THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

By Connor Whelan

Photographs are now common within the modern world with millions being shared daily through social networking and used everyday to capture memories, to create art and are a vital piece of modern medicine.

To mid-19th century observers photography seemed capable of capturing the world whole rather than describing and interpreting it as drawing did they called it “The mirror with a memory” a phrase coined by Dr Oliver .W. Holmes

Giphante

Giphante is a fictional story written by de la Roche.

Within the book De La Roche writes about capturing images from nature on a canvas which had been coated in a sticky substance.

When left in the dark these images would become permanently etched onto the canvas

Little did this man know he was predicting the invention and early forms of a fundamental piece of technology that is used in modern life.

De La Roche died decades before the camera was invented

and never knew that this would hold any relevance in

mass society as it does today.

The Origin of Photography

The first use of the word Photography was by a man names John F.W. Herschel and translates from the greekorigin φωτός (Photos), genitive of φῶς(phōs), "light"and γραφή (graphé) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing",together meaning "drawing with light".

Camera Obscura

The camera obscura is a dark box/room which is lens-less and holds the ability to project an image from whatever it is that is facing the pinhole on the side of the box onto the opposing wall. The incorporation of a lense to the camera obscura in the 17th century allowed for a crisper and brighter image, resulting in the foundations for modern day camera’s.

It can be used to safely view both solar eclipses and the sun.

Light from only one part of a scene will pass through

the hole and strike a specific part of the back wall.

The projection is made on paper from which

an artist can then copy.

Camera Obscura and Art

Photgraphy created an impetus for painters to forsake straight forward description in favour of more interpretive abstract styles such as impressionism, cubism and abstract impressions

It is believed that many artists would use the camera obscura in secrecy to cut down on time and effort taken and put into a painting, there is much supporting evidence towards this theory and it is believed that artists such as Vermeer were partial to the method.

Chemical Photgraphy

Chemical photography revolutionized the process and sealing it through the medium of creating permanent images.

The earliest recorder photograph was by a man named Nicephore Niepce

It was taken in 1836 and took 8 hours to develop and be exposed, The image was over exposed as can be seen by the amount of sunlight on both building within the picture

The method consisted of using a metal plate

within the camera of which the image

would be etched onto.

He called the method

heliography (sun writing)

Daguerrotypes

Nicephore continued his exploration into this field with the help of a man named Lois Daguerre, They experimented with Johann Heinrich Shultzs discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light. This led to more visibly pleasing photographs with a sharper definition. Nicephore died in 1833 but the work was carried on by Daguerre who polished the method to a point that cut the exposure time down substantially and photgraphs only took half of an hour to expose. These pictures became known as Daguerrotypes. He did this by Braising a coating on to a copper plate with silver eventing in fine rich details. This meant that Early photographers would also have to have a basic knowledge as a chemist. This soon took off as a massive trend and was referred to by a Paris news paper as “Dagurotypomania” which consisted of post mortem portraits and calling cards for the wealthy. It still remained an expensive process and the prints could not be reproduced

Calotype

A method invented by William Henry Fox Talbot The calotype negative provided the first practical method of producing prints on paper from a camera exposure.

This provided a solution to the limitations of the daguerrotypes in that the prints could be reproduced an unlimited number of times compared to the one of a kind prints that that the daguerreotype permitted.

The earliest paper negative was taken in August 1835 by Fox Talbot at his home Lacock abbey

The print was poor in quality compared to the daguerreotype and was one 1” in size. By 18 44 he had made improvements to the method and published a photography book called “The Pencil of Nature”

Fredrich Scott Archer

Interest in daguerreotypes dwindled in Europe after 1851, when English photographer Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion, or wetplate process. This was a negative-topositive process, but because the negatives were made of smooth glass rather than paper, the collodion process produced much sharper images.

Using the collodion method, French painter and photographer Adolphe Disdéri in 1854 invented the carte-de-visite, a form of photographic calling card, which soon became the new rage

Photographers using the collodion, or wet-plate, process hauled their large cameras, tripods, and portable darkrooms to the farthest reaches of Europe‟s imperial quest in the years between 1850 and 1870.

Civil War

The Civil War in the United States (1861-1865) was the first war to be thoroughly recorded by photography Matthew Brady

Photography and Industrialisation

As industrialization came to define Western life in the 19th century, industry employed photography to portray its successes and strengths. For example, in 1857 British photographer Robert Howlett took pictures of the British steamship Great Eastern, the largest vessel of its day.

Medical uses of photography

photography proved useful to medicine and the social sciences Doctors wanted beforeand-after pictures of wounded Civil War soldiers to study the effects of amputation and invasive surgery…

Psychologists studied photographs of mental patients in an attempt to visually discern their disorders. Photographers recorded the features of criminals, not only as a means of identification, but also in an effort to identify physical characteristics, which criminologists then believed might correspond with criminal behaviour.

Photography and the study of Human & Animal movement

The development of faster cameras in the 1870s spurred scientists and others to use photography in the study of human and animal movement. In 1878 Muybridge used a series of photographs of a galloping horse to demonstrate to the world that the animal lifts all four feet off the ground at once.

French physiologist Etienne-Jules Mareyalso followed Muybridge‟s example and devised a special camera to record sequential photographs on a single plate. The resulting photographs showed an echoing trail of images that recorded the subject‟s movement in both time and space. Marey used this method to develop insights into the flight of birds, human movement, and the workings of the human eye.

Photography and Poverty

In the last quarter of the 19th century the camera helped record the plight of the dispossessed, displaced, and overlooked. One of the earliest attempts to document urban poverty was made by Scottish photographer Thomas Annan, who aimed his camera at the empty, unsanitary alleyways of Glasgow in 1868 City officials commissioned Annan’s documentation to justify replacement of Glasgow’s unsavoryslums with new development.

Photography’s 50th birthday

photography celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1889, the average person was familiar with what photographs looked like and probably kept some at home, but few people took photographs themselves. In addition, most photographs existed as unique originals, because copies were still difficult to make. All this soon changed as a result of two important introductions: the simple-to-use Kodak camera and the halftone printing process.

The Kodak

The use of photographic film was pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to celluloid in 1889. His first camera, which he called the "Kodak," was first offered for sale in 1888. It was a very simple box camera with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer. The Kodak came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and needed to be sent back to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished.

The Brownie

In 1900, Eastman took massmarketphotography one step further with the Brownie, a simple and very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the snapshot. The Brownie was extremely popular and various models remained on sale until the 1960s.

The Snapshot

The snapshot expanded photography‟sterritory to include casual family scenes, candid views of everyday life, and instantaneous images that stopped motion in midair.Frenchman Jacques Henri Lartigue, began taking snapshots at the age of six. In this snapshot, taken when he was a child of his cousin appears suspended over a flight of stairs, miraculously posing for the camera in the middle of her flying leap.

The Simplicification of Photography

35mm As early as 1905, Oscar Barnackhad the idea of reducing the format of negatives and then enlarging the photographs after they had been exposed. As development manager at Leica, he was able to put his theory into practice. He took an instrument for taking exposure samples for cinema film and turned it into the world's first 35 mm camera: the 'Ur-Leica'.

Photography to a mass audience

As the technology for reproducing photographs improved in the first decade of the 20th century, a new world of images began to make the world seem smaller and its manufactured goods more desirable. Along with motion pictures, which the Lumière brothers of France introduced to the world in 1895, photographs in reproduction led to new concepts of celebrity, culture, advertising, and entertainment, all of which depended on the availability of a mass audience….

Fashion Photography

Fashion photography developed along with the new picture magazines. Confined at first to studio portraits of society women in their finery, it turned to professional models and professional photographers to enliven images and entice the reader.

Digital Photography

Digital Photography Digital camera technology is directly related to and evolved from the same technology that recorded television images. In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world's first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5x7-inch digital photo-quality print. resolution images could be stored in internal memory

Today, the technology is massively advanced, with high res cameras even incorporated as commonplace in mobile phones

Photography Today

“Today photography remains a vital and inextricable part of contemporary art, as well as retaining its commercial and more everyday uses. The invention of various digital means of making, altering, and transmitting images has thus far failed to curtail interest in traditional methods of picture making. Nor has such technology lessened the faith most people have in the documentary truth of photographs.” Cindy Sherman