Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and two years later as a result of their correspondence, they start an offcial partnership. The document is signed on December 14, 1829, with an extension for a period of two years, and was intended to promote the process of Niépce, initially with the help of improvements made later on by Daguerre. After Niepce’s death in 1833, Daguerre is awarded such merit in the discovery process, to be known in the future as the “Daguerreotype”. Shortly, after the opening of the first daguerrian studios in New York, the example was taken over in major European capitals, including London, Paris and Vienna. In the British Capital, the first studio of its kind was opened by the great industrialist Richard Beard, who managed to obtain the licence of practice from Daguerre. In June of the same year, François Arago presented before the plenary of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, several portraits obtained in only 10 – 12 seconds by the Bisson brothers. Interested at the beginning in Daguerre's method, Hyppolite Bayard, offcial of the Ministry of Finance in Paris, started his own investigations using different substances and mediums. After the daguerreotype, the Tintype, although it was a variant of wet collodion process, it was invented by amateur photographer Adolphe Alexandre Martin and improved at the same time in England, France and America, by several enthusiasts of photography, being used as an alternative to daguerreotype and it was much more accessible financially. Along with the daguerreotype, it was discovered a new way to obtain images, through a method which had origins in the work of Thomas Wegdwood at the turn of the century, subsequently perfected through the experiments of the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot after 1835. In 1835, with a pinhole camera fitted with a microscope lens, Talbot manages to capture a window of Lacock Abbey’s library to reside on a small paper and with a long time exposure. His presentation of the new invention was followed by a statement on 31 January at the Royal Society in London entitled: “Some accounts of the Art of Photogenic Drawing”, and later he called the improved process: the “Calotype”. Louis-Désiré Blanquart Evrard experimented with the photographic paper and his work was revealed by a communication presented at the French Academy on May 27, 1850, in which he proposes two ways of dealing with paper, one with serum and the other with albumin. Another improved process, one embodiment of the calotype became, with the introduction in 1851 of the paper coated with wax by the Gustave Le Gray, who called it: “waxed paper processing method”. In March of 1851, a British sculptor and calotipist, Frederick Scott Archer, described for the first time in the publication “The Chemist”, a new photographic process based on collodion entitled: “On the use of collodion in Photography”. André-Adolphe Eugene Disderi, discovered after moving to Paris in 1853 new ways of experimenting with wet collodion and the waxed paper of Le Gray. The method produced the photographic cartes-de-visite, which represented another application of collodion technique and consisted in making several frames on a single glass plate treated with this emulsion. A total of 4, 6, 8 or even 12 different frames were made using a camera equipped with as many lenses in the front. One of Disderi’s main competitors proved to be Nadar, who in 1853 opened a photographic studio in Paris in partnership with his brother Adrien. After 1860, new trends in the field of fine art photography were emerging and led to some controversy concerning the so-called “pure photography”, which previously sought faithful representation of reality and the new concepts of pictorial photography that was already taking shape through the work of Oscar Gustav Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson. Charles Ludwig Dodgson, known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, also became famous for the volume of stories “Alice in Wonderland” and practiced photography as a personal hobby since 1856. Julia Margaret Cameron manipulated the photographic negatives to achieve the desired e ects by scratches or by the fingerprints left on the printed images, which was often criticized for this by contemporary photographers. The first satisfactory method using dry collodion was attributed to Dr. Richard Leach Maddox from London, who published on 8 September 1871 a brief overview of the process in the publication "British Journal of Photography”. Eadweard Muybridge, a British employee as a topographic photographer in California, began to study the various stages of movement of a galloping horse and continued the experiments in collaboration with Leland Stanford, in order to obtain visual information about both the movement of animals and humans. In London, Leon Warneke perfected a camera in 1875 which used flexible celluloid film, using a costly substance, which was composed of India Rubber and collodion and which was subsequently applied to the surface of paper. In last quarter of the century, George Eastman became interested in photography and followed the initiation courses in this area in a local photographer’s studio. In 1879 he patented the first automatic device producing dry plates and his first commercial success was obtained in 1880 with the American company known for photographic accessories, E. & HT Anthony. His first camera model was launched in 1888 as the “Brownie” and had integrated from the manufacturing stage a roll film holder inside. Roll film became very popular in the coming period, especially among amateur photographers and was known as the “American film”. Commercial slogan used by the Eastman’s company Kodak monopolized the global photographic market to mid-twentieth century with the message content: “You push the button, we do the rest”.