THE SECOND INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY (1839-1854)
The Second Invention
- During the months following Daguerre and Argo's first presentation in 1939, photography and its potential were energetically discussed in Europe, Russia, and its potential were energetically discussed in Europe, Russia, and the United States,a s well as some parts of Asia and Latin America.
- Photographers began to assemble series of photographs,ranging from before-and- after pictures of events to microscopic studies and travel pictures.
- The spread of photography included not only the reproduction of art objects, but the creation of an infant art poised between formal consideration of light and shade and the impact of subject matter.
- One of the earliest indications of photography's transition from an invention to an active agent in the social world was the patenting go both the calotype and the daguerreotype processes.
- Daguerre received his patent and began charging everyone to use it.
- Talbot also received a patent, but would only charge commercial photographers to use it.
- In April 1839, the New Yorker was sufficiently confident in the medium's future to extol both Daguerre's contrivance and Talbot's photogenic drawing.
- In the 1840's, as photography began to proliferate s a craft, a fledgling industry, a means of record-keeping, and an aspiring art form, it also became a topic in newspapers, magazines, and other areas of public debate, where it was regularly called an " art-science".
- Anton Georg Martin (1812- 1882) studied photography soon after it was announced, and used it to picture an ordinary farmyard in winter.
- American poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), wrote three articles on photography for popular magazines in 1840.
- Because the photograph was commonly conceived as nature delineating nature, some found it lacking in imagination.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE SCIENCES
- After witnessing Daguerre's Paris presentation of his invention and studying directly with Daguerre, the Viennese physicist and mathematician Andreas Ritter von Ettingshausen (1796-1878) created startlingly detailed microscopic images.
- The scientist Léon Foucault, who would later do distinguished research into the speed of light, became involved with photography while still a medical student.
- Beginning in the early 1840's, several daguerreotype experiments reduced printed matter to a size so small that it had to be read with a microscope.
- In America, George Phillips Bond (1825-1865) and John Adams Whipple (1822-1891) made daguerreotype views of the moon.
- Hugh Welch Diamond (1809-1886), a British medical doctor and active amateur, photographed still lives and took pictures of antiquarian interest.
- Hugh's also made photographs of mental patients.
- He professed that mentally ill patients could look at photographs of themselves and understand their afflictions better.
- Dr. Diamond was one go the first photographers to experiment with the collodion process published by Frederick Scott Archer (1813-187) in 1851.
- The Ambrotype, a popular adaptation of the glass negative, was patented in 1854 by James Ambrose Cutting.
- The ambro type was a glass negative backed by a dark substance, such as black varnish, cloth, or paper.
- The French photographer E. Thiésson produced annotated images of the residents of Sofala, a town in Mozambique, and of the Botocudo people in Brazil.
WAR AND PHOTOGRAPHY
- Early photographers faced both philosophical and technical difficulties when they attempted to document the facts, causes, and experience of conflict.
- The daguerreotype and the calotype required length preparation of materials prior to exposure in the camera and a cumbersome development process; neither was able to register the rapid action of battle.
- War photographers had to cope with the lack of an established market or viewing space for their work, and the fact that, unlike painted and engravers, they were restricted to what happened in front of the lens.
- The Mexican-American War (1846-48) coincided with the rise of American newspaper.
- Public interest in the way accelerated the appearance of wood-engraving illustrations in newspapers, and increased the popularity of lithographs.
- For the first time war correspondents dispatched from major American papers could send back reports that were rushed into print.
- During and after the Mexican- American War, patriotic themes and sensational melodramas dominated the images produced for the press and the market.
- A daguerreotypist accompanying the United States troops may have made the picture to commemorate the brief eruption of peace during combat.
- John McCosh is the earliest war photographer whose name is known. He took photographs not of troops but of fellow officers in India, where he served as a surgeon with the East India Company during the Second Sikh War (1848-49).
- During the Second Burma War (1852-53), between the Burmese and the British, McCosh produced large photographs, such as his view within the city of Prome.
TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY
- The global expansion of European and American power spurred the growth of photographic practice.
- Photography was seen as an important tool for information gathering.
- John Herschel had unsuccessfully suggested that photographic equipment be included in an 1839 British expedition to the Antarctic.
- In 1842, American photographer Edward Anthony (1811-1888) accompanied a government survey of the northeast boundary of the United States and Canada.
- He used photography as documentation
- He is known to take pictures that look like less photographs and more like water paintings.
- Started by the French ministry of the interior what they did was hire a whole bunch of photographers to capture historic monuments all over the world.
- They decided to use calotype to make multiple copies of them
- The growth of urban areas during the mid-ninetenth century doubtless helped make the city an object of increased interest.
- Edouard Baldus (1813-1889) created a large print of the Cloister of Saint-Trophime, Arles (1851), by joining many negatives, and by retouching them where necessary.
- Baldus defined the photograph not as the pure product of a single camera exposure, but as a flexible basis for picture making.
- He was a pioneer in composite photography- when you put 2 or more pictures together
- “ Photography is not about a single exposure, …….”
- He wanted to move things around to make a perfect picture, not just point and shoot and have a picture.