Introduction to the History of Photography

"Porte D'Oree, Jerusalem" 1850, calotype, ca. 1850s "Rive Oriental du Nil, Nubie" 1849-50, calotype Nubie, Ibsamboul, Colosse Orientale du Spéos, 1850, salt print, paper negative, ca. 1850 source: http://www.leegallery.com/ducamp.html Abu Simbel, 1850 Salted paper print (Blanquart-Evrard Process) from paper negative source: http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/treg/ho_1981.1229.2.htm

Antecedents: miniature painting and silhouette François I of France Jean Clouet (c.1535, oil on panel) (Louvre) Miniature portrait painting evolved in the Renaissance from the art of illuminating books . Beethoven as a boy, 18th century silhouette portrait Machine for drawing silhouettes. From the 1792 English edition of Johann Kasper Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy Daguerreotype portraits Daguerreotype of a young man by T.H. Newcomer, Philadelphia. Split leather case with the photographer's imprint on velvet mat. source: http://www.antiquephotographics.com/Format%20Types/dags&ambros.htm With rapid developments in the daguerreotype's materials, equipment and technique, portraiture, formerly a privilege of the powerful and the very wealthy, gained popularity and soon developed into a large industry providing a new commodity for mass consumption. Prestige, utility, the human passion for the mimetic, narcissistic investment and the human desire for the kind of immortality

The concept of the photographic latent image is characterized by B. Newhall as: " a relatively week light signal is amplified enormously by development" (1) The action of light in the sensitized plate, paper or film is just the initial stage towards the formation of the photographic image, a process that must be complemented by development. The concept, according to Newhall, was announced by Talbot in 1841. Previously, Talbot allowed the action of light to be prolonged until the image appeared. The new procedure greatly reduced the necessary exposure time. The idea that a feeble image can be "increased, brought out, and strengthened" after the completion of the exposure process, was part of the daguerreotype process, as Talbot himself noted in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, after Daguerre´s disclosure of his invention. (2) It was in fact the pioneer discovery of Niépce in the 1820s. (3) The pictures from the Salomon Andree