TIMELINE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Rachel Barlow

Evolution of photography

Photography is used widely and it forms a base for the World today. Photography can range from a form of identification or a passport to Photo’s just purely for memories. Many years ago camera’s were not as technology based as they are now, you can now open a camera on your phone and take as many images as you want in the space of a second.

An example of how photography has changed is:

Psychologists studied photographs of mentally patients in an attempt to visually discern their disorders via their facial expressions etc. Photographers recorded the features of criminals also, not only as a form of identification but also in an effort to identify their physical characteristics which some criminologists would believe may correspond with their criminal behaviour.

Mid 19-th century DR OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

To 19-th-century some observers, photography seemed able to capture the World as a whole rather than describing and interpreting it as a drawing did. This was called “mirror with a memory”.

Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes was the one who created this phrase “mirror with a memory”.

People then in the 20-th-century went onto argue with Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes phrase as they criticised whether photography is actually a direct trace of experience or instead a reflection of the main photographers particular point of view.

1729-1774

GIPHANTIE

Within the time period of 1729-1774, De La Roche predicted that it was possible to capture images of the nature available to him which he’d then further put onto a canvas which had been coated with a sticky substance. This surface, in which he believed, would not only provide a mirror image onto the sticky canvas but it would further then remain on it. He then believed after you left it in the dark it would remain permanent. This is the tale in which he believed, the author would have not believed how prophetic the tale would become over the decades after his death.

It is now further believed today that photography created a catalyst for painters to renounce straightforward description in favour of more interpretive or abstract styles such as cubism and impressionism.

1839 SIR JOHN F.W HERSCHEL

The term “photography” is derived from the Greek roots: φωτός (photos) and γραφή (graphy) meaning lines or drawing.

This word was firstly used by the scientist Sir John F.W Herschel in the time period of 1839. This method includes recording images by the action of light or related radiation on a sensitive material.

Camera Obsurca

The Camera Obsucra was developed out of a simple lens-less ‘pinhole camera’. This was used maybe around 1,000 years ago. This allowed people to project an image of the sun and safely view any eclipses. The Latin meaning for a ‘camera obsucra’ is “darkened room”, this is due to it taking place in either a dark room or a box. The camera obsucra was used by adding a hole in one side of a box or into a room, the light from an external source would pass through the hole and strike a surface inside in which it would reproduce at a rotation of 180 degrees(upside down) but with colour and perspective preserved. This image can then further be projected onto paper and traced to produce a highly representation.

Camera Obscura VERMEER

There has been a hypothesis that the artist Vermeer used the camera obscura for some of his painting.

Within the Victorian Era many seaside resorts would have a camera obscura which was usually set up in a small octagonal building near the beach or on a pier. Within it you could watch a moving picture of the view outside.

1820’s Nicephore Niepce

Photography in the 1820’s developed chemical photography, this is where the image is developed onto photographic film with the use of chemicals. The first permanent photograph was an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce. Although they had to spend 8 hours exposing the picture so he went on to find a new less-time wasting process.

Nicéphore Niépce used a coating of bitumen of Judea to make the first permanent camera photograph, the bitumen was hardened which was the part which had been exposed to the light and then the unhardened area was then removed with a solvent.

This is the first permeant photograph by the French Inventor.

Daguerreotypes

Nicéphore Niépce work in a partnership with Louis Daguerre experimenting with the silver compounds based around Johann Heinrich Schultz discovering in 1724. Johann’s theory was that when silver and chalk are put into the same mixture it darkens when exposed to the light. As this theory would take up to 8 hours to expose they tried to think of an easy way.

Nicéphore Niépce died in 1833 but his former Partner Daguerre continued the work, he eventually went onto discover the development of the daguerreotype in 1839 which reduced the exposure time down to half an hour.

Nicéphore Niépce & Louis Daguerre

This was the first ever Daguerreotype.

Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype plate consisted of brazing or coating a copper plate which was covered in silver- silver being the main photographic emulsion.

The image was then able to capture very fine, rich detail. This main technique is still being reproduced by people today.

Daguerreotype

The very low-cost daguerreotype became so popular over the years that by the end of 1839 some newspapers such as one in Paris were referring to a new disease called Daguerreotypomania.

Photographic portraits were much less expensive than painted ones due to it taking less time for the sitter and it described individual faces with uncanny accuracy. There was a great sense of presence in these pictures that the Photographers were often called upon to take portraits of the recently deceased. This was known as post-mortem portraits.

Daguerreotype

The process of the daguerreotype was very good but it was also very expensive. To many people they would have not regarded this as a disadvantage; it meant the owner of their portrait could be very certain that he had the one piece of art and there was no way it could be duplicated. However, if two copies were needed, the only way of doing so would be to use two cameras side by side.

Calotype WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT

In a sense of rivalry to the Daguerreotype was the invention of the Calotype by William Henrey Fox Talobot. The Calotype negative provided the first ever practical method of producing prints onto paper from a camera exposure.

The earliest known paper negative was produced in August 1835. The negative is very small at 1” square and poor quality compared with the images produced with the Daguerreotype process. The one advantage of Talbot’s method was that more than one positive prints could be produced. By 1840 Talbot had made significant improvements and by 1844 he was then able to bring out a photographically illustrated book called “The Pencil Of Nature.

Collodion FREDERICK SCOTT ARCHER

A wide range of interest in daguerreotypes developed in Europe after 1851 when the English Photographer Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion, also known as the wet-plate process. This process was a negative-to-positive process, due to the negatives being made of smooth glass rather than paper, the collodion process would produce much sharper images.

Photographers using the collodion process would haul their large cameras, tripods and portable darkrooms to the Europe’s Imperial Quest within 1850-1870.

1854 Adolphe Disderi

Using the collodion method, the French painter and photographer Adolphe Disderi invented the carte-de-viste. This was a form of photographic calling card which son became the new rage.

It was usually made of an albumen print which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. He also had the method of taking eight separate negatives on one single plate to reduce production costs.

The Civil War in the United States 1861-1865 was the first war to be thoroughly recorded by photography.

Some industries within the 19th century employed photography to portray its success and strengths. Such as in 1857 British Photographer Robert Howlett took pictures of the British Steamship Great Eastern which was the largest vessel of its day.

With this in mind, photography then went onto prove useful for medicine and the social sciences due to Doctors wanting before and after pictures of wounded Soldiers from the Civil War in which they would study the effects of amputation and invasive surgery.

Civil WarFirst War to be recorded thoroughly by photography.

1878 Muybridge

When faster cameras became more developed in the 1870’s, scientists and others use photography in the study of human and animal movement. An example of this is Muybridge as he used a series of photographs of a galloping horse in order to demonstrate to the World that the animal lifts all four feet of the ground at once.

Etienne-Jules Marey

French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey followed Muybridge’s example and created a special camera which would record a sequence of photographs on a single plate.

The final photographs showed an echoing trail of images which recorded the subject’s movement in both time and space. He used this method to develop insights into the flight of birds and then human movement and the working eyes of a human.

1868 Thomas Annan

Within the last quarter of the 19th century, the camera helped record the displaced and the overlooked. One of the earliest attempts to document urban poverty was created by Thomas Annan who aimed his camera down an empty alleyway in Glasgow 1868.

George Eastman

Photographic film was pioneered by George Eastman who started to manufacture paper film in 1885 before moving over to celluloid in 1889. The first camera of his was called the “Kodak” which was first offered for sale in 1888. It consisted of a very simple box camera with a fixed-focus lens and a single shutter speed, along with its low price it appealed to the average customer.

The Kodak camera came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposes which would then be needed to be sent back to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was completely finished.

In 1990, Eastman went one step further with the “Brownie” and created a simple and very inexpensive box camera which had the concept of snapshot.

The snapshot

The snapshot expanded photography’s areas to include family scenes, images that stopped motion in mid-air and candid views of everyday life.

Photograph’s of Frenchman Jacques Henri Lartigue who began taking snapshots at only the age of six was able to conquer this. Within one of his snapshots which he taken when he was 10, it showed his teenage cousin appearing suspended over a flight of stairs posing for the camera.

Oscar Barnack

Within the early 1905, Oscar Barnack had an idea which would reduce the format of negatives and then enlarging the photographs after they had been exposed. Due to him being develop manager at Lecia, he was then able to put this theory into practice by taking an instrument able to expose samples for the cinema film and turned it into the World’s first ever 35mm camera called the “Ur-Lecia”. 35m

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Lumiere Brothers

The Lumiere brothers of France introduced motion pictures into the World in 1895, they invented their own device which consisted of combining a camera with a printer and a projector in which they called it the “Cinematographe”. Photograph’s began to reproduce which would led to the new concepts of culture, advertising and entertainment.

One example of the new visual culture was the use of picture of magazines due to their contents being defined as much as the text was.

Magazines such as National Geographical magazines became widely popular all over due to the wide range of photo’s being from all over the World. This was one of the first publications to use colour when using photo’s.

Photographic uses

As time went on fashion photography developed running aside with the new picture magazines. It was firstly studio portraits of society women in their finery which it then turned to professional models and professional photographers to liven up the images to intrigue the reader more.

This then led onto photographs being used sophistically in advertisements.

1920 John Heartfield

Photography played a large part in surrealism and dada, art movements that encouraged literature and theatre as well as painting and sculpture. John Heartfield a Dada artist in Germany, developed a form of nonsensical photo collage around 1920. He used this to express dissatisfaction with the social conventions. This image he created is an example of a photomontage, he has created this to make strong political points against the government and social issues.

Digital Photography

Digital Photography uses an array of electronic photo detectors which captures the image focused by the lens as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The image which has then been captured is digitized and stored on a computer ready for digital processing, viewing and digital publishing and printing.

In 1986 Kodak scientists invented the World’s first megapixel sensor which was capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5x7-inch digital photo-quality print.

Today, camera’s are much more simple to use. They take a matter of second to capture and expose. There is also camera’s used within mobile phones which have a high amount of pixels.

APPLE QUICK TAKE 100 .1994.  The first mass-market color digital camera.  640 x 480 pixel CCD.  Up to eight 640 x 480 resolution images could be stored in internal memory

Doctoring Photographs

Doctoring photographs has ben around for almost as long as the photograph itself. Due to digital hardware and software developing over the years and becoming more advanced, the whole digital image manipulation has become much more common and faked photo’s are becoming harder to detect due to the quality they are manipulated to. This can also be referred to as ‘photoshopping’, many consider this fakery to be a new form of art.

Doctoring Photographs

Doctoring or photoshopping images has also been used within real life ethics for photojournalism. This is an example of when it has gone wrong and been caught out.

Photography in this day in age

Today, photography remains a vital part of life and contemporary art. Without photography the World wouldn’t work the same, photography is used as a form of Identification and this is a vital piece of photography. Also for police matters, documenting their information by the use of photographs helps them have hard visible evidence. Camera’s are now developed to do pretty much everything photo wise, changing the lens to make it zoom in or out. They are also much clearer and take a matter of seconds to expose whereas ones from years ago could take up to 8 hours and they were just in simple black and white.