Introduction to the History of Photography

  Engraving of the first photograph of the Pathenon. Taken by Gaspard-Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière in 1839. Published in Excursions daguériennes by Noël Paymal Lerebours in 1841   source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Parthenon_1839.jpg   Niagara. Chute Du Fer a Cheval   from Excursions daguerriennes: vues et monuments les plus remarquables du globe,  published by Lerebours, Nöel-Marie-Paymal  1840 engraving from daguerreotype 26.0 x 73.5 cm.  source: Daguerreotypomania GEH "The Excursions Daguerriennes, représentant les vues et les monuments les plus remarquables du globe, [Daguerreian Travels, representing the most remarkable views and monuments in the world] was published in Paris by Noël-Marie Paymal Lerebours between 1841 and 1864. The volumes were sold by subscription and in the end contained more than one hundred views of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East shot between 1839 and 1844. Pattinson's view of t...

  Cincinnati Waterfront Panorama Daguerreotype, taken by Charles Fontayne and William S. Porter in 1848 click on the image to enlarge  sources: http://codex99.com/photography/5.html  http://www.cs.rochester.edu/~rmessing/cincinnatti/     A zoom illustrating the extraordinary level of detail in a daguerreotype This is plate 4 of the Cincinnati Waterfront Panorama Daguerreotype consisting of 8 plates, taken by Charles Fontayne and William S. Porter in 1848. The plate, property of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton Counties, was imaged in tiles using a stereomicroscope (Zeiss StereoDiscovery.V12) at George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film, Kay Whitmore Conservation Center, in Rochester, NY source:  YouTube   links: http://www.cincinnatilibrary.org/main/rb.asp#daguerreotype http://www.tedxcincy.com/2010/09/30/fontayne-porter-panorama-part-2-by-patricia-van-skaik/    Porter, William S...

The notion of what we may call an “artless art” was applied at different times, and with different intentions, to photography and the Daguerreotype. The image produced “directly” by nature, bypassing the intervention of the hand of the artist, was the object of amazement at first, and praised for its astounding fidelity of detail: an “art form” therefore that “no painter could ever match”.  The popularization of the daguerreotype as the 19th century progressed, brought about by technical improvements allowing for the mass production of images and specially, for the first time, the mass production of portraits, produced also as a counter-current, a kind of  “over familiarity” with the daguerreotype portrait. And with it, a relative weariness about the repetitious, the unstudied, the narrowly documentary and "vulgar" or commonplace qualities (issues only partially explained by inherent  limitations of the Daguerreotype technique for portraiture, such as exposure time requi...

The following are examples of the art of the Daguerreotype as practiced today by specialized studios and labs. From the site: TheDagLab.com. Here their Gallery of Portraits .  And here an explanation of the process

  Malcolm Daniels, Curator of the Dept of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, talks about the Daguerreotype process source: YouTube

    The Geography Lesson , 1851. Stereoscopic daguerreotype   Portrait of Fox Talbot by Claudet, c.1844 image source: British Library - Points of View Born in Lyon, France, in 1797,  Antoine-Jean-Francois Claudet  settled in London in 1827. After a period as a successful  glass merchant, he learned the daguerreotype process from Daguerre himself. Claudet purchased the first Daguerreotype licence in England and established his own photographic studio on the roof of the Adelaide Gallery, behind St. Martin's church, London, from 1841 to 1851, later moved to 107 Regent Street.  He brought several technical improvements to the Daguerreotype process, including new sensitizing materials, exposure times and focal improvements, and is credit with the discovery that it was possible to develop prints under a red light, as well as the use of painted backdrops. He was appointed photographer to Queen Victoria in 1853. MGL   Self-portrait with ...

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 ...

Cindy Sherman by Chuck Close from A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (Aperture 2006) Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something Photographs by Chuck Close Poems by Bob Holman Interview with Chuck Close and Bob Holman by Lyle Rexer Clothbound, 22 tritone images 56 Pages, 11.375" X 14.875" Aperture 2006 Excerpt from an interview by Lyle Rexer in the book: Rexer : "And daguerreotypes are unforgiving. In the nineteenth century there were reams written about the fact that if you decided to have a daguerreotype made, you took your self-image in your hands, because nothing would be left out." Close : "It was more warts-and-all than any other process. Because it’s so red-sensitive, any marks, any flaws are heightened. You have to be pretty comfortable in your skin, and vanity goes out the window. And it’s also physically painful. A normal ...

"If a man had handed a metallic speculum to Democritus of Abdera, and told him to look at his face in it while his heart was beating thirty or forty times, promising that one of the films his face was shedding should stick there, so that neither he, nor it, nor anybody should forget what manner of man he was, the Laughing Philosopher would probably have vindicated his claim to his title by an explosion that would have astonished the speaker. This is just what the Daguerreotype has done. It has fixed the most fleeting of our illusions, that which the apostle and the philosopher and the poet have alike used as the type of instability and unreality. The photograph has completed the triumph, by making a sheet of paper reflect images like a mirror and hold them as a picture. This triumph of human ingenuity is the most audacious, remote, improbable, incredible,--the one that would seem least likely to be regained, if all traces of it were lost, of all the discoveries man has made. It h...

Daguerre, Atelier, 1837, daguerreotype source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Daguerreotype_Daguerre_Atelier_1837.jpg Born in 1787, Daguerre was apprenticed to an architect in his hometown of Corneilles-en-Parisis. In 1804 in Paris, he served in the studio of Degotti, a stage designer, and later assisted the painter of panoramas Prevost. Daguerre attained the post of stage designer at the Opera around 1819. He conceived and built the Diorama around 1822, offering staged illusionist entertainment that combined realistic painting and moving light effects. The constant use of the camera obscura to create his large scale paintings led to the idea of fixing the images of the optical apparatus and to his collaboration with Niepce that would result, after the dead of his collaborator and creator of the first photograph, in the invention of the daguerreotype.

Jean-Baptiste Sabatier-Blot (French, 1801–1881) Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, 1844 Daguerreotype; 14.3 x 11.7 cm (5 5/8 x 4 5/8 in.) George Eastman House, Rochester source: http://www.metmuseum.org/special/French_Daguerreotypes/1.L.htm

"The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839–1855" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 23, 2003 through January 4, 2004, was the first survey of key monuments from photography's earliest moments, when its pioneers used the invention for a broad spectrum of artistic, scientific, and documentary purposes. Philippe de Montebello, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented: "The invention of the daguerreotype—the earliest photographic process—forever altered the way we see and understand our world. No invention since Gutenberg's movable type had so changed the transmission of knowledge and culture, and none would have so great an impact again until the informational revolution of the late twentieth century." source: http://www.metmuseum.org/special/French_Daguerreotypes/dawn_more.htm the exhibition site has also a video animation on the Daguerreotype process The Daguerreotype Process (4 minutes, silent) Courtesy of Py-Films, Bou...

Baron Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros (French, 1793–1870) View of the East Facade of the Propylaea on the Acropolis, Athens, May–June, 1850 Daguerreotype; 14.9 x 20 cm (5 7/8 x 7 7/8 in.) Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal From the exhibition The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839–1855 September 23, 2003–January 4, 2004 Drawings, Prints, and Photographs Galleries, The Howard Gilman Gallery, 2nd floor Metropolitan Museum, New York image link