Introduction to the History of Photography

Hugo Erfurth, Marc and Bella Chagall, 1923 Hugo Erfurth, Oskar Kokoschka, 1920 Hugo Erfurth, Max Beckmann, 1928

Series Köpfe des Alltags : 1928 - 1930, published 1931 source: George Eastman House ( Yemenititischer Knabe ) “Yemenite Boy” 1933

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 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 ...

  Le Comte de Yoldi collection Veerle Van Goethem  source: http://users.telenet.be/thomasweynants/precursors.html Invented by Gilles-Louis Chrétien in 1784, the Physionotrace allowed the rapid production of a profile portrait by an artist. The result was engraved on copper and the portrait multiplied by printing. The physionotrace  was a mechanical apparatus that worked as a large pantograph. It represented one step in the process of democratization of portraiture: from the miniature, the silhouette and the camera lucida drawing to photography. By facilitating the reproduction of a likeness in  a relatively short time, and therefore reducing the artist's effort, and, as a consequence, the price of portraits, it can be considered as a precursor of the photographic portrait as a mass phenomenon. Indeed, portraiture in the 19th century, starting with the Daguerreotype and the Calotype, was one of the main elements in the diffusion and popularization of photogr...

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 ...

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 ...

Ambrotype photograph by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) from July 21, 1865 depicting Effie Gray Millais, John Everett Millais, and their daughters Effie and Mary at 7 Cromwell Place, signed by Effie Millais. "Alexandra 'Xie' Rhoda Kitchin (September 29, 1864-April 6, 1925) was the favourite photographic subject of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), who photographed her around fifty times, from age four until just before her sixteenth birthday. She was also a notable 'child-friend' of Dodgson. The works they made together, often in tableau form, are commonly known to collectors, curators, and the contemporary artists who are inspired by them as the 'Xie' (pronounced 'Ecksy' - a diminutive form of Alexandra) pictures. " source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Kitchin Alice Liddell and her sisters, c.1859 Photo of Alice Liddell by Lewis Carroll. (1858) source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll#The_Photographer

André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (French, 1819–1889) Prince Lobkowitz , 1858 Albumen silver print from glass negative; 7 7/8 x 9 1/8 in. (20 x 23.2 cm) image source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/infp/ho_1995.170.1.htm André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri The Organ Grinder c. 1853 , salt print 5 7/8 x 4 3/4 in. image source: http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=69940&handle=li Multiple-shot camera invented by Desderi image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Appareil_disderi.gif link: Carte-de-visite photography by Robert Leggat

Pierre-Louis Pierson, Countess of Castiglione, c.1860 link: "La Divine Comtesse": Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione, Metropolitan Museum, NY

Re-enactment of the October 16, 1846 ether operation; daguerrotype by Southworth & Hawes. image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Southworth_%26_Hawes_-_First_etherized_operation_%28re-enactment%29.jpg

Étienne Carjat (French, 1828–1906) Charles Baudelaire, ca. 1863 Woodburytype image source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/infp/ho_64.677.4.htm

Newhaven fishwives by Hill & Adamson David Octavius Hill standing at the gate to his studio calotype by Hill & Adamson. source: http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/pp_d/pp_hill_calotypes_of_do_hill.htm David Octavius Hill (1802–1870) and Robert Adamson (1821–1848) Redding the Line (Portrait of James Linton), c. 1846 Scotish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh image source: http://www.kiberpipa.org/gallery/album82/David_Octavius_Hill_and_Robert_Adamson_Baiting_the_Line_1845.jpg David Octavius Hill (1802–1870) and Robert Adamson (1821–1848) "Photograph from the frontispiece of an album dated 1848, showing D O Hill sketching in Greyfriars Kirkyard, watched by the Misses Morris. Other tableaux in the same setting included The Artist and The Gravedigger" source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Octavius_Hill "Many of Hill's portraits were made in the Edinburgh Greyfriars cemetery - nothing is more characteristic of this early period than the way his subjects were at...

Julia Margaret Cameron My Favorite Picture of All My Works. My Niece Julia April 1867 http://www.masters-of-photography.com/C/cameron/cameron_niece_julia_full.html Julia Margaret Cameron Julia Jackson 1867 source: http://www.masters-of-photography.com/C/cameron/cameron_julia_jackson_full.htm l Julia Margaret Cameron Mrs. Herbert Duckworth April 1867 http://www.masters-of-photography.com/C/cameron/cameron_mrs_herbert_duckworth_full.html Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 – 1879) J.F.W. Herschel 1867 source: http://www.masters-of-photography.com/C/cameron/cameron_herschel_full.html Pomona 1872 The Rosebud Garden 1868 Pre-Raphaelite study 1870 Queen Esther before King Ahasuerus 1865 source: http://www.victoriaspast.com/JuiliaMCameron/juliacameron.htm Rossetti, Beata Beatrice, 1863, Tate Gallery Rossetti, Boca Bacciata , 1859 links: Rossetti Archives