History of Photography: An Introduction

Reading

If you are very interested in the history of photography, I suggest that you read A World History of Photography by Naomi Rosenblum. (Please note that this is not mandatory reading, it is simply an option if you would like to broaden your knowledge on the subject.)

Focus on the following chapters:

Watch a movie from the early 1900s

Have you ever seen "Citizen Kane", "Birth of a Nation", "The Seventh Seal" or "8 1/2"? Why don't you watch one of these golden oldies? This is not a mandatory exercise, but it is amazing to see how the world of film and technology has advanced during the past decades.

A brief summary of the history of photography: From pinhole cameras to the daguerreotyp

Source: Mary Bellis, thoughtco.com

The word "photography" is derived from the Greek words photos (light) and graphein (to draw), so photography is essentially "drawing with light". This is a very descriptive name for it, because without the use of light we wouldn't be able to take any photographs. Photography is thus a method of recording images by the action of light on a sensitive material. The word "photography" was used for the very first time in 1839 by a scientist named Sir John F.W. Herschel. During the photography course you will learn how important light is and that photographers can use it to create many interesting effects.   

The pinhole camera

The first pinhole camera (also known as the camera obscura) was invented in about 1 000 AD by a man called Alhazen. Alhazen was a great authority on optics in the Middle Ages and he could also explain why the images from the pinhole camera were upside down. Thousands of years ago, a Nomadic tribe in North Africa discovered that a small hole could project a picture. Living in animal skin tents, a tiny hole in the tent would project an image of the beautiful outside scene. 

Light travels in straight lines. This was first discovered by Chinese scholars in the 5th Century BC. A pinhole creates an inverted image, as noted by the philosopher Mo Ti. In the 4th Century BC, Aristotle referenced pinhole images in his writings.
 Source: http://www.alternativephotography.com

Source: thoughtco.com
Pictures of the pinhole camera.

The first photograph

Joseph Nicephore Niepce took the first photographic image with a camera obscura on a summer’s day in 1827. Before Niepce took this photograph, artists only used the camera obscura to help them draw pictures, never to take photographs. Niepce's creations were aptly named "sun prints", since light is used to draw the picture. These prints formed the blueprint for modern photography.

Niepce created his sun prints by engraving a picture onto a metal plate, coating it in bitumen and then exposing it to light. The shadowy areas of the engraving blocked light, while the lighter areas allowed for light to react with the chemicals on the plate. When you soak this metal plate in a solvent, an image would gradually start to appear. Niepce's photograph needed a full eight hours of light exposure!  After the picture appeared, it would quickly fade away again.

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This is one of Niepce's works, and apparently the oldest known photograph in the world.

Louis Daguerre

While Niepce was experimenting with photography, a Frenchman callled Louis Daguerre was also looking for ways to capture images with light. It took Daguerre over a decade before he was able to reduce the exposure time to less than half an hour and prevent the image from disappearing afterwards. This process made Daguerre the father of the practical process of photography.

In 1829 Daguerre and Niepce joined forces to improve the process of photography. After about ten years of experimentation, Daguerre created an easier and more effective way of taking photographs and called it the daguerreotype. Niepce passed away in the meantime.

To create a daguerreotype, Daguerre would "fix" an image onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. He would then polish the silver and coat the sheet with iodine, which creates a surface that is sensitive to light. He then placed this plate in a camera and exposed it to light for a few minutes. After the image was created, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This ensured that the image would last and that it wouldn't change when it got into contact with light.

Daguerre and Niepce's son sold the rights for daguerreotype to the French government in 1839. They also wrote and published a booklet that describes the process. The daguerreotype quickly became popular and in 1850 over seventy daguerreotype studios could be found in New York City alone. 

Source: Thoughtco.com
This portrait is one of the first daguerreotypes.

The process of negatives and positives

Henry Fox Talbot, an English botanist and mathematician, invented the first negative from which one could make multiple positive prints. Talbot used a silver salt solution to make paper sensitive to light. He then exposed the paper to light. The light on these images was reversed out, so they almost looked like X-rays. We call this "negative images". From these negatives, Talbot made contact prints, so he reversed the light and shadows to create a normal, detailed picture. He perfected this process in 1841 and named it "calotype", which means "beautiful picture" in Greek.

Source: Thoughtco.com
This image of the window in the South Gallery of Lacock Abbey is apparently the oldest photographic negative in existence.

Tintypes

Hamilton Smith coined tintypes in 1856. This medium also contributed to the birth of modern photography. A thin sheet of iron formed a base for light-sensitive material and formed a positive image.

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Here is an old tintype photograph.

Wet plate negatives

Frederick Scoff Archer, an English sculptor, invented the wet plate negative in 1851. He used a strong solution of collodion along with glass that was coated in light-sensitive silver salts. The fact that he used glass instead of paper ensured that his negatives were more stable and detailed. He could also produce many prints from one negative.

The field of photography grew quickly after sensitised materials could be coated on plate glass. The only challenge was that wet plates had to be developed very quickly, before the solution dried, so photographers had to bring portable darkrooms along.

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Above is an image of a glass negative.

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Here is an example of a wet plate photograph.

Dry plate negatives and hand-held cameras

The dry plate was created in 1879. This consisted of a glass negative plate with a dried gelatin emulsion. Dry plates could be stored for a period of time, so photographers no longer had to carry portable darkrooms around and could even hire technicians to develop their photographs for them. Dry processes absorbed light quickly, so the handheld camera entered the scene.

Source: Thoughtco.com
An example of a dry plate photograph.

Flexible roll film

George Eastman created film that is flexible and unbreakable in 1889. One could also roll this film up. This was the first step in making the mass-produced box camera a reality.

Colour photographs

Commercial colour films were brought to the market in the early 1940s. (Except for Kodachrome, which was intruced in 1935). These films used the modern technology of dye-coupled colours - a chemical process connects the three dye layers together to create a full colour image.

Final thoughts

You may see it as a waste of time to learn about the origins of photography, especially since digital photography is so different from photography in the olden days. Or is it? Even though technology has changed, the principle of “drawing with light” is still the same. I assure you that it is always good to know the history of an art form. As the old saying goes: If we don’t know where we come from, how will we know where we are going. Rather approach the history of photography as an interesting story filled with breakthroughs than a waste of time than can quickly be skipped over.

Sources

Source: Thoughtco.com

 


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