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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2015
https://archive.org/details/concisehistoryofOOgern
A Concise History of
Photography
1 CECIL BEATON. MARTITA HUNT AS ‘THE >1AD WOMAN OF CHATBOT’, 1951
A Concise His to ry of
HELMUT GERNSHEIM
in collaboration with
ALISON GERNSHEIM
T/f/^
/ ^6/
CONTENTS
Photochemistry 1
The daguerreotype 59
Photographs on paper 79
Landscape 107
Architecture 111
Fotoform 227
Reportage 244
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 294
all but a picture . . . You know that the rays of light, reflected from
different bodies, form a picture, and paint the image reflected on all
polished surfaces, for instance, on the retina of the eye, on water, and
on glass. The elemental spirits have sought tcYfrx these fleeting images;
they have composed a subtle matter, very viscous and quick to harden
and dry, by means of which a picture is formed in the twinkling of an
eye. They coat a piece of canvas with this matter, and hold it in front
of the objects they wish to paint. The first effect of this canvas is
similar to that of a mirror; one sees there all objects, near and far,
the image of which light can transmit. But what a glass cannot do,
the canvas by means of its viscous matter, retains the images. The
mirror represents the objects faithfully, but retains them not; our canvas
shows them with the same exactness, and retains them all. This im-
pression of the image is instantaneous, and the canvas is immediately
carried away into some dark place. An hour later the impression is
dry, and you have a picture the more valuable in that it cannot be
imitated by art or destroyed by time The correctness of the drawing,
. . .
the truth of the expression, the stronger or weaker strokes, the gradation
of the shades, the rules of perspective, all these we leave to Nature,
who with a sure and never-erring hand, draws upon our canvasses
images which deceive the eye.’
9
in the camera obscura, which plays an equally essential role in photo-
graphy, recording nature automatically would never have become possible.
Knowledge of the optical principle of the camera obscura images can
be traced back to Aristotle; its use as an aid in drawing, to Giovanni
Battista della Porta. The photographic camera derives directly from the
camera obscura, which was originally, as its Latin name implies, a dark
room, with a small hole in the wall or window-shutter through which an
inverted image of the view outside is projected on to the opposite wall or
a white screen. In southern climates where people darken their rooms in
hot weather, this phenomenon may well have been noticed even before its
It may be assumed that knowledge of the camera obscura effect was wide-
spread amongst Arab scholars, who preserved Aristotelian learning through-
out the Dark Ages in Europe.
During the next five centuries the use of the camera obscura for the
observation of solar eclipses without harming the eyes by looking directly
at the sun was referred to by a number of scholars including Roger Bacon.
The first published illustration (111. 2) of it is contained in De radio
astronomico geometrico liber (1545) by a Dutch physician and mathe-
et
matician Reiner Gemma Frisius. The earliest printed account antedates this
by twenty-four years. Cesare Cesariano, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci,
described in an annotation in his 1521 edition of Vitruvius’s De architectura
the camera obscura in which the image of everything outside the room
can be seen. Leonardo had already written two descriptions of the camera
obscura in his notebooks, which however were not published until 1797.
The fullest and best description of the camera obscura was published
by a Neapolitan scientist Giovanni Battista della Porta in Magiae naturalis
(1558), in which for the first time it was recommended as an aid in drawing.
10
ilium in tabula per radios Solis
,
quam in c<rlo contin-
gir:hoc eft,fi in ccelo fuperior pars deliquiu patiatur, in
radns apparcbit inferior deficere,vr ratio exigit optica.
‘If you cannot paint, you can by this arrangement draw [the outline
of the images] with a pencil. You have then only to lay on the colours.
This is done by reflecting the image downwards on to a drawing-board
with paper. And for a person who is skilful this is a very easy matter.’
11
3 NINETEENTH-CENTURY TENT
CAMERA OBSCURA, OF THE TYPE
USED BY JOHANN KEPLER IN 1620
12
The camera obscura in its original form as a darkened room in a house
restricted the artist to the view outside, or to portraits of people posed in
front of the hole, but in the seventeenth century portable cameras, which
had first been suggested before 1580 by Friedrich Risner and published
posthumously in his Optics (1606), were constructed.
Fourteen years later the astronomer Johann Kepler while making a survey
of Upper Austria in his capacity as Imperial Mathematician, sketched in
a small black tent, through the top of which projected a tube containing
a biconvex lens, and a mirror to reflect the image down on to the drawing-
board. The tent-type camera obscura was still in use in the early nineteenth
terior of thebox and lens-tube black to avoid reflections. In size and design
Zahn’s cameras were prototypes of nineteenth-century photographic box
and reflex cameras.
By the eighteenth century the use of the camera obscura was common
knowledge among educated people; long descriptions of the apparatus were
contained in most works on optics, treatises on painting, and books of
popular recreation. Cameras were constructed in innumerable types and
sizes, from the original darkened room -now usually in a tower, to give
an extensive panorama of the surroundings -to pocket cameras only 6 to
8 inches long and 2 or 3 inches wide. Some were in the form of a book
(III. 7), others were concealed in the head of a walking-stick. To aid
the artist in portraiture, still-life, and were table cameras
interiors, there
PHOTOCHEMISTRY
Whereas since the middle of the seventeenth century the existing optical
apparatus could have been used for photography, from the chemical point
of view it was not until 1725 that Johann Heinrich Schulze, professor of
anatomy at the University of Altdorf near Nuremberg, observed that the
15
darkening of silver salts (on which most photographic processes depend)
was not due -as previously believed -to the sun’s heat or to air, but
to light alone. While trying to make phosphorus, Schulze saturated chalk
with nitric acid which happened to contain some silver. He performed the
experiment near an open window in sunshine, and was surprised to see
that the mixture on the side of the flask facing the light turned purple,
while the portion away from the light remained white. Tests by the fire
proved that the colour change was not due to heat. Using a mixture con-
taining more silver, the discoloration took place much more rapidly. Finally,
Schulze covered the flask with paper from which he had cut out letters.
‘Before long I found that the sun’s rays on the side on which they had
touched the glass through the apertures in the paper, wrote the words or
sentences so accurately and distinctly on the chalk sediment, that many
people . . . were led to attribute the result to all kinds of artifices.’ Beyond
making evanescent stencil images Schulze did not carry his experiments
towards photography. He published his observations in 1727 in the trans-
actions of the Imperial Academy at Nuremberg, entitling his paper jokingly
Scotophorus pro Phosphoro lnventus 3 for he had been trying to make
phosphorus, ‘bringer of light’, and discovered instead ‘Scotophorus’, ‘bringer
of darkness’.
Schulze’s experiment became widely known, not only in scientific circles,
being also published in many popular books of ‘rational recreations’ as a
parlour-trick.
Extending Schulze’s observations, the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm
Scheele proved that the violet rays of the solar spectrum have a more rapid
darkening effect on silver chloride than the other wavelengths -a fact
which on proved a disadvantage in photography until the introduction
later
of panchromatic emulsions, as it caused an incorrect translation of the
colours of nature into the monochrome tone scale. Scheele also published in
Chemische Abhandlung von der Lufl und dem Feuer (1 777) that silver
the different spectrum colours darken silver chloride: from 15 seconds for
violet light to 20 minutes for red. Senebier also made important investiga-
tions of the effect of light on resins, finding that some lose their solubility
in turpentine after exposure to light: i. e. they harden -a phenomenon later
used by Nicephore Niepce in his photographic experiments.
16
*
The Invention of Photography
THE EARLIEST ATTEMPTS AT PHOTOGRAPHY
The first to try to fix the images of the camera obscura by chemical means
were the brothers Joseph Nicephore and Claude Niepce, officers in the
French army and navy respectively, while stationed at Cagliari, capital of
Sardinia, in 1793. Beyond the fact that they made some experiments to-
gether, referred to in a letter from Nicephore to Claude on 16th September
1824, nothing is known.
Towards Thomas Wedgwood, son of
the close of the eighteenth century
the potter Josiah Wedgwood, and an amateur scientist, conceived inde-
pendently the same idea. Tom Wedgwood was familiar with the camera
obscura used for sketching great country houses to ornament dinner and
tea services made at the Etruria pottery works. His knowledge of the light-
sensitivity of silver nitrate was acquired from his tutor Alexander Chisholm,
formerly chemical assistant of Dr William Lewis, the first person in Eng-
land to publish (in 1763) Schulze’s investigations.
Wedgwood’s attempts at photography were published in the Journal oj
the Royal Institution, London, in June 1802 by his friend (Sir) Humphry
Davy. Wedgwood’s main object was to fix the images of the camera obscura
on silver nitrate, but he failed to do so ‘in any moderate time’ -without
stating what he considered moderate. Wedgwood and Davy both succeeded
in making copies of leaves, insects’ wings, and the then fashionable paintings
17
-
9 NICEPHORE NIEPCE.
HELIOGRAPH OF CARDINAL
d’amboise, 1826-27
10 NICEPHORE NIEPSE. PENCIL AND VASH. PORTRAIT BY C. LAGUICHE, C. 1795
sensitized with silver chloride, but only partially fixed with nitric acid. As
the parts which were light in reality appeared dark in the photographs -they
were negatives -Niepce tried to print through one of them, and though un-
successful in making a positive copy, his knowledge of this possibility
forestalled Talbot.
For many years Niepce experimented with different light-sensitive
materials and eventually turned to substances mentioned by Senebier which
harden, instead of darken, under the influence of sunlight. In July 1822
he made his first successful photo-copy of a copperplate engraving by
laying it on a glass plate coated with bitumen of Judea, a kind of asphalt
used in engraving on account of its resistance to etching fluids. In the
following years Niepce copied several engravings by superposition on metal
plates (usually zinc or pewter) instead of glass, for he intended them to be
etched and printed from. The best is a portrait of Cardinal d’Amboise
(III. 9) which Niepce made in 1826 and had printed by the Parisian engraver
Lemaitre the following February.
19
11 J.
E. MAYALL. DAGUERREOTYPE
OF L. J. M.DAGUERRE, 1846
20
*
d’Amboise, and several other heliographic reproductions. At Kew he made
the acquaintance of the botanical painter Francis Bauer, who recognizing
the importance of the invention persuaded Niepce to address a memoir on
the subject to King George IV and to the Royal Society. However, as the
cautious inventor refused to disclose the details of his process, the Royal
Society would not take cognizance of it. Before returning home, Niepce
gave Bauer all these photographic incunabula ,
and after several years’
‘detective. work’ by the authors Ills. 9 and 12 and both memoirs came to
light in 1952.
Giving up pewter, which is too soft a material to form a satisfactory
printing plate -always Niepce’s final aim -he changed to silverplated sheets
of copper, improving the contrast of his pictures by blackening the bare
parts of the silvered plate with iodine vapour. The exposure, however,
remained unpractically long.
In December 1829 Niepce signed a partnership agreement with Louis
Jacques Mande Daguerre (III. 11), theatrical designer and co-inventor with
model of camera obscura and his talents, and it was formed explicitly for
the purpose of perfecting Heliography. Two years after Niej^ce’s death
Daguerre discovered that an almost invisible or latent image could be
brought out or developed with mercury vapour, thus reducing the exposure
time from at least eight hours to 20-30 minutes. It was not until May 1837,
however, that he found a way of fixing the pictures with a solution of
common salt.
22
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these wise men knew nothing of mirror pictures made permanent, then
one can straightway call the Frenchman Daguerre, who boasts of such
unheard of things, the fool of fools.’
IIISTORIQIE ET DESCRIPTION
ox* p^
DAfrlERREOTYPE
rt l»u Diorama,
PAR DAGUERRE,
fce*. 1 I*-;* £7'* * Lsn-'.'fr ' -t cn.4 ti pom feme Hi
PARIS,
16 TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST EDITION M.PHONRK C.IKOI \ KT f*.
Oij-MfM -ii. • X. *« 7. .< ar falnqumi <r, .
IIEI.LUH, UHKAIHE.
20 august 1839
X
26
*
on their methods, Reade mentioned that he had been speeding up his photo-
graphs with an infusion of galls. A recently discovered letter from Reade
to his brother dated 1st April 1839 seems to contradict Reade’s claim, made
many years later, that his experiments began in 1837.
On hearing of Daguerre’s discovery, the great English astronomer Sir
John Herschel set himself the task of solving the problem of photography
independently. Within a week he achieved what had taken others years to
accomplish. His first photograph, of his father’s big telescope at Slough near
London, was taken on 29th January 1839 on paper sensitized with carbonate
of silver and fixed with hyposulphite of soda. On 14th March Herschel read
a paper to the Royal Society ‘On the Art of Photography’ which was
accompanied by twenty-three photographs on paper, some of them negatives,
others positives. Apart from the photograph of the telescope they were all
copies of engravings or drawings by superposition. Out of consideration for
Talbot, whose achievement Herschel did not want to belittle by his own
independent discovery, Herschel withdrew his communication from publica-
tion in the Royal Society’s Transactions, and only an abstract was printed
in the Society’s Proceedings.
27
advantage over negatives, set to work to do the same. It is a curious fact
that in the first years of photography the direct positive process was by
most people regarded as superior to the negative/positive process which
required two manipulations in order to get a picture, instead of one -with-
out considering the convenience of being able to make any number of copies.
On 20th March Bayard obtained his first direct positives on paper in the
camera. The exposure was stated to have been about an hour. In June he
showed thirty photographs of still-life, sculpture and architecture at a mis-
cellaneous exhibition in Paris. Arago, to avoid prejudicing his negotiations
with the Government on behalf of his protege Daguerre, persuaded Bayard
by a grant of Fr. 600 for better equipment, not to publish his method at
present. For this trifling consideration Bayard did not divulge his mean-
while improved manipulation to the Academie des Sciences until 24th Feb-
ruary 1840, thus losing his right to a more prominent position as an in-
dependent inventor of photography, which would undoubtedly have been
accorded to him had he published prior to Daguerre.
Two German scientists, Franz von Kobell, professor of mineralogy, and
Carl August von Steinheil, professor of mathematics, both at Munich Uni-
versity, have occasionally been stated in German source-books to be in-
dependent inventors of photography in 1837. Our researches published in
1959 prove, however, that their photographic experiments did not begin
until March 1839 when they drew up a joint report on Talbot’s invention
for the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. They presented their report on
13th April, together with three paper negatives lVs inches square which they
had recently taken of buildings in Munich with an exposure of several hours.
Though fixed with ammonia, they were apparently too dense for printing
positives. Four of these pictures are preserved at the Deutsches Museum in
Munich, together with an autograph note of Kobell describing them as
28
»
17 W. H. FOX TALBOT. DAGUERREOTYPE
BY A. CLAUDET, 1844 (DETAIL)
SOME ACCOUNT
T II E A II I O V
P II 0T () G ENIC I) It A \\ I N G,
19 PORTABLE.CAMERA OBSCURA,
C. THE TYPE USED BY
1810, OF
TALBOT AND DAGUERRE
im
V.V.V.VAV.V/.V.V.V.'.V.V.V
'msmm
durably and remain fixed upon the paper!’ This idea came to him while
sketching at Bellagio on Lake Como in October 1833 with the aid of a
camera lucida. Finding this optical device difficult to use, he remembered
having previously been more successful with a camera obscura (III. 19).
Talbot began his photographic experiments by making contact copies of
plants, lace, and feathers (III. 20), on silver nitrate and silver chloride
paper, fixed imperfectly with ammonia and sometimes potassium iodide. In
the summer of 1835 he had a number of cameras made, only 2 V 2 inches
square, and took tiny views of his house Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire on silver
chloride paper with an exposure of half an hour. They were fixed with
common salt. The earliest extant paper negative was taken in August 1835
and shows the window of the library at Lacock Abbey. Compared with
Niepce’s 8 X 6 V2 inches view taken nine years earlier, Talbot’s 1 inch square
picture is rather poor. No wonder that Photogenic Drawing completely
30
>
failed to capture the imagination of the public. Pictures taken in the camera
were too slow, too small, and not good enough technically compared with
the brilliant detail of the daguerreotype, and contact copies of botanical
specimens were of interest to comparatively few people. Talbot continued
trying to improve his invention and in September 1840 discovered the pos-
sibility of developing the latent image formed during a much shorter ex-
posure, by using gallo-nitrate of silver -having been informed of the accel-
erating properties of gallic acid, which had been used by the Rev. J. B. Reade.
Talbot patented his improved process, which he called Calotype, on
8th February 1841. Later it also became known as Talbotype.
Good quality writing paper was coated successively with solutions of
silver nitrate and potassium iodide, forming silver iodide, then further sen-
sitized with solutions of gallic acid and silver nitrate. After exposure the
latent image was developed with a further application of gallo-nitrate of
silver solution -which had the same function as the mercury developer in
the daguerreotype -and the picture became visible when the paper was
warmed by the fire for one or two minutes. The negative was fixed with
potassium bromide (later hyposulphite of soda) and then rinsed with water.
The positive print was made on Photogenic Drawing paper (not developed).
Talbot’s process had now (1841) reached the same speed as Daguerre’s
had with chemical acceleration, and offered the great advantage that any
number of positive prints could be made. It is this negative/positive principle
on which modern photography is based, whereas the daguerreotype, which
produced a single picture, was a cul-de-sac in photography.
Albumen-on-glass process
The first practicable method of photography on glass was the albumen
process of Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor, a cousin of Nicephore Niepce,
published in June 1848. A glass plate was coated with white of egg sensiti-
zed with potassium iodide, washed with an acid solution of silver nitrate,
developed with gallic acid and fixed in the usual way. Very fine detail was
achieved, and the prepared plates could be kept for a fortnight, and develop-
ment postponed for a week or two. The exposure, however, lasted 5 to 15
31
V
minutes, according to circumstances, which ruled out portraiture, but slow-
ness was no great drawback for landscapes, architecture, and art reproduc-
tions.
Collodion process
1851 marks the beginning of a new era in photography. The invention
which in a short time supplanted all existing methods was Frederick Scott
Archer’s wet collodion process published in the March issue of The Chemist
that year. Before this, Robert J. Bingham and Gustave LeGray had alluded,
independently, to the possible use of collodion in photography, but neither
published a workable manipulation.
An English sculptor, who learned calotyping in order to have portraits
of his sitters as studies, Archer endeavoured to improve Calotype paper by
spreading various substances on it, including the recently discovered collo-
dion. This led him to the idea of using collodion as a substitute for paper.
negative character (III. 22). The name Ambrotype was suggested for collo-
dion positives by Marcus A. Root, a Philadelphia daguerreotypist, and was
also current in England. On the Continent they were usually called Melaino-
types. Backed with dark-coloured velvet, paper or varnish, and contained
in decorative American ‘Union’ cases of moulded plastic material, or some-
times in gilded frames, Ambrotypes bear a superficial resemblance to dagu-
erreotypes (III. 23), and were in the nature of a cheap substitute for them.
The vast nmjority are small portraits, and were very popular with the
cheaper kind of photographer from the early ’fifties until the mid-sixties
when the fashion for the carte-de-visite superseded them.
Collodion direct positives were also sometimes made on dark-coloured
leather oron black paper (Atrographs). Ferrotype or tintype portraits on
enamelled sheet iron originated with Adolphe Alexandre Martin, a French
teacher, in 1853. They enjoyed great popularity in the United States with
the lower grade photographers from c. 1860 onward, but failed to establish
themselves in Europe until the late 1870s when they were introduced as an
American novelty by beach and street photographers. Better class photogra-
phers had little demand for any of these direct positives, and made mostly
^onjtact copies on albumen paper. This positive paper introduced by E. Blan-
quart'-Eyrardvin May 1850 was coated with white of egg (albumen) to give
it a glossy surface, and sensitized with As the process of
silver nitrate.
35
*s
were producing 80%-90°/o of the world’s output. The film had been inde-
pendently invented and patent applied for in 1887 by the Rev. Hannibal
Goodwin, whose successors eventually were awarded five million dollars
after a twelve-year lawsuit against the Eastman Kodak Company. The
highly inflammable nitro-cellulose film began to be replaced by non-inflam-
mable cellulose acetate about 1930, and since then the emulsion has been
frequently increased in sensitivity.
with plate box, iodising and mercury boxes, spirit-lamp, bottles of chemicals
and other paraphernalia, weighed 110 lbs. and cost 400 francs (then £16 -by
36
>
24 DAGUERREOTYPE CAMERA
WITH THE SEAL OF THE
MANUFACTURER GIROUX AND
Daguerre’s signature, 1839
today’s value about £120) (III. 25). Soon smaller models and folding
cameras were designed for travelling. In December Baron Seguier introduced
a light-weight bellows camera, and with it three ‘firsts’ in photographic
equipment: the darkroom tent, the photographic tripod and the ball-and-
socket head. Previously, the camera was simply placed on a table or
other solid stand.
The same month, Carl August von Steinheil constructed a pocket camera
taking 8X11 mm daguerreotypes, which had to be viewed through a
magnifying glass. This proved a stumbling-block to the introduction of the
miniature camera - an invention that had come long before its time.
26 woixott’s mirror
CAMERA, 1840
27 ‘the photographer
DEPRIVES THE ARTIST OF HIS
LIVELIHOOD’. CARICATURE BY
TH. HOSEMANN SHOWING THE
VOIGTLANDER CAMERA, 1843
The lenses made by Lerebours and Chevalier for the early French appa-
ratus were of poor quality, the effective aperture at which a sharp image
was obtained being F 14 or even F 16, with the result that the necessary
long exposure ruled out portraiture. To overcome this grave disadvantage
Alexander S. Wolcott of New York in May 1840 patented a mirror camera:
awooden box which had instead of a lens an open front through which the
sitter was received on a concave mirror and reflected on to the
image of the
2X2 inch daguerreotype plate (III. 26). By this ingenious arrangement
much more light was received on the plate than if it had passed through
a lens.
The need for a rapid portrait lens prompted the Viennese mathematician
Josef Max Petzval to calculate one for Friedrich Voigtlander, who designed
an original conical-shaped brass camera for it (III. 27). The apparatus put
on the market on 1st January 1841 took circular pictures 3V2 inches in dia-
meter in IV 2 to 2 minutes on a sunny day in the shade. It made portraiture
possible even before the introduction of chemical acceleration of the daguer-
38
>
reotype plate, for Petzval’s double combination lens gave excellent definition
even at full aperture F 3.5, and was thirty times faster than any other lens
of the period. Indeed this lens -the first designed specifically for photo-
graphic portraits - remained the most widely used lens-design for portrai-
ture all over the world until the introduction of Paul Rudolph’s anastigmat
by Carl Zeiss in 1889.
Wolcott’s and Voigtlander’s cameras were, however, exceptions and only
used for a short period until chemical acceleration made possible the taking
of larger pictures with ordinary cameras.
Cameras for taking Calotypes were similar to those for daguerreotypes.
In 1850 Marcus Sparling, Roger Fenton’s assistant during the Crimean
War, designed the first magazine camera for the travelling photographer.
Ten sheets of Calotype paper were stored in separate holders inside the
camera, each sheet being dropped after exposure into a receptacle beneath
the instrument.
Pride of place for ingenuity must go to A. J. Melhuish and J. B. Spencer
for the first ‘roll-film’ arrangement in May 1854. Sensitized waxed paper
was rolled up on a spool and the exposed part rewound on to a receiving
spool. The roll-holder was made in several sizes suitable for attachment
to any camera.
The landscape photographer using wet collodion had to take with him
an enormous amount of equipment as the plates had to be prepared, exposed
and developed while the collodion was still moist. In addition to camera
PHOTOGRAPHIC
really satisfactory in practice. The so-called dry collodion plates were far
too slow, and manipulating chemicals inside the camera was a messy business.
Paradoxically, during the collodion period (1851— c. 1880) the camera
became both larger and smaller - according to the purpose for which it was
intended. Realizing the possibilities of photography as an independent art
medium - a feeling which had hardly existed in the 1840s when photo-
graphy was largely in the hands of professional portraitists - many amateurs
took up the art and competed with each other and with professionals in
exhibitions. Naturally, the bigger pictures were the more imposing ( 111 . 31 ),
and was not yet practicable on account of the extreme slowness
as enlarging
of the positive printing-out paper, the photographer had to use big plates
from which he made contact prints. 10X12 inch and 12X16 inch were
quite ordinary plate sizes, and some hardy spirits felt that nothing smaller
than a 20X16 inch plate would do justice to their subject. Keen photogra-
phers laboured under the most trying conditions with their huge equipment,
but these difficulties caused them to be particularly careful in the choice
of viewpoint and lighting in order to ensure success at the first exposure.
41
32 STEREOSCOPIC DAGUERREOTYPE INCLUDING STEREOSCOPIC VIEWER, C. 1852
The largest camera made during the nineteenth century was constructed
in 1860 for John Kibble, a Glasgow amateur. It was so big that it had to be
mounted on wheels and drawn by a horse. The glass plates measured 44X36
inches and each one weighed about 44 lbs. Fortunately Kibble was used to
handling large panes of glass, being by trade a builder of conservatories
and greenhouses.
In contrast to this monster camera were the stereoscopic cameras intro-
duced in the 'fifties when a great demand arose for photographs to be viewed
42
in Sir David Brewster’s lenticular stereoscope, commercially introduced by
Louis Jules Duboscq in 1851. To enable two pictures of the same object to
be taken from slightly different viewpoints, giving an impression of relief
(3X3 1 /4 inches) and the short focal length of the lenses (5 inches) it was
possible with binocular stereoscopic cameras to obtain lively instantaneous
pictures of moving objects in a fraction of a second: street scenes with traffic
(III. 34), seascapes with rolling waves, public ceremonies. The extreme
popularity of stereoscopic pictures began in the mid-’fifties and affected the
whole of the so-called civilized world for about fifteen years. It was claimed
1
there was ‘no home without a stereoscope .
33 j. b. dancer’s binocular
46
The rapid gelatine dry plate which began to come into general use in
1879-80 not only greatly simplified photographic technique but also revo-
lutionized equipment. Cameras for outdoor work were now small, and pro-
vided with an instantaneous shutter. Quarter-plate and 4X5 inch hand
cameras established themselves as the most popular sizes for amateurs in the
Anglo-Saxon countries, the Continental equivalent being 9X 12 cm.
During the 1880s and 90s a variety of cameras were produced for use
with dry plates, cut film, and roll-film. They fall into four main categories:
(1) Change-box cameras with a plate-changing box attached, similar to a
modern film-pack casette. They usually held a dozen plates (sometimes cut
film), each in a separate plate-holder, permitting daylight changing. In most
cases an automatic counter indicated the number of exposures made.
(2) Magazine cameras with twelve plates or forty sheets of cut film stored
in a magazine or chamber inside the camera body, the plate being changed
after each exposure by various mechanisms. In the simplest form the ex-
posed plate was dropped into the bottom of the camera and the next plate
pushed forward by a spring (III. 37). An automatic counter was provided.
(3) Reflex cameras. Single and twin-lens reflex cameras are classed as a
separate group, for although they were variously made with change-box,
magazine, or roll-film attachment, they are basically of different construc-
tion, incorporating a mirror fixed at 45° to the lens, reflecting the image
box and magazine cameras, used flexible films instead of glass plates or cut
films, the film being wound on two spools. At first the film was in a separate
box or roller-slide, made in many sizes for attachment to almost any camera.
The first camera incorporating a roll-film was the Kodak introduced by
George Eastman in August 1888. The apparatus was the embodiment of
simplicity, being a wooden box 6 1 /2X3 1 /2X 3V2 inches with a rectilinear
fixed-focus lens giving sharp definition of everything beyond 8 feet, and
having only one speed and a fixed stop. With the Kodak anybody could
photograph who could Tull the string -turn the key -press the button’. Its
appeal to the unskilled amateur was further enhanced by Eastman’s recom-
mendation to return the camera to the factory for developing and printing
of the film, according to his famous slogan ‘You press the button -we do
the rest’.
The rapid growth of the amateur movement after 1880 had made the
mass-production of photographic equipment and materials feasible for the
first time, and the Eastman Company in Rochester, N.Y., was the first of
39 ‘ticka’ detective
CAMERA TAKING 25 PICTURES
ON 16 MM FILM, 1906
40 SHEET OF ‘POSTAGE STAMP* PHOTOGRAPHS WITH PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
WILSON, 1888. WITHDRAWN FOR LESE-MAJESTE
49
New cameras constantly appeared on the market, for the ranks of photo-
graphers swelled from week to week. By 1900 every tenth person in Britain
-four million people -was reckoned to own a camera. The proportion was
probably about the same in the U.S.A., but considerably lower on the
Continent. Today the U.S.A. with over forty million amateur photographers
is the largest camera-owning country, followed
by Britain and Japan.
The vast majority of the small cameras were of the folding type and
made of light-weight metal. Gaumont of Paris introduced in 1903 a well-
designed vest pocket camera, as the 4 V 2 X 6 cm plate size was generally
called. This was the smallest size from which a contact print was considered
acceptable for pasting in an amateur’s album.
An interesting pointer to future development and a precursor of the
Leica was designed and constructed by George P. Smith of Missouri in 1912.
His 35 mm camera took IXIV 2 inch pictures on cine-film. The mass-pro-
duction of 35mm film for the new cinema industry made it economical for
photography and it is natural that this idea should have occurred to
still
more than one camera designer about the same time. The Minnograph intro-
duced in 1914 by Levy-Roth of Berlin took 50 pictures 18X24 mm on
35 mm The external dimensions of the Minnograph, 5X6X13 cm,
cine-film.
The prototype of the Leica was constructed
are very similar to the Leica’s.
in the same year by Oskar Barnack, a microscope designer at Leitz in
Wetzlar. Owing to the first World War and the subsequent inflation in
Germany it was ten years before the Leica went into production. The
significance of the Leica lay in the fact that various features such as a
range-finder coupled with the excellent Elmar lens designed by Dr Max
Berek to give first-rate definition at the full aperture of F 3.5, raised the
50
*
41 ERMANOX CAMERA WITH
ERNOSTAR LENS F 2, 1924
light at political meetings, indoor social functions, the theatre, and so on. In
conjunction with fast panchromatic plates 4 V 2 X 6 cm, the Ermanox was the
camera used by the pioneers of photo-journalism, Dr Erich Salomon, Felix
H. Man, and others who had to work in poor lighting conditions.
The Rolleiflex put on the market in 1929 by Franke & Heidecke, Braun-
schweig, was the precursor of numerous similar twin-lens reflex roll-film
cameras, of which it still remains the most popular. Like the Leica and the
Contax, the Rolleiflex has undergone many revisions since its first appearance,
and its former disadvantage of being restricted to one focal length has been
overcome by a modification of the construction to permit interchangeability
of lenses, as with other cameras.
The best-known of the pre-war single-lens reflex cameras in the 6X6 cm
format, the Reflex Korrelle, was also of German make.
After World War II the 6X6 cm single-lens reflex camera of the Swedish
manufacturer Hasselblad in Gothenburg, incorporating an interchangeable
film back, came into prominence. It is popular among advertising, fashion
and portrait photographers.
In recent years the Japanese camera industry has produced precision
instruments in the 35 mm and 6X6 cm sizes now almost universally fav-
51
oured, with a range of excellent lenses, challenging for the first time the
previous hegemony of the German camera and photographic optical industry.
This had begun in 1889 with the introduction of Dr Paul Rudolph’s an-
astigmat, and was firmly established with his Tessar lens (1902), and other
world-famous lenses and camera features such as Friedrich Deckel’s Compur
shutter (1912), and above all the Leica and the Rolleiflex.
The need for several lenses of different focal length will before long be
superseded by the Zoom lens system giving variable focal length, introduced
by Voigtlander, Braunschweig, in 1959.
With the latest fully automatic cameras, of which the prototype was the
Optima of Agfa, the amateur has no longer to worry about diaphragm open-
ing and length of exposure, which are controlled by built-in photocells.
The Polaroid camera invented by Edwin H. Land in 1947, with which a
positive could be obtained in 60 seconds (now reduced to 10 seconds) after
exposure, the paper negative and positive being developed in the camera,
is by many people considered the ideal instrument for the amateur. Ex-
the attainment of colour was only a matter of time -though its advent came
much later than expected.
Lack of colour was at first particularly felt in portraiture, for the public,
accustomed to miniatures, preferred ‘twopence coloured’ to ‘penny plain’.
Miniature painters, finding themselves out of work through the popularity
of the daguerreotype, soon fulfilled the demand by tinting daguerreotypes
and occasionally painting over paper photographs.
(Sir) James Clerk-Maxwell in a lecture on the Young/Helmholtz theory
52
42 LOUIS DUCOS DU HAURON. VIEW OF ANGOULfeME, 1877
of striped coloured ribbon through glass cells containing red, blue and green
solutions of metallic salts (acting as filters). Diapositives of these were
projected from three optical lanterns behind three identical coloured filters,
not only impracticable but were moreover based on Sir David Brewster’s
theory of red, blue and yellow as primary colours, which is erroneous for
light, though valid for pigments.
Louis Ducos du Hauron made the greatest contribution to the evolution
of colour photography in the nineteenth century. He proposed the subtractive
method of colour photography in his book Les Couleurs en Photographie ,
53
took three separation negatives behind green, orange and violet filters, and
made positives on thin sheets of bichromated gelatine incorporating carbon
pigments of red, blue and yellow colour respectively, i.e. the complementary
colours to those by which the negatives were taken. When the red, blue and
yellow carbon prints were mounted superimposed, a Heliochrome or colour
photograph was the result. Either colour transparencies or colour prints
could be made, depending on whether the carbon prints were mounted on
paper or on glass.
54
*
A pioneer in inventing equipment for three colour photography was
Frederick Eugene Ives of Philadelphia, whose various apparatus first made
the realization of colour photographs a commercial proposition. In Ives’s
Photochromoscope camera (1891) three separation negatives were taken in
rapid succession on one plate by means of a repeating back containing red,
green and blue-violet filters. From these, black and white diapositives were
made by contact printing. When laid on the Kromskop viewing instrument
(1892), containing filters in the same colours, the Kromograms appear in
perfect colour.
Ives also brought out stereo versions of these instruments, in which the
colour pictures are seen in relief, and in 1895 introduced the Projection
Kromskop for use with a magic lantern, which was followed a few years
laterby a one-shot colour camera.
Prof. Gabriel Lippmann’s interference process (1891), based on the theory
of Wilhelm Zenker, aroused much scientific speculation, for it produced a
direct natural colour picture without the intervention of filters or dyes,
which can only give close approximations. The phenomenon of colours pro-
duced by interference was described by Sir Isaac Newton, and can be seen
in, for instance, soap bubbles, mother-of-pearl or oil on a wet road, which
appear coloured though consisting of colourless substances. A thin photo-
graphic plate coated with fine-grain silver bromide was placed with the emul-
sion side in contact with mercury. This formed a mirror-like deposit, decom-
posing the white light into the spectrum colours by the interference of light
rays reflected by this thin film of mercury, the colours being caused by the
phenomenon of interference due to the structure which the mercury deposit
has acquired. From the practical point of view Lippmann’s process was too
complicated, the exposure extremely long, the picture difficult to see, and
impossible to reproduce.
A turning point in practical colour photography was the colour screen
process patented in 1904 by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere. The
Autochrome plates at their factory at Lyons were not com-
manufactured
mercially introduced until 1907, after good panchromatic emulsion was
available. The glass plates were coated with microscopically small grains of
starch dyed green, red and blue. Over them a thin film of panchromatic
emulsion was applied. The exposure was made through the glass side of the
plate, i.e. through the dyed starch grains acting as colour filters. After de-
velopment the plate was re-exposed to light and re-developed (reversal
process), resulting in a transparency composed of small specks of primary
colours giving the effect of mixed colours, as in a pointilliste painting.
55
Although the Autochrome was the first colour process to enjoy consider-
able popularity, particularly among it had the disadvantages that
amateurs,
the exposure was about forty times longer than with black and white, and
that the transparencies were rather dense.
In this resume only brief mention can be made of the best-known of
the other colour processes invented before 1935. Though improvements on
previous additive or subtractive processes, all were too complicated and
expensive to find widespread application. Additive processes: Dufay (1908),
Agfa colour plate (1916) introduced in film form as Agfacolor (1932),
Finlay Screen process (1929). Subtractive processes: Sanger-Shephard (1900),
Pinatype (1904), Uvachrom invented by Arthur Traube (1916), Duxochrom
invented by Herzog (1929), Autotype carbro process (1930), Vivex colour
prints (1932), Kodak wash-off relief (1934).
56
>
of the amateur, was to have colour prints. Though the Agfacolor negative/
positive process was published in 1937, development of the system for prac-
tical use was stopped by the war and the film did not become available until
1950. Meanwhile Kodak had brought out in 1942 the Kodacolor negative/
positive film in which the first part of the process (the making of the trans-
parency) is analogous to the procedure described above under Agfacolor.
Instead, however, of converting the negative into a positive transparency,
a negative dye image in the complementary colours was left; this negative
was then printed on to paper coated with a similar set of emulsions to those
on the original negative, and after similar processing a positive print in the
primary colours was obtained.
The processing of all modern colour films is complicated and requires
controlled laboratory conditions and for this reason is performed by the
manufacturers or their authorized agents properly equipped for the work.
Since about 1950 leading manufacturers of photographic materials in many
parts of theworld have marketed colour films under their own trade names.
They are all more or less based on the Agfacolor patent which, as an enemy
invention, became available to the allied powers.
An exception is the Polaroid colour film introduced by the Polaroid Cor-
poration of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1963, for use in the Polaroid
Land camera. It produces a direct colour positive in one minute.
57
43 DR J. W. DRAPER. DAGUERREOTYPE OF HIS SISTER DOROTHY CATHERINE DRAPER,
JUNE 1840
»
THE ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS
OF PHOTOGRAPHY
THE DAGUERREOTYPE
America
Probably no other invention ever captured the imagination of the public to
such an extent and conquered the world with such lightning rapidity as the
daguerreotype. Within a month of the manipulation’s being made public,
D. W. Seager, an English resident in New York, on 16th September 1839
took the first successful daguerreotype in the New World -a view of St Paul’s
Church,New York. He was immediately followed by two professors of
New York University, Samuel Morse, portrait painter and inventor of the
electro-magnetic telegraph, and the scientist Dr John William Draper, who
independently of one another experimented with portraiture. Alexander
S. Wolcott, a New York manufacturer of dental supplies, on 7th October
succeeded in taking a profile portrait the size of a signet-ring of his partner
John Johnson. Nine days later Joseph Saxton, an official of the U.S. Mint,
took the American daguerreotype, a view in Philadelphia.
earliest surviving
When, therefore, Francis Gouraud, agent of Daguerre and Giroux, the
manufacturer of his apparatus, arrived in New York on 23rd November
with the intention of introducing the daguerreotype in the New World,
he found he had been forestalled. However, the thirty daguerreotypes
which Gouraud exhibited in aBroadway hotel were vastly superior to the
experimental ones so far made in the United States. According to The
Knickerbocker the French daguerreotypes were
,
‘the most remarkable ob-
jects of curiosity and admiration, in the arts, that we ever beheld. Their
exquisite perfection almost transcends the bounds of sober belief’. Gouraud
gave demonstrations and lessons, sold daguerreotype outfits, and published
an instruction manual in March 1840. Independently from this, there appear-
ed almost simultaneously a brochure by Dr James Chilton, a Broadway
chemist.
During the winter Wolcott, with the assistance of Henry Fitz, who
possessed some knowledge of optics, had devised a novel camera in which
59
a concave mirror was substituted for a lens (III. 26). This shortened the
exposure to 3-5 minutes, and allowed Wolcott and Johnson to open the
world’s first Daguerreian Parlor in New York at the beginning of March
1840. A contributory factor to success in ‘sun-drawn miniatures’ was Wol-
cott’s ingenious lighting system. Two adjustable mirrors outside the window
reflected the sunlight on to the sitter through a plateglass trough filled with
a solution of copper sulphate, the blue colour of which made the light more
actinic as well as protecting the sitter’s eyes from the glare.
The following month Morse and Draper, considering their experiments
sufficiently advanced, opened jointly a portrait studio on the roof of the
University building, where they also gave lessons in daguerreotype mani-
pulation. The earliest good portrait to survive until modern times was taken
by Draper of his sister in June 1840 (III. 43). It measured 3V2X2 3 /4
inches and the exposure was 65 seconds. The first detailed description of the
taking of photographic portraits was communicated by Draper to The Lon-
don & Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and published in September 1840.
By the early ’forties portrait studios abounded in American cities, and
itinerant daguerreotypists appeared in every small town.
Prominent early American daguerreotypists include Charles R. Meade,
M. M. Lawrence, Jeremiah Gurney and Mathew B. Brady, all in New
York. The latter from 1844 onward photographed every American of
distinction with the intention of forming a National Historical Portrait
Gallery. Edward Anthony in partnership with J. M. Edwards opened a
portrait studio in in 1842 and photographed all the Mem-
Washington D. C.
bers of Congress. Marcus A. Root of Philadelphia was from 1842 to 1846
in partnership with J.E. Mayall, later a leading photographer in London.
John Adams Whipple of Boston is better known for a particularly success-
ful daguerreotype of the moon in 1851 than for his portraits. Excellent
views, as well as portraits, were taken by Albert Sands Southworth and
his partner Josiah John Hawes where John Plumbe, a Welsh
in Boston,
60
>
44 PLATT D. BABBITT. DAGUERREOTYPE OF THE NIAGARA FALLS, C. 1853
61
At the Great Exhibition in London, 1851, American daguerreotypes won
universal praise for their technical brilliance, due to special care in polishing
the silvered plate -frequently by steam-machinery driving cleaning and
buffing wheels.
The daguerreotype attained its greatest popularity in the States in 1853
when three million were estimated to be produced. In New York City alone
there were about a hundred studios. The process remained popular in the
United States until the mid-’sixties, several years longer than in Europe.
Great Britain
England was the only country in which the daguerreotype had been patent-
ed. In February 1840 Daguerre and Isidore Niepce (Nicephore’s son) sent
to England an agent, Elzeard Desire Letault, with the aim of selling the
daguerreotype patent to the British Government or some public institution.
However, Letault returned to Paris two months later without having accom-
plished his object.
About this time Richard Beard, coal-merchant and patent speculator,
acquired from Alexander Wolcott the right to use his mirror camera, which
was vital to Beard’s plan to make photographic portraiture a commercial
success. He engaged John Frederick Goddard, a science lecturer, with the
object of accelerating the daguerreotype process with bromine (which he
learned Wolcott had experimented with) in order to make it fast enough
for portraiture. By 12th December Goddard had succeeded sufficiently
to make an announcement in The Literary Gazette of his ability to take
portraits, and Beard went ahead with his plan for a public studio. This
was opened on 23rd March 1841 on the roof of the Royal Polytechnic
Institution in London. It was the first public photographic portrait studio
in Europe, and the novelty of having one’s likeness taken ‘by the sacred
radiance of the Sun’ caused immense excitement. Crowds flocked to Beard’s
establishment, and ‘in the waiting rooms you would see the nobility and
beauty of England, accommodating each other as well as the limited space
would allow, during hours of tedious delay’. The average daily takings
amounted to £150, the charge being one guinea for a IV 2 X 2 inch portrait
-the size to which the picture was limited by the mirror camera. The ex-
posure varied in summer from 3 seconds to 2 minutes and in winter from
3 to 5 minutes according to the weather. For this reason the head-rest as
employed by Sir Thomas Lawrence and other portrait painters was taken
over by photographers, and remained in use to a certain extent up to the
Great War.
62
! — ; ;
I. —INVITATION TO SIT.
I
-
“S
Beard’s studio was circular and glazed with blue glass casting a mysterious
light which made people look like spectres. The arrangement was more
convenient than Wolcott’s liquid filters. The posing chair stood on a raised
platform bringing the sitter closer to the light (III. 45). Here
The realization that the camera revealed the sitter with uncompromising
truth, dispelling cherished illusions of youth and beauty, was disconcerting
at first, particularly to women. The demands of the sitter for a good like-
ness and at the same time a beautiful portrait were -and still are -seldom
compatible. Fashionable artists, especially miniaturists, had encouraged their
sitters’ whims, and traded on deceit. Suspecting, perhaps, that Alfred Cha-
lon had made her quite unrecognizable by excessive flattery, the young
Queen Victoria asked her Court painter one day whether he were not
afraid that photography would ruin his profession. Chalon’s confident
rejoinder, ‘Ah non, Madame! photographic can’t flattere’ was characteris-
tic. Nevertheless, the heyday of miniature painting was past. To all except
the incurably vain the intimacy of the actual image of life was photo-
graphy’s strongest attraction (III. 46). It was this quality that caused
Elizabeth Barrett to write to her friend Mary Russell Mitford in 1843: ‘It
is not merely the likeness which is precious -but the association and the
sense of nearness involved in the thing . . . the fact of the very shadow of
the person lying there fixed for ever! ... I would rather have such a memo-
rial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist’s work ever produced.’
The best daguerreotypists took such excellent portraits that even the great
Ingres avowed: ‘It is to this exactitude that I would like to attain. It is
64
s
Daguerreotype portraiture proving a lucrative business, in June 1841
Beard bought Daguerre’s patent rights for the daguerreotype in England,
Wales and the Colonies. To overcome a frequent complaint against dagu-
erreotypes by people used to miniatures, Beard in March of the following
year patented a method of colouring daguerreotypes. Further studios were
soon opened by him in London and the provinces, and he also sold licences
for professional studios in certain towns and counties. For amateurs the fee
was five guineas annually. Beard’s quickly-earned fortune was lost, however,
in several protracted lawsuits against infringers of his rights and he was
declared bankrupt in June 1850 -three years before the patent ran out.
The most distinguished daguerreotypist in Britain was Antoine Claudet,
a Frenchman who had settled in London in 1827 as an importer of sheet
glass and glass domes. In August 1839 he learned the daguerreotype process
from the inventor himself and purchased from him a licence to practise it in
Britain.He was also granted sole agency rights for the import and sale of
French daguerreotypes and Daguerre’s apparatus. Claudet’s independent ex-
perimentation with an acceleration process led him to success slightly later
than Goddard. After discovering that a combination of chlorine and iodine
vapour greatly increased the sensitivity of the plate, Claudet began taking
portraits professionally in June 1841 in a glass-house erected on the roof of
the Royal Adelaide Gallery, a popular scientific recreation centre rivalling
the Polytechnic. This was the second photographic portrait studio in Europe.
Claudet was a man of superior calibre to Beard, who was merely a pro-
moter. He belonged to that rare species of being equally distinguished in the
scientific and artistic fields, and an inventor as well. For the first quality
he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; his artistic merits were summed
up by The Athenaeum: ‘What Lawrence did with his brush, Monsieur Clau-
det appears to do with his lens.’ (Ills. 17,48). Claudet introduced the red
dark-room light, the use of painted backgrounds, and several instruments,
especially in the field of stereoscopy. In 1851 he set up a ‘Temple to Photo-
graphy’ in Regent Street-the most elegant establishment of its kind in Brit-
ain, designed by Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament.
John Jabez Edwin Mayall, a daguerreotypist in Philadelphia from
1842-46, opened his American Daguerreotype Institution in London early
in 1847 under the pseudonym ‘Professor Highschool’. Early daguerreotypists
frequently called themselves ‘Professor’. The technical excellence of Mayall’s
portraits soon brought him into prominence. A 24X20 inch daguerreotype
portrait preserved at the Science Museum, London, was probably taken by
him, for only Americans took daguerreotypes of such large dimensions.
66
48 ANTOINE CLAUDET. DAGUERREOTYPE (TINTED) OF A LADY, C. 1851
Other noted London professional daguerreotypists include William Ed-
ward Kilburn, T. R. Williams and William Telfer.
The Science Museum, London, possesses 158 wholeplate daguerreotypes
of Italian architecture and views taken in 1840 and 1841 (III. 49). Most
of them are by Dr Alexander John Ellis, philologist and mathematician, but
some of the earlier ones were commissioned by him from Achille Morelli and
Lorenzo Suscipi. own pictures bear an exact description of subject,
Ellis’s
date, time of day, and exposure, which varied from 5 to 35 minutes. The
photographs were intended for publication as steel engravings, which, how-
ever, some unknown reason did not materialize. They are the only
for
daguerreotype views known to have been taken by an Englishman, and the
earliest surviving photographs of Italy.
The first professional portraitist in Scotland- where photography was free
from patent restrictions- was a Mr Howie who began taking portraits in
Princes Street, Edinburgh, in autumn 1841. The sitter had to climb three
flights of stairs and a ladder through a skylight on to the roof, where
Howie would push him into a posing chair with the encouraging observa-
tion: ‘There! Now sit as still as death!’
In Ireland the first Daguerreotype Portrait Institution was opened in
France
With Arago’s revelation of the daguerreotype manipulation, all Paris was
seized with daguerreotypomania. An eye-witness wrote: ‘You could see in
all the squares of Paris three-legged dark-boxes planted in front of churches
and palaces (III. 50). All the physicists, chemists and learned men of the
capital were polishing silvered plates, and even the betterclass grocers found
69
•N
52 L. J. M. DAGUERRE. DAGUERREOTYPE OF NOTRE DAME AND THE ll.E DE LA CITE, PARIS, 1838
115 e PUS BOUfffO/S
» 49
53 caricature by Position repute? la plus comode pour iroir onjoh portrait iu fyucrrcotjpe
DAUMIER, 1844
in his studio (III. 51), buildings and views in Paris (111.52), and a few
portraits taken in the mid-’forties at his country house at Bry-sur-Marne
to which he retired in 1840.
In France, as elsewhere, attempts at portraiture were immediately made,
by Dr Alfred Donne, head of the Charite clinic; Abel Rendu, a civil serv-
ant; Susse Freres; E. T. and E. Montmiret; and others. As people had to
sit imprisoned in a posing chair in direct sunshine for about a quarter of
an hour they looked more dead than alive (III. 53). The only people who
could stand the ordeal with a reasonable measure of success were artists’
models, but it was not until July 1840 that portraits of this kind were
mentioned for the first time as being on view.
71
v
As architecture, sculpture and landscapes do not depend for success on
a short exposure, N. P. Lerebours, an enterprising Parisian optical instru-
ment maker, equipped a number of artists and writers with daguerreotype
outfits of his own manufacture and commissioned them to take views in
72
>
54 J. P. GIRAULT DE PRANGEY.
DAGUERREOTYPE OF STATUE AT PORTAL
OF GENOA CATHEDRAL, 1842
N
74
*
studies for which there was always a demand in Paris from artists and
tourists.
Louis Bisson also opened a studio in Paris some time in 1841. About 1848
he was joined in business by his younger brother Auguste, and with the
support of a financial backer they were established in the fashionable quarter
of the Madeleine. Henceforth until their retirement from photography in
the early 1860s their work was usually signed ‘Bisson Freres’.
Other well-known French professional portraitists in the 1840s include
Richebourg, Derussy and Victor Plumier in Paris, and I. Thierry and Vaillat
in Lyons, all of whom took up to 3000 portraits a year at prices varying
from 10 to 20 francs according to size, whether tinted, and style of frame.
On the Continent white passepartout frames were usual; in England and
America daguerreotypes were framed like miniatures in attractive velvet-
lined red morocco or moulded plastic cases, or occasionally in hanging-
frames of the kind used for silhouettes.
People could hardly believe that the photographer could depict a large
group (III. 55) just as quickly as a single portrait, and some early adver-
tisements drew special attention to the fact that there was no extra charge
for additional sitters in the picture. Many photographers, however, charged
more for children on account of the likelihood of their spoiling several
plates by fidgetting. Incidentally, it was a Parisian daguerreotypist, Marc
Antoine Gaudin, who in 1843 first used the famous stock phrase to children:
‘Now look in the box and watch the dicky-bird!’
German-speaking countries
The keen interest of the Germans in the daguerreotype is evinced by the
surprisingly large number of ten publications on the process which appeared
there during 1839. In Berlin, daguerreotypes were taken within a month
of publication of the manipulation, by Louis Sachse, Theodor Dorffel and
Eduard Petitpierre, a Swiss. The first professional studio in Berlin was
opened by J. C. Schall, a portrait painter whose earliest traceable daguerreo-
type advertisement appeared on 16th August 1842. Within three weeks
competition arose from another portrait painter, Julius Stiba. These Berlin
daguerreotypists had, however, been preceded by another artist, Hermann
Biow, whose Heliographic Studio at Altona near Hamburg opened on
15th September 1841. Between 1846 and his early death in 1850 Biow dagu-
erreotyped royalties and celebrities in Dresden, Frankfurt, and Berlin,
where a studio was set up for him in the Royal Palace. Here he photogra-
phed King Frederick William IV of Prussia, many princes, politicians, and
75
56 C. F. STELZNER.
DAGUERREOTYPE GROUP,
C. 1842
men famous in art and science. Like Brady in America, Biow planned a
National Gallery of Photographic Portraits, of which 126 were copied as
authentic pictures, The Illustrated London News published in its first issue
on 14th May 1842 an imaginary view of the fire based on an old print of
Hamburg in the British Museum, suitably embellished with flames and
smoke!
76 -^ -
*
The important advance in the optics of the daguerreotype made by Petz-
val and Voigtlander has already been referred to. Chemical acceleration by
the combined vapours of chlorine and bromine is due to Franz Kratochwila,
a Viennese civil servant, who published the process in the Wiener Zeitung
on 19th January 1841. Early in March the brothers Joseph and Johann
Natterer of Vienna were reported to have taken portraits experimentally
with the Voigtlander camera on plates prepared according to Kratochwila’s
method, which they found increased the sensitivity five times. The exposure
a prism -which lengthened the exposure -the image, being a direct positive,
was laterally reversed.
PHOTOGRAPHS ON PAPER
Great Britain
Talbot’s first was the miniature painter Henry Collen, who opened
licensee
a Calotypc studio in London in August 1841. He took small portraits in
about a minute, using them merely as a base for drawing or painting over.
The Calotype never became really popular, partly on account of the
stringent conditions imposed by Talbot under his patent, partly because the
soft grainy effect of the paper was generally considered a disadvantage
79
80
The Pencil of Nature (III. 60), the first photographically-illustrated
book in the world, came out in six parts during 1844-46, and only about
a dozen complete copies containing all the 24 photographs are known. Sun
Pictures in Scotland , with 23 photographs, was published in 1845. An ex-
planatory ‘Notice to the Reader’ in both books stressed the novelty of
photographic illustrations: ‘The plates in the present work are impressed by
the agency of light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil.
They are the sun pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined,
engravings in imitation.’
The majority of Talbot’s photographs are rather matter-of-fact records,
though his work does include a number of highly artistic compositions
(III. 61), in some of which he may have had the collaboration of Henry
LONDON. I»44
Pencil of Nature were taken by Benjamin Bracknell Turner, an artist who
became a well-known Calotypist. However, even if Talbot lacked artistic
talent, he showed aesthetic perception in remarking with regard to one of
the photographs in this book: ‘A painter’s eye will often be arrested where
ordinary people see nothing remarkable. A casual gleam of sunshine, or a
shadow thrown across his path, a time-withered oak, or a moss-covered
stone, may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque imagin-
ings.’
work undertaken at the Reading establishment, which was closed the follow-
ing spring when Talbot opened a portrait studio in Regent Street, London,
in Henneman’s name. But like an earlier attempt of Claudet to introduce
82
folk in scenes of everyday life. Their joint opus of some 1,500 photographs
also includes architectural views of St Andrews and Edinburgh, where
Greyfriars churchyard with its ivy-clad walls and ancient monuments formed
84
a favourite background for picturesque groups. Curiously enough, though
Hill was a landscape painter, there are comparatively few photographic
landscapes by him and Adamson.
Contemporary critics were full of admiration for these Calotypes, which
look not unlike purple-brown mezzotints. On account of the grain and
thickness of the paper negative, the Calotype gave broad effects (III. 64),
which suited Hill’s style much better than the brilliantly detailed daguerreo-
type would have done. The Hill/Adamson portraits are powerful in charac-
terizationand display a masterly sense of form and a sure instinct for bold
and simple composition. The massing of light and shade and apparent ease
of pose give them great charm.
After the death of Adamson at the age of twenty-seven Hill devoted the
remainder of The enormous canvas Signing of the Deed
his life to painting.
67 JOHN SHAW SMITH. PILLARS OF THE GREAT HALL OF THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK.
LUXOR. WAXED PAPER PROCESS, 1851
achieving in these fields the same high artistic level as his friend D. O. Hill
had and genre. Another Scottish landscape photographer of
in portraiture
distinctionwas John Forbes-White.
Calotype views and architectural close-ups of unusual artistic merit were
taken by John Shaw Smith, an Irish landowner, during a tour through
southern Europe and the Near and Middle East in 1850-52 (111.67).
Smith and his wife ventured as far as Petra, though he was not the first to
photograph the rose-red city. That distinction belongs to Dr George S. Keith,
brother of Thomas Keith, who in 1841 accompanied his father on a tour
of the Near East and took about 30 daguerreotypes.
88
*
68 HIPPOLYTE BAYARD. THE WINDMILLS OF MONTMARTRE. CALOTYPE, 1842
69 W. H. FOX TALBOT. HOUSE IN PARIS OPPOSITE TALBOT’S HOTEL. CALOTYPE, 1843
90
)
Camp’s Egypte Nubie Palestine et Syrie (III. 70), the first instalment of
, ,
Though occasionally used for portraits by amateurs, the waxed paper proc-
ess was mainly employed for landscapes and architecture, being very
92
for the Government Commission on Historic Monuments. Charles Negre,
a pupil of Delaroche and Ingres, took up photography early in 1851
primarily in order to make studies for his Salon paintings (III. 71) but he
also took many and in
architectural photographs, of Chartres Cathedral
the south of France. Otherwell-known photographers using the paper proc-
esses include Hippolyte Bayard, Baron Humbert de Molard (III. 72) >
Vicomte Vigier, Charles Marville and Baron Cros. Within a few years all
these photographers changed over to the collodion process.
In Rome Comte Flacheron was the centre of a small photographic circle,
to which belonged Prince Giron des Anglonnes, Eugene Constant and
Giacomo Caneva.
72 BARON HUMBERT DE MOLARD. OLD FARMHOUSE. WAXED PAPER PROCESS, 1852
The first French photographically illustrated book, Italie Monumentale
by Eugene Piot, commenced publication in Paris in May 1851. Later the
same year appeared Henri Le Secq’s Amiens: Recueil de Photographies and ,
94
73 CHARLES CLIFFORD. FOUNTAIN AND STAIRCASE AT
CAP&ICHO PALACE NEAR GUADALAJARA, SPAIN, C. 1855
A Calotype studio was opened in Vienna in October 1847 by the portrait
painters R. Gaupmann and G. Fischer.
than previous methods- Archer’s process started the first great wave of
popularization of photography. Not only were there thousands of new-
comers to the art, but there soon arose an insatiable demand from the
public for photographs of all kinds of subjects, now that one could collect
96
[74 ALOIS LOCHERER.
TRANSPORT OF THE COLOSSAL
(STATUE OF ‘BAVARIA’ FROM
THE FOUNDRY TO ITS PRESENT
[SITE IN MUNICH. CALOTYPE,
1850
we have seen, the majority of people were hitherto only acquainted with
daguerreotypes.
97
75 THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS. ENGRAVING FROM BANKES’S ‘NEW AND COMPLETE SYSTEM
5
OF GEOGRAPHY (1790?). IT WAS COPIED, WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS, FROM o. dapper’s
‘BESCHREIBUNG AFRIKAS’ (DESCRIPTION OF AFRICA), 1670
English traveller went further up the Nile than any photographer had been
before, proceeding by horse and dromedary beyond the Fifth Cataract about
1,500 miles from the Nile Delta. Producing these photographs, some as large
98
as 16X20 inches, was a feat of endurance with temperatures in the dark-
tent sometimes reaching 130° F., flies and sand adding to the difficulty.
Frith’s photographs are both and technically superior to Maxime
artistically
became justly famous for their superb large views of the high Alps, as well
as architecture in France and Italy. In 1860 the Bisson brothers were com-
manded accompany Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie on a climbing
to
expedition at Chamonix in the Savoy Alps (III. 78). In July the following
year Auguste Bisson became the first to photograph from the top of Mont
Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe (15,780 feet). Twenty-five porters
were needed to carry his equipment, and owing to adverse weather condi-
tions the climb lasted three days. For rinsing the plates, snow had to be
melted over the feeble heat of oil lamps, which would hardly burn at that
altitude. Bisson succeeded in taking three negatives on the summit, and
the return of the party was celebrated in Chamonix with fireworks and a
salute of guns.
Aime Civiale had different aims. From 1859 onward for ten years he
made with great exactness a record of the entire range of the Alps from
the geological point of view, which he published in forty-one panoramas
in 1882.
101
Whereas Alpine photographers were seldom more than two days from
and could usually find shelter in a mountain hut at
their headquarters,
night, those who photographed in remoter regions had naturally still greater
difficulties to contend with.
Philip H. Egerton, Deputy Commissioner of Kangra, in his Journal of
a Tour through Spiti to the Frontier of Chinese Thibet (1864) describes an
arduous three-months’ journey in the summer of the previous year to in-
vestigate an alternative route for the shawl-wool trade, during which he
took the first photographs of the Shigri Glacier, and the life of the natives
of Spiti. The same year Samuel Bourne, an English professional photo-
grapher in Simla, made a ten-weeks’ tour in the Himalayas. It was followed
103
V
the same region. They may well have been undertaken for Watkins, from
whom Muybridge learned photography and with whom he was for a time
in partnership. In 1868 he worked in Alaska on an official survey which
led to his appointment as chief photographer to the U.S. Government.
During the 1870s Muybridge took hundreds of views for the Central & South
PacificRailway and for the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., but gave up land-
scape photography when he embarked on the thorough investigation of
animal locomotion for which he is chiefly remembered today.
One of the most famous photographers of the American West was William
Henry Jackson. Between 1870 and 1877 Jackson accompanied eight Govern-
ment geological surveys and had a canyon and a lake named after him. Some
of his photographs of the Yellowstone region, which were handed to every
member of the House of Representatives and the Senate, were instrumental
in the passing of the Act of Congress (1872) declaring this area the first
National Park.
Timothy H. O’Sullivan, a prominent photographer during the American
Civil War (nearly half the photographs in Gardner's Photographic Sketch-
book of the War are by him) took part in a Government survey of the
40th Parallel 1867-69, and in 1870 in an expedition to survey a possible
ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama. In further expeditions O’Sullivan
photographed the canyons of the Colorado River, and in Arizona, where
he produced one of his finest pictures, the Canyon de Chelle (III. 81).
Vittorio Sella combined photography with Alpinism, like his father
Giuseppe Sella, who wrote the first general handbook on photography
published in Italy. From 1880 onward his exploits in the Alps, the Caucasus,
Alaska (1897), Equatorial Africa (the ‘Mountains of the Moon’) (1906) and
the Himalayas (1909), mostly as official photographer on the Duke of
Abbruzzi’s expeditions, made Sella’s photographs world-famous. Many of
these climbs established altitude records. Sella did not, of course, at that
late date have to contend with the great difficulties of wet collodion.
Herbert Ponting as official photographer to Captain Scott’s second and
last South Pole exploration (1910-12) brought back a superb record of the
expedition and the Antarctic landscape (III. 82). Similar splendid docu-
mentations made by Captain Frank Hurley, an Australian, on no fewer
than five Antarctic expeditions, demanded great resourcefulness. The crush-
ing of the Endurance by ice and the rescue of the party six months later
was recorded by Hurley in highly dramatic pictures on Sir Ernest Shackle-
ton’s second Antarctic expedition of 1914-16. They express better than
words the hardships endured.
104
Landscape
Landscape photography was a which the British particularly ex-
field in
107
v~ tV~
In advance of their time, too, though purely for a technical reason, were
the seascapes of Gustave Le Gray, who instead of the usual blank sky of
the time, succeeded in 1856 in depicting clouds and the moving waves of
the sea in large exhibition photographs (III. 85). The extreme difficulty
of depicting the bright sky in the same length exposure as the darker land-
scape was a great vexation to early photographers and led to the use of
separate cloud negatives which were printed in -a technique devised by
Hippolyte Bayard in summer 1852, and widely practised from the 1860s on.
James Mudd, a Manchester portrait photographer, in a beautiful set of
pictures caught the fantastic scene after a disastrous dam-burst near Sheffield
in 1864 (III. 86).
Francis Bedford’s views, highly praised by his contemporaries, seem today
topographical rather than artistic. The same criticism applies to a certain
extent to the work of Francis Frith, George Washington Wilson of Aberdeen,
and James Valentine of Dundee, all of whom were publishers of views on
such a mass-production scale that only a small proportion of the photo-
graphs bearing their names were actually taken by them.
108
>
85 GUSTAVE LE GRAY. ‘BRIG UPON THE WATER’, 1856
Architecture
Philip Henry Delamotte, a designer and artist, during 1853-54 took a
unique series of photographs of the rebuilding of the enlarged Crystal Palace
at Sydenham, from the levelling of the site to the opening ceremony by
Queen Victoria on 10th June 1854 (III. 87). The latter is one of the earliest
instantaneous photographs of an historic occasion. Delamotte’s two volumes
published in 1855 contain a total of 160 photographs forming a documenta-
tion of great architectural interest as well as unusual aesthetic merit (III. 88).
In the following years he continued publishing brilliant pictures of the ex-
terior and interior of this great Victorian glass palace and its exhibitions.
!
89 ROBERT MACPHERSON. RELIEF ON ARCH OF TITUS, RGME, C. 1857
90 JAMES ANDERSON. BASE OF TRAJAN’S COLUMN, ROME, C. 1860
112
*
remained in the hands of his descendents until quite recently when the large
stock of negatives was acquired by Count Vittorio Cini and united with
those of the Alinari brothers, Brogi, etc., in an art archive in Florence.
114
I
work was undertaken for the Society for Photographing the
Similar
Relics of Old London by Henry Dixon and A. & J. Boole between 1874
and 1885 (III. 93). In Glasgow Thomas Annan took an interesting series
of slums for the Glasgow City Improvement Trust during the period 1 868—
1877. Some of his work goes deeper than the recording of a picturesque
close or alley that was due for demolition, by the inclusion of the poverty-
stricken people standing outside their ramshackle houses (III. 94).
Unaware of Baldus’ great unpublished survey of the Louvre, Ferdinand
Ongania believed his monumental work on the Basilica di San Marco
(1878-86) to be the first photographic survey ever to be made of a build-
ing.In over 500 photographs printed by the heliotype process every note-
worthy feature of the brilliant exterior and gloomy interior of St Mark’s
can be studied without neck-twisting or the need for binoculars.
93 HENRY DIXON. THE OFFICE OF THE ‘DAILY NEWS’, FOUNDED BY CHARLES DICKENS,
IN FLEET STREET, SHORTLY BEFORE DEMOLITION, 1884
patent was taken out in November 1854, the carte de visite photograph did
not win much favour at first. The craze for these portraits dates only from
116
May 1859, when Napoleon III at the head of his army departing for Italy
halted his troops in the Boulevard des Italiens while he went into Disderi’s
studio to have his photograph taken. This rather ludicrous incidentwas of
course excellent publicity for Disderi,who became famous overnight. All
fashionable Paris followed the Emperor’s example, and by 1861 Disderi was
reputed to be the richest photographer in Europe, taking £48,000 a year
in his Paris establishment alone -and he also opened branches in Toulon,
96 J. E. MAYALL.
QUEEN VICTORIA AND THE
PRINCE CONSORT, 1861
He had a turnover of half a million cartes a year, and an estimated gross
annual income of £12,000. Even provincial studios did excellent business,
and altogether 300 to 400 million cartes were sold annually in England. No
wonder more than one Chancellor of the Exchequer seriously considered
following the example of the United States by imposing a small tax on
these pictures.
‘Cartomania’ was truly international. Ludwig Angerer, who introduced
the carte de visite in Vienna in 1857, sold enormous quantities of cartes of
the Imperial family; so did Rabending &
Monckhoven. L. Haase & Co. in
Berlin could not print their carte portraits of the Royal family and other
Prussian celebrities quickly enough. The same can be said of Sergej L.
Lewitzky in St Petersburg and Georg Hansen in Copenhagen. In the United
States, during the Civil War, the popularity of cartes was just as great as in
Europe. In Paris an army of photographers sprang up to exploit the boom;
no fewer than 33,000 people were stated to be making their living from the
production of photographs and photographic materials in 1861. In this year
the number of portrait studios in London had risen from sixty-six in 1855
to over two hundred; in 1866 when the carte de visite craze had already
passed its peak there were 284.
Photographs of celebrities were sold at stationers’ shops as picture post-
cards are today. The price of a carte was 1/- to l/6d according to the fame
and popularity of the sitter.
Some of the finest carte portraits were taken by Disd^ri and by another
Frenchman, Camille Silvy, who exchanged a diplomatic career for the
lucrative business of portrait photography. In 1859 Silvy opened a sump-
tuous studio in London giving employment to forty assistants. Gifted with
exquisite taste, Silvy posed his sitters gracefully in elegant interiors or
against charming painted landscape backgrounds, which earned him the
appellation of ‘the Winterhalter of photography’ (111.97). They are rather
in the nature of fashion-plates. With the Frenchman’s intuitive under-
standing of the fair sex, he published a series entitled ‘The Beauties of
England’ -a brilliant idea, for not to be included implied that a woman was
either not pretty enough, or was not in society.
Swamped with orders, some inferior photographers were tempted to
serve mammon rather than art. One boasted of taking 97 negatives in eight
hours! -and it is not to be wondered at if all attempt at characterization
is lacking and the poses stereotyped. In the degree to which the portrait
was reduced in size, its setting increased in importance, and the photo-
grapher’s studio became a stage with elaborate ‘properties’and pictorial
118
*
backgrounds. A glamorous effect was what people demanded, and the
humbler their home the greater their desire for splendour;and the grander
his studio the more business a photographer could expect.
No longer was photography an art for the privileged: it had become the
art for the million. Approving this democratic tendency as the first ‘people’s
art’ The Photographic News (London) wrote in 1861:
‘Photographic portraiture is the best feature of the fine arts for the
million that the ingenuity of man has yet devised. It has in this sense
swept away many of the illiberal distinctions of rank and wealth, so that
the poor man who possesses but a few shillings can command as perfect
a lifelike portrait of his wife or child as Sir Thomas Lawrence painted
for the most distinguished sovereigns of Europe.’
When the carte de visite lost its novelty, the larger Cabinet portrait 5V2X4
inches, introduced in England in 1866, proved a popular new format,
remaining in favour until the Great War.
graphers, both professional and amateur, whose work stands out from the
mass of stereotyped portraiture.
Nadar, Carjat, Adam-Salomon, Bertall, Mulnier and Pierre Petit, all
of Delacroix, Daumier, Baron Taylor, Victor Hugo, and George Sand -one
of his rare portraits of a woman (III. 100).
121
by electric arc light from a Bunsen battery, in the catacombs and sewers of
Paris. His balloon ‘Le Geant’, three times the size of any other balloon in
Europe, was a sensation in 1863. During the Siege of Paris Nadar com-
manded an observation balloon corps, and provided at his own expense a
balloon postal service to the seat of the Delegate Government at Tours, later
Bordeaux.
When Nadar heard that the artists later known as the Impressionists were
looking for a place to show their first exhibition (1874), with characteristic
generosity he lent them his old studio from which he had just moved, and
welcomed the sensation which the exhibition caused in the art world as good
personal publicity.
Julia Margaret Cameron deplored the shallowness and lack of individ-
uality in the carte de visite portraits of her famous friends, in which there
was no endeavour to record what she called ‘the greatness of the inner as
well as the features of the outer man’. This aim was her resolve when at the
age of forty-eight she took up photography, which to her was a ‘divine art’.
Working for her own satisfaction and not for a living, Mrs Cameron could
afford to go her own way, and became a pioneer in a new kind of portrai-
ture -the close-up. She had the real artist’s gift of piercing through the out-
ward appearance to the soul of the individual. Nowhere is this more striking
than in her photograph of Sir John Herschel, one of the greatest portraits
ever taken (III. 102). Although the impressiveness of J. M. Cameron’s por-
traits in some cases undoubtedly owes much to the strong personality of the
sitter -and this remark applies frequently to portraits of the famous -her
large head studies have a boldness which is startling in its originality of
conception. A comparison of her forceful portraits of great Victorians such
as Tennyson, Carlyle, Browning, Darwin (III. 103) with the paintings of
the same sitters by the leading portrait painters G. F. Watts and Sir John
Millais is rewarding: the photographer scores in every case against the
painter.Roger Fry’s claim that ‘Mrs Cameron’s photographs bid fair to out-
live most of the works of theartists who were her contemporaries’ holds
good for a great many other classic photographic portraits, which give a
truer and more intimate impression of the men and women who left their
mark on this epoch, than do painted portraits.
124
lOi HONORE DAUMIER. ‘NADAR RAISING PHOTOGRAPHY
TO THE HEIGHT OF ART*
LITHOGRAPH, 1862
JULIA MARGARET CAMERON. CHARLES DARWIN, 1869
104 ROBERT HOWLETT. ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL, 1857
lett, who, the previous year, had taken some lively pictures at the Derby to
serve as studies for William Powell Frith’s well-known painting Derby Day ,
photographed the launching of the ‘Great Eastern’ steamship, and its de-
128
signer I. K. Brunei (III. 104) in a way that is completely modern in con-
ception.
The photo-interview was pioneered in 1886 by Felix Tournachon and
Paul Nadar for Le Journal Illustre. The occasion was the hundredth birth-
107 (below) ELLIOT & FRY. SIR JOSEPH WILSON SWAN, 1904
110 THOMAS ANNAN.
DR DAVID LIVINGSTONE,
1864
Gladstone and Robert Stephenson (1856) (III. 109) by Maull & Poly-
blank; David Livingstone (1864) (III. 110) by Thomas Annan; Ludwig II
of Bavaria (1867) by Josef Albert; Camille Corot (1871) (III. Ill) by
Eugene Dutilleux; Robert Louis Stevenson (1885) by A. G. Dew Smith;
Cardinal Newman (1887) by Herbert Barraud; William Morris (1889) by
Sir Emery Walker; Oscar Wilde (1890) by W. & D. Downey; Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec (c. 1892) (III. 112) by Paul Sescau, Lautrec’s night-life
companion, for whom he designed a poster Henry Irving
(III. 113); Sir
as Thomas a Becket (1893) by H. H. H. Cameron J. M. Cameron);
(son of
Aubrey Beardsley (c. 1895) by Frederick Hollyer; Mark Twain (1902) and
Auguste Rodin (1903) by E. Walter Barnett; J. P. Morgan (1903) by Ed-
ward Steichen; the Arch-Duchess Stephanie (1905) by Alice Hughes; Alice
Meynell (1908) and John Galsworthy (1912) by E. O. Hoppe.
133
Ill EUGENE DUTILLEUX. CAMILLE COROT AT ARRAS, 1871
]
112 PAUL SESCAU. DOUBLE PORTRAIT OF HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, C. 1892
136
at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was professor of mathematics, his
best work dates from the ’fifties and ’sixties when he used to take his
cumbersome apparatus to the homes of friends and acquaintances, where
he found full scope for his inventive genius. Sometimes he composed amus-
ing anecdotal or genre scenes. The original and casual-looking poses he
arranged constitute the chief charm of his pictures. Only an amateur could
have taken such an independent course from the usual stilted studio
portraits of children, and that is why Lewis Carroll’s pictures strike us
today as so greatly superior to professional work.
Viscountess Hawarden’s photographs of children, admired and collected
by Lewis Carroll, show a remarkably fresh outlook. She did not restrict
herself to children any more than Lewis Carroll did, and the picture of
her daughter reflected in the looking-glass is one of the most delightful
genre photographs (III. 115) of the Victorian period.
War Reportage
Though scenes in the war between the United States and Mexico, 1846-48,
and the Siege of Rome in 1849 and other historic events at the beginning
of the Risorgimento were recorded by photography in individual pictures,
the first war reportage was Roger Fenton’s and James Robertson’s
extensive
coverage of the Siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War. The initial
phases of hostilities in the Balkans had been recorded by Karl Baptist de
Szathmari, an amateur in Bucharest, whose photographs have unfortunately
not survived.
Roger Fenton’s 360 photographs of the Crimean War, taken in 1855, are
not very warlike by present-day standards (III. 117), but this is ex-
by the dual purpose of the undertaking: to sell prints to the public,
plained
who would have abhorred gruesome pictures, and to give convincing proof
of the well-being of the troops after the disasters of the preceding winter
139
116 O. G. REJLANDER. THE MILKMAID, C. 1857
117 ROGER FENTON. CRIMEAN WAR, BALACLAVA HARBOUR, 1855
118 ROGER FENTON. CRIMEAN WAR, CANTINIERE AND WOUNDED MAN, 1855
which had caused the downfall of the Government. Despite their lack of
action, the photographs provide a far more convincing picture of life at the
front than the wide views of William Simpson, published as lithographs by
Colnaghi.
The photographic van (III. 30) formed a conspicuous target and on
drew the fire of the Russian batteries. The heat in the
several occasions
Crimea made working in it extremely trying. Exposures were 10-15 seconds,
but Fenton was very skilful in arranging groups naturally to convey the
impression of having been taken instantaneously (III. 118).
Fenton was obliged to leave the seemingly endless Siege of Sebastopol at
the end of June, but James Robertson, chief engraver of the Imperial Mint
at Constantinople, completed the reportage of this senseless campaign with
photographs of the English and French trenches, the wrecked Russian forts
(III. 119), and the ruins of the bombarded city immediately after the
retreat of the Russians on 8th-9th September 1855.
119 JAMES ROBERTSON. CRIMEAN WAR, INTERIOR OF THE REDAN AFTER WITHDRAWAL
OF THE RUSSIANS, SEPTEMBER 1855
N
graphers including Luigi Sacchi, Berardy and the Ferriers, father and son,
whose stereoscopic pictures showed not only camp life but for the first time
the horrors of war which Fenton had intentionally avoided.
It is as organizer of the photographic documentation of the American
Civil War that Mathew B. Brady is today remembered and honoured. Be-
lieving that ‘the camera is the eye of history’ Brady left his prosperous por-
trait studios in New York and Washington in the care of employees, and
with his staff of nineteen photographers covered almost every theatre of the
war. Many of the finest pictures were taken by Alexander Gardner, Brady’s
former studio manager in Washington, Timothy H. O’Sullivan (III. 120)
and other members of the team, and only a comparatively small number
143
i
122 PARIS COMMUNE INSURRECTION, THE FALLEN VENDOME COLUMN, 16 MAY 1871.
THE BEARDED MAN IN SECOND ROW IS GUSTAVE COURBET
Government by balloon from the capital. After arrival in Paris the messages
were projected by magic lantern (III. 123), copied by clerks, and distrib-
uted. This was a kind of forerunner of the airgraph letter service during
World War II.
Lively stereophotographs were taken during the Boer War (1899-1902)
for Underwood & Underwood, New York publishers of stereoscopic pic-
tures. There were no official photographers attached to the army, but thanks
144
123 COPYING PIGEON POST
DISPATCHES DURING THE
SIEGE OF PARIS, 1870-71
to private enterprise such as The Daily Graphic which sent out its staff
photographer Reinhold Thiele, and others working on the Boer side, the
documentation of the South African War was very extensive (III. 124).
This was the first war covered by cinematographers, whose news-reels were
Social Documentation
The first documentary photographs, which unfortunately no longer exist,
ing that the camera is a mightier weapon than the pen for attacking the
bad conditions that lead to crime, took between 1887 and 1892 a poignant
series of photographs to point out to society its obligations to the poor
(III. With his books How the Other Half Lives (1890) and Children
127).
of the Poor (1892) Riis awakened the conscience of New Yorkers and
influenced the Governor of New York State, Theodore Roosevelt, to under-
take a number of social reforms, including the wiping out of notorious
tenements at Mulberry Bend. Today the Jacob A. Riis Neighbourhood
Settlement commemorates the photographer’s great work.
?
«.
128 LEWIS W. HINE. CAROLINA COTTON MILL, 1908
town (1897) and the devastation caused by the earthquake and fire of 1906,
are infinitely more interesting than his rather uninspired portraits of stage
and screen stars that made him one of America’s most prominent photo-
graphers after settling in New York in 1911.
149
129 SIR BENJAMIN STONE. OX-ROASTING AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON ‘MOP’, C. 1898
150
130 NAHUM LUBOSHEZ. FAMINE IN RUSSIA, 1910
ested in Atget’s self-imposed task, and he ended his days in extreme poverty,
leaving to posterity nearly 10,000 prints. The most publicized side of Atget’s
work is his street life series, very similar to Thomson’s and Martin’s, but
his roving eye was fascinated by many things which other people pass by
Photography of Movement
The desire to record action existed right from the earliest days of photo-
graphy, but remained in general unfulfilled until the introduction of the
stereoscopic camera in 1853 (III. 33). Noteworthy exceptions were a few
small daguerreotypes taken in 1841: street views including people and slow-
moving traffic by the Natterer brothers of Vienna, a view of the Pont Neuf,
Paris, by Marc Antoine Gaudin, and the changing of the guard at the
Tuileries, with a crowd of spectators, by Girault de Prangey.
Ten years later Hippolyte Macaire of Le Havre showed daguerreotypes
of a trotting horse, a moving carriage, a walking man, and seascapes with
waves and steamships with smoke coming out of the funnel. For these novel
153
134 G. W. WILSON. GREENWICH PIER, 1857
154
i
roof of a cab in 1862 was able to snatch very lively impressions of the hustle
and bustle of busy London thoroughfares. Twenty-five years later Charles
A. Wilson (son of G. W. Wilson), using gelatine dry plates, took still better
pictures of larger size from inside a furniture van (III. 135).
Action photographs made it possible to record and study the movements
of animals scientifically. Best known in this field are the serial photographs
of Eadweard Muybridge, the first man to think of a photo-finish in horse-
racing. His investigation of the locomotion of animals originated in 1872
with a controversy about the leg movements of a trotting horse. His serial
P «MT*
n
136 EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE. GALLOPING HORSE, 1883-85
156
-
1882 onward. At first he took single photographs, four years later changed
to Muybridge’s system of twenty-four cameras for chronophotography, mak-
ing chiefly photographs for military training purposes. For stroboscopic
synthesis of these pictures Anschutz constructed the Electrotachyscope in
1887, in which the pictures were arranged round the edge of a rotating
wheel and each in turn briefly illuminated by an electric spark.
The ‘freezing’ of rapidly moving objects for a fraction of a second by the
sudden flash of an electric spark in a darkened room was demonstrated by
Sir Charles Wheatstone five years before the introduction of photography.
Talbot applied photography to record phenomenon in 1851, when he
this
158
139 prof. HUBERT SCHARDIN. BULLET PASSING
THROUGH CANDLE FLAMES, AND THE
SOUND WAVES CAUSED BY IT. C. 1950
140 HAROLD E. EDGERTON. MULTIPLE-FLASH PHOTOGRAPH OF THE GOLFER DENNIS
SHUTE, C. 1935 100 FLASHES PER SECOND
.
Pictorial Photography
The earliest exponent of fine art photography was J. E. Mayall, who in 1845
produced a series of ten daguerreotypes illustrating ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. Six
years later at the Great Exhibition in London Mayall showed several com-
positions described in the catalogue as ‘Daguerreotype pictures to illustrate
poetry and sentiment’ -‘The Soldier’s Dream’, ‘The Venerable Bede blessing
a child’, and ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’ measuring no less than 24X15 inches.
Despite Prince Albert’s encouragement, Mayall abandoned art photography,
realizing probably the validity of the criticism put forward by The Athe-
naeum: ‘To us these pictures seem a mistake. At best, we can only hope to
get a mere naturalistic rendering. Ideality is unattainable- and imagination
supplanted by the presence of fact.’
161
a watercolour artist, astonished the world of art and photography -and the
President of the Royal Academy, Sir Charles Eastlake, who was also Presi-
dent of the Photographic Society of London -with
‘Don Quixote’ and his
other compositions in the chivalric style of the Academician George Catter-
mole. They heralded an unfortunate trend -photographic picture making
instead of picture taking. Whilst the art critics welcomed High Art photo-
graphy, as it was then called, those with a deeper knowledge of the photo-
graphic medium were convinced that ‘photographic renderings of historical
or poetic subjects give at best only the impression of a scene on the
. . .
stage’.
163
the Photographic Society of London, which afterwards made the round of
the important exhibitions in Britain and the Continent. These and other
compositions created the style known as ‘pictorial photography’. Robinson’s
method, entirely contrary to the true technique of photography, was to
build up making a preliminary sketch of the
the picture in stages. After
design, he photographed individual groups of figures, cut them
figures, or
in 1885, shows his great though misapplied skill; one cannot possibly detect
the joins of the five negatives was made up. But why should
from which it
164
training, had never heard of any rules of composition and took rather free-
and-easy snapshots, often very charming like J. Bridson’s picnic (1882)
(III. 144). They were fascinated that a click of the shutter could capture
a slice of life bustling with activity (III. 145). Oscar van Zel’s snapshot
(III. 146) of figure skaters in Vienna ‘froze’ their movement and shows
what short exposures could be attained. Degas, who disliked painting out
of doors, relied a good deal on photographs as studies for his canvases, many
of which convey a casual snapshot-like impression, for example the ‘Place
de la Concorde’ with people half cut off.
that had been opened up, using the recent technical advances merely to
indulge in trite pictorialism with greater facility.
169
149 LYDDELL SAWYER. THE CASTLE GARTH, NEWCASTLE. ORIGINAL
PHOTOGRAVURE, 1888
150 GEORGE DAVISON. ‘THE ONION FIELD*, 1890 (REPRODUCTION)
Joseph Gale, Lyddell Sawyer (III. 149), and Frank M. Sutcliffe. The two
last-named had professional portrait studios, but made delightful landscape
and genre pictures for exhibitions.
Under the influence of the first exhibition of French Impressionist paint-
ings in England in 1889, George Davison revived the old argument that a
soft photograph was more beautiful than a sharp one -an idea that had led
to heated discussions among English photographers in the ’fifties.The follow-
ing year he exhibited the first impressionist photograph, ‘The Onion Field’
(III. which the image was slightly blurred by a combination of
150), in
soft focus and rough-surfaced paper. Soon the desire arose to increase the
softness and to break up the smooth halftones of the photographic image to
emphasize the Impressionistic effect. This met with stubborn opposition from
the traditionalists who were purists in technique, at least, and since the
artistic photographers were already dissatisfied with the recent scientific bias
of the Photographic Society, they broke away from the establishment and
171
founded a secession movement in 1892. The Linked Ring Brotherhood was
formed by Davison and all the members of the Naturalistic school of photo-
graphy (except its founder) and, incongruous as it seems, the old pictorialist
H. P. Robinson. Since England had a long tradition of pictorial photo-
graphy and was indeed until the ’nineties the chief country where it was
practised, it is not surprising that the Linked Ring group was looked up to
as the natural leader by amateur organizations that grew up in other coun-
tries about this time. Within three years the leading French, Austrian and
American art photographers had become members of the Linked Ring and
sent their pictures to its annual exhibitions, the London Salon, which re-
mained the most important international event in photography up to 1914.
The London Salon set an example for international exhibitions of aesthetic
photography on the Continent: Vienna (1892), Hamburg (1893), Paris
(1894), Turin (1897), Berlin (1899); and the Linked Ring led to similar
secession movements, of which the most important was the Photo-Secession
founded by Alfred Stieglitz in New York in 1902.
The pursuit of art unifying photographers of many nations resulted in the
formation in 1904 of the International Society of Pictorial Photographers
under the presidency of J. Craig Annan of Glasgow.
The international status of the aesthetic movement brought in its wake
-at Europe -an extraordinary uniformity of style. Most pictorial
least in
canvas. Rough drawing paper and certain pigments could make the photo-
graph look like a red chalk or charcoal drawing. Nothing flattered the
fin-de-siecle photographer more than the admiring exclamation: ‘That
doesn’t look a bit like a photograph!’ (III. 151), for it proved their
distinction from the mass of casual snapshooters for whom these techniques
were far too difficult. Whilst in their ambition for recognition as artists
dancer (III. 152)} On the other hand, Frau E. Nothmann’s ‘In the Garden’
has the character of a Renoir without being directly indebted to him (III.
153).
The most prominent art photographers using the gum bichromate and
other controlled printing processes were, in France: Robert Demachy, C.
Puyo. In Austria: Heinrich Kuhn ( III. 154) and Hans Watzek (III. 155).
FRAU E. NOTHMANN. ‘iN THE GARDEN'. PHOTOGRAVURE OF A GUM PRINT, C. 1897
154 (LEFT) HEINRICH KUHN.
VENICE. GUM PRINT, 1897
(reproduction)
In Germany: the brothers Theodor and Oskar Hofmeister (III. 156), Ru-
dolph Diihrkoop and Hugo Erfurth (III. 157). In Belgium: Leonard Mi-
sonne. In Spain: Jose Ortiz Echague. In Britain: Alfred Horsley Hinton,
Alexander Keighley (III. 158), and F. J. Mortimer. The American Edward
Steichen, then living in Paris, may also be considered to fall in this
However attractive, art photography was neither art nor true photo-
graphy but a hybrid arising from a misconception of its functions, which
befuddled even the usually clear-headed Munich art critic Karl Voll into
proclaiming: ‘Since the introduction of the gum print their results have no
longer anything in common with what used to be known as photography.
For that reason one can proudly say that these photographers have broken
the tradition of the artificial reproduction of nature. They have freed them-
selves from photography.’
178
157 HUGO ERFURTH. LADY WITH
HAT. NEGATIVE PRINT, 1907
180
!
expectation was a revitalization of painting through photography. The art-
ists of the Munich and Vienna Secessions admitted the art nouveau photo-
graphers to their exhibitions in 1898 and 1902 respectively, and in 1899
the first exhibition of art photography in Berlin took place at the Royal
Academy.
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By no means all photographers of the art nouveau period were forgers
work or imitators of non-photographic techniques. A number
of painters’
of English photographers and practically the entire American group, with
the exception of Steichen, had no desire to ‘free themselves from photo-
graphy’. They favoured the soft silver-grey or sepia toned platinum paper,
or hand-made photogravures or photo-etchings. These techniques had been
chosen by P. H. Emerson as giving a slightly softer and more artistic presen-
tation of a photograph than the usual glossy albumen or bromide prints. To
this purist group, who exhibited side by side with the ‘daubers and gum-
161 J. CRAIG ANNAN. THE PAINTER AND ETCHER SIR WILLIAM STRANG.
PHOTOGRAVURE, C. 1900
162 FREDERICK H. EVANS. AUBREY BEARDSLEY. PLATINUM PRINT, C. 1895
163 MAURICE BUCQUET. ‘EFFET DE PLUIE*. PARIS, C. 1899
Rubincam (III. 167). Even their pictures frequently show soft impression-
istic effects, with occasional contre-jour lighting, and a preference for wet
or snowy weather.
George Bernard Shaw admitted to Helmut Gernsheim that he originally
aspired to be a Michelangelo, not a Shakespeare, but could not draw well
enough to satisfy himself (III. 168). Considering the camera a wonderful
5
substitute for the paint-box he began ‘pushing the button in 1898, with
such lack of success that he made the classic comparison: ‘The photographer
5
is like the cod, which lays a million eggs in order that one may be hatched.
Nevertheless Shaw audaciously prophesied in the third year of his hobby:
‘Some day the camera will do the work of Velasquez and Pieter de Hoogh,
colour and all Selection and representation, covering ninety-nine hun-
. . .
5
dredths of our annual output of art, belongs henceforth to photography.
186
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168 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S REPLY TO HELMUT GERNSHEIM, GIVING HIS REASON
FOR TAKING UP PHOTOGRAPHY, 1949
Whilst in his own inimitable way Shaw tried to confirm Delaroche’s opinion
that painting was dead, he did not, of course, expect his remark to be taken
literally. But before long, a photographic Pieter de Hoogh interior made
its appearance was only one of many elaborate and accom-
(III. 169). This
plished imitations of Old Master paintings, in which great pains were taken
to achieve historical accuracy. From the photographic point of view the
technique itself was straightforward. Madonnas and saints far more convinc-
ing than Mrs Cameron’s appeared, and even Crucifixions, Depositions and
Entombments did not escape photographic treatment. With such aberrations
of taste the Dutch amateur photographer Richard Polak, the Americans
J. C. Strauss, F. Holland Day and Lejaren a Hiller, the Italians Ruffo and
Guido Rey, L. Bovier of Belgium, Fred Boissonnas of Switzerland and Mrs
Barton in England, won their laurels.
The man who set out to regenerate the art of true photography towards the
end of the century was Alfred Stieglitz. His photographs of New York streets
188
j
in the ’nineties convincingly proved that everyday scenes abound in effec-
191
Whereas Paul Strand’s experiments in abstraction were photographs of
recognizable objects, the first purely abstract photographs were a series of
‘Vortographs’ made 1917 by A. L. Coburn by photographing bits of
in
wood, crystals and other objects through an arrangement of three mirrors
forming a triangle and resulting in multiple images (III. 176).
At the end of World War I the cynicism, disillusion, and contempt for
established values led not only to political upheavals but also to a disinte-
gration of accepted conventions in art. Traditional rules of composition
were cast aside in a search for new ways of expression. Some young painters,
trying to mould photography to their own visual aims, diverted it from its
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180 ERNST HAAS. POSTER, 1959
181 PHOTOMICROGRAPH FROM ‘FORM IN ART AND NATURE* BY GEORG SCHMIDT AND
ROBERT SCHENK, BASLE, 1960
Even quite simple techniques such as negative-printing (III. 157) (i. e.
not reversing the image to the positive), multiple images, and distortion
could result -so Moholy-Nagy pointed out -in exciting optical images, and
being the enfant terrible who aimed at a complete break with traditional
methods of picture-making, he urged his pupils to look at everything afresh,
from novel viewpoints (III. 182). Moholy-Nagy made photomontages
chiefly in connection with typography, or for advertising, and called the
combination of the printed word with a photograph ‘typophotoh His book
I
CECIL BEATON. THE ACTRESS DIANA WYNYARD, 1935
185 ANGUS MCBEAN. SELF-PORTRAIT (FOUR EXPOSURES), 1946
200
186 WINIFRED CASSON.
SURREALIST PHOTOGRAPH, C. 1935
202
189 ANDRE KERTESZ.
DISTORTION STUDY, 1934
(reproduction)
205
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207
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book Es Kommt der Neue Fotograf (1929) form the perfect guide to the new
vision, which now began to establish itself firmly in Germany. The classic
rules of composition and perspective devised in the Renaissance for paint-
ing were now deliberately discarded as photographers at last learned to see
photographically
Several German weekly illustrated papers and monthly magazines in the
late ’twenties surprised their readers with startling photographs featured
under such titles as ‘The New Vision’, ‘The World from Above’, ‘Under the
Magnifying Glass’, ‘How Our Photographer Saw It’, ‘The Picture can be
Found in the Street’, ‘Beauties of Every Day’, ‘Journeys of Discovery with
the Camera’, etc.
The possibility of publishing their pictures in magazines and books freed
photographers from their former dependence on exhibitions for fame. It
208
brought about a much wider division between photographs made for ex-
hibitions -the old art for art’s sake- and those intended for publication,
which were concerned with life and reality, photography’s proper domain.
Hugo Erfurth, though adhering to the manipulated gum and oil pigment
print, depicted the German intelligentsia in the 1920s with a depth of un-
derstanding and artistic conception (III. 198) equalled by South African-
born Howard Coster, who settled in London in 1925, in his portraits of the
English intelligentsia (III. 199).
211
200 EDWARD WESTON.
SWEET PEPPER, 1930
The only country outside Germany where New Objectivity found imme-
diate acceptance was Switzerland; perhaps it was natural that the new factual
style should appeal to a nation noted for clockwork precision and down-to-
earth exactitude, and be considered unpoetic in England and France.
In the United States new realism began independently of German influence
with a small number of photographers, of whom Edward Steichen, Paul
Strand and Edward Weston are the best known. Steichen’s early work in
this style has already been referred to. Strand began in 1926 to take close-up
photographs of machinery, plants and rock formations. Weston was a Salon
•N
This American group did not abandon their 10X8 inch plate cameras in
favour of the miniature cameras introduced in the ’twenties, because they
considered superlative technique just as essential as imaginative vision. In
1932 Willard van Dyke, a cinematographer, formed the F 64 Group with a
few other like-minded photographers, including Weston and Imogen Cun-
ningham. They used the smallest diaphragm opening on their lens in order
to obtain the greatest possible depth and sharpness from foreground to back-
ground, rarely making larger prints than contact copies. This was a return to
the practice of the pioneer landscape photographers three-quarters of a
had usually worked with much larger plates.
century earlier, except that they
Inspired by the Westons and Adams (III. 202), there are today in America
a number of dedicated nature photographers -Wynn Bullock, William
Garnett, Eliot Porter and Cedric Wright -whose brilliant work has appeared
in This is the American Earth (1960) by Nancy Newhall and other fine
publications sponsored by the Sierra Club in San Francisco.
Mention must also be made in this connection of the originators of New
Objectivity who are and have published a number of books con-
still active
taining superb photographs: Paul Strand on Mexico (1940), New England
(1950) and the Hebrides (1963); Renger-Patzsch on the Ruhr and Mohne
landscape (1958), trees (1962) and stones (1965).
When Helmut Gernsheim tried to propagate New Objectivity in Britain,
his book New Photo Vision (1942) (111.204) met with the same kind of
hostile reception from the old guard as Die Welt ist schon had previously.
For many years the new style found little favour outside advertising, despite
the excellent annuals Modern Photography and the books of Ansel Adams
and the Viennese Wolfgang Suschitzky, all published by The Studio. Su-
schitzky applied the modern realistic style to close-ups of animals (III. 203)
and children in a way that had not been attempted before. During World
War II Gernsheim brought the same approach to the architecture and
sculpture (III. 205 By isolating and lighting he
of historic monuments.
intensified individual motifs and brought out significant details which in
some cases would otherwise have remained unnoticed by the casual observer,
since they were often in obscure positions.
Andreas Feininger, who left Germany in the mid-’thirties about the same
time as Gernsheim, has been staff photographer of Life for over twenty
years, specializing in subjects calling for an intellectual rather than an
emotional approach. An architect by training, Feininger’s analytical search-
ing eye discovered many new vistas in American landscape and townscape
(III. 206) and fantastic forms in The Anatomy of Nature (1956).
214
203 WOLFGANG SUSCHITZKY.
TWO CAMELS, 1938
art critics/!
217
207 PETER CORNELIUS. CANAL ST-MARTIN, PARIS, 1958
208 YOUSUF KARSH. SIR WINSTON CHURC^HILL, 1941
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITURE
The greatest contemporary representative of portraiture in the classic tradi-
tion Armenian-born Yousuf Karsh, whose name will for ever remain
is
associated with the image he created of Sir Winston Churchill (III. 208)
-the most characteristic portrait expressing the bulldog determination of
the great wartime leader. No other artist succeeded so well in catching the
forcefulness of Eleanor Roosevelt, the impish, quizzical expression of G. B.
Shaw, or the Weltschmerz of Albert Einstein. These and many other faces
of destiny photographed by Karsh during the war for the Canadian Govern-
ment make a strong case for an International Photographic Portrait Gallery.
Smaller fry do not stand up to the same heroic treatment, though their
portraits too are unmistakably stamped with Karsh’s personality.
— " »
210 ELIOT ELISOFON. LOUIS ARMSTRONG
Latvian-born Philippe Halsman, with over 100 Life cover pictures to his
he sees his greatest reward when one of his portraits becomes the definitive
image of some famous person. History will remember Einstein as Halsman
saw him (III. 213). His Jump Book of famous people, on the other hand,
strikes one as hardly more than a gimmick.
Living with Pablo Picasso for several months enabled David Douglas
Duncan to build up a great composite portrait -the best documentation that
has so far been produced on the private life of a great figure. The Private
World of Pablo Picasso (1958) has that air of intimacy which only famili-
arity can give. Despite his flair for acting, Picasso refrained from playing
to the gallery.
225
s
Irving Penn and Richard Avedon are America’s leading fashion magazine
photographers today. They have created a contemporary style for Vogue
and Harper's Bazaar respectively, as distinctive as Edward Steichen’s for
Vanity Fair in the 192Qs and and Cecil Beaton’s for Vogue in the 30s
30s,
and 40s. Observations (1959) and Moments Preserved (1960) show better
than words can describe the quality which gives their fashion photographs
that new look, and makes their colour advertisements so eye-catching. Eco-
nomy of means, unusual viewpoints and a strong black-and-white effect create
a sense of monumentality in Penn’s portraits of Picasso and Marlene Dietrich.
The same strength emerges from Avedon’s Stravinsky (III. 214). Occasionally,
however, when the sitter has to play-act a part assigned to him, he is
FOTOFORM
Since much was stigmatized by the
of the avant-garde art of the Bauhaus
Nazis was closed down when Hitler came to power. Walter
as degenerate, it
Gropius and Moholy-Nagy had already left in 1928. To the post-war gen-
eration in Germany most of the Bauhaus teaching was a sealed book.
In the wave of non-representational art which swept the world after
World War II Kandinsky, Klee and Feininger, who had made the Bauhaus
the spearhead of abstract art, were international idols. It is not surprising,
therefore, that in the spirit of the times Prof. Otto Steinert, teacher at and
later director of the State Art & Craft School in Saarbrticken, considered
the moment opportune to revive the entire range of photographic image-mak-
ing evolved by Moholy-Nagy. Under the name ‘Fotoform’, and with a good
deal of drum-beating from art critics, one of whom likened the impact
of the first Fotoform exhibition (1950) to ‘an atom bomb in the dungheap of
decadent German photography’, photographs with a graphic design or ab-
stract pattern became the rage in Germany. Some photographers discovered
that nature abounded with abstract patterns if you started looking for them.
Toni Schneider’s air bubble formation in ice (111.215) and Peter Keetman’s
227
216 PETER KEETMAN. OIL DROPS, 1956
oil drops (III. 216) are excellent examples. Keetman made a variety of
aesthetically satisfying oscillation photographs (III. 217 ), unaware that the
first made with a swinging light source had been produced as early
designs
as 1904 by C. E. Benham and published in the January 1905 issue of The
Photogram London. The ‘Luminograph’,
,
originally introduced for time-
and-motion study of factory workers, led Gjon Mili to ask Picasso to draw
for him a light picture in the air. Less original, but sometimes more fantastic,
were the light patterns traced by the headlights of motor cars on photo-
graphic film, and the helicopter spiral (III. 218) by Andreas Feininger.
However, more often than not abstractions and graphic designs were only
conceived in the darkroom, and it was in the nature of things that the
desired graphic effect usually necessitated the suppression of the specifically
photographic qualities in order to render the subject of the photograph
meaningless. Extremists seemed to feel the same urge to ‘free themselves
from photography’, as some of the art nouveau gum-splodgers had done.
The quest for originality frequently led to cultivation of what had
formerly been rejected as technically faulty, transforming the normal
image quite surprisingly: over-enlargement of a small part of a negative,
coarse grain, blurred outlines, camera-shake, double images, exaggerated
contrast and reticulation. Man Ray in his self-portrait obtained a
graphic effect by printing from a zincographic plate (III. 219). As the
218 ANDREAS FEININGER. NAVY RESCUE HELICOPTER TAKING OFF AT NIGHT, 1957
219 MAN RAY. SELF-PORTRAIT, 1948. PHOTOZINCOGRAPH
222 CAROLINE HAMMARSKIOLD. FISHING-NET, 1950
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225 RAYMOND MOORE. ROCK POOL, 1964
227 CLARENCE J. LAUGHLIN.
WINDOW, 1963
son Brett were among the first to be captivated by the expressiveness and
wonderful forms they found on their explorations of nature. However, their
pictures are less closely related to the current trend in painting than those of
a number of other American photographers in this field, foremost among
them Aaron Siskind ( III. 232 and Harry Callahan, who for many years
jointly directed the photographic department of the Illinois Institute of
Design (the New Bauhaus). Quite a different abstraction, depending purely
on form, is given by Callahan’s silhouette (III. 233) and Bill Brandt’s strange
study from Perspective of Nudes (1961) (III. 234). Very interesting patterns
are sometimes- also the by-product of scientific investigations as in Prof.
Schardin’s photograph of the temperature distribution around a heated
metal tube (III. 235).
Henry Holmes Smith has used the multiple-colour dye-transfer process
for creating abstract forms in colour. Herbert W. Franke in Kunst und
Konstruktion (1957) lists a great many techniques from X-rays to ultralight.
241
)
-35 HUBERT SCHARDIN. TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION AROUND A HEATED METAL TUBE, C. 1950
tions, to the cliche-verre process which goes back to 1839. In this, the
photographic part consists solely in copying on to sensitive paper a design
scratched or painted on a coated glass plate (III. 236). Some of the light-
drawings of the Hungarian teacher of design Gyorgy Kepes (III. 237) -co-
founder with Moholy-Nagy of the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937-also
fall into this group. Indeed, many so-called innovations in photography are
ancient: light-drawing, photomontage, cliche-verre , oscillation photographs,
solarization and other techniques have been re-invented from time to time
simply because people forgot, or perhaps never knew, what had been done
before. It is a common failure to ignore the past instead of learning from it.
242
236 NORMAN TUDGAY.
‘clich£-verre’, 1955
and despair, the humanity and inhumanity, of the world in which we find
ourselves participants whether we like it or not.
With new techniques of transmission, photography as a communications
medium has gained immeasurably in importance. Pictures of the assassina-
tion of President Kennedy were on the front page of every important daily
newspaper throughout the world the next day. The modern world takes in
its stride photo-telegraphy, television, Telstar, and pictures of the moon
automatically taken and radio’d to earth from a distance of 240,000 miles.
A surprising circumstance in this revolutionary development of communica-
tions is that it is only sixty-one years since the first newspaper world
in the
illustrated exclusively with photographs, The Daily Mirror (London), made
its appearance. Indeed it was only in June 1919 that the New York tabloid
The Illustrated Daily News followed suit, thirty-nine years after the feasibil-
ity of printing a halftone block alongside type had been satisfactorily de-
monstrated by Stephen H. Horgan in The New York Daily Graphic. Even
238 FRENCH MACHINE GUN DETACHMENT UNDER FIRE AT HELLY DURING WORLD WAR I, 1918
C
239 THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES. RED THURSDAY’ DEMONSTRATION IN PARIS, 1925
during the early twentieth century practically the only outlet the news
photographer had for pictures of events, and complete reportages of occa-
sions such as Queen Victoria’s funeral and Edward VII’s coronation, was
the sale of postcards.
During World War I photographers were for the first time officially at-
tached to the armed forces, and some action shots under fire comparable with B
those of World War II were taken (III. 238). Yet comparatively few of them
were published in the press, and to satisfy the growing demand, sets of official
war photographs were released to the public in the 1920s in England, France
and Germany in the form of stereoscopic slides and published albums.
Newspapers were incredibly slow to adapt themselves to the photo-age.
Although numerous excellent photographs of historic events had been
made in the and early twentieth century, photo-reportage
nineteenth
in the modern sense began only in the mid-’twenties (III. 239) with the
245
a rather exaggerated claim of the manufacturer of the Ermanox
theless,
camera to advertise: ‘What you see you can photograph’. According to Hugo
von Hofmannsthal, Dr Hans Bohm working with this camera from a box
in the Josephstadt Theatre in Vienna recorded for the first time the ex-
pressions and gestures of actors during actual performances in Max Rein-
hardt’s first season 1924-25. His success decided the former research chemist
to become a professional stage photographer.
The new technical facilities gradually gave rise to a new kind of photo-
graphy -a preoccupation with human situations (III. 240). The fathers of
modern photo-reportage are Dr Erich Salomon, Felix H. Man and Wolfgang
Weber.
Salomon started as a free-lance photo-reporter in February 1928 after the
sensational success of his photographs of a Berlin murder trial taken secretly
with an Ermanox concealed in an attache case. In fact, a similar ‘scoop’ had
already been made twenty years earlier by an English press photographer,
Arthur Barrett, who caught expressive close-ups (111.241) of suffragette
leaders in the dock at Bow Street Magistrate’s Court, London, with a camera
hidden in his top hat, in which he had cut a hole for the lens.
the Berliner lllustrirte Zeitung , Dr Salomon astonished the world with his
candid snapshots of statesmen and other celebrities in unguarded moments,
especially at international political conferences. Aristide Briand called him
‘le roi des indiscrets’ (111.242), for Salomon was as ingenious at getting
into secret sessions from which photographers were barred, as the China-
man who, posing as a special envoy, boldly joined the royal procession at
the opening of the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851.
Another early worker in this field was the Hungarian Muncaszi, who like
graphers were Umbo and Felix FI. Man, the former working mainly on the
studio and advertising side, and the latter as photo-journalist. In 1930 they
were joined by Kurt Hiibschmann (later Hutton). Others working for
Dephot were Walter Bosshard, and Harald Lechenperg who some years
later became editor of the Berliner lllustrirte. The close association with
Stefan Lorant, who was from August 1928 Berlin editor of the Miinchner
lllustrierte and became its brilliant editor-in-chief in 1930, was the main
250
1945. Lorant emigrated to the United States in 1940, and with his book
252
Lincoln: His Life in Photographs (1941) pioneered a new genre in book-
publishing— the pictorial biography.
From the foregoing it becomes abundantly clear that the oft-repeated
claim that photo-reportage originated with Life completely lacks founda-
tion. Eisenstaedt, staff photographer on this magazine from its foundation
in November 1936, like a number of other emigre photographers, merely
introduced into the United States a style already current in Germany for
several years. Moreover, for the first two years Eisenstaedt had to operate
with flashlight and tripod in order to satisfy the American concept of a good
photograph -pinsharpness. In fact, it was only after the appearance of
Picture Post in September 1938 that Life changed to the modern reportage
style.
Brassai’s frank revelations of Parisian life (III. 249) in the early ’thir-
Mexico (1934) (III. 248), and Robert Capa’s dramatic pictures of the
Spanish Civil War (III. 250), firmly established reportage photography as
an art form.
Influenced by the work of Atget and Brassa’i, Bill Brandt, a pupil of Man
Ray, took up reportage photography and made an unforgettable documen-
tation ofThe English at Home (1936), illustrating the great chasm divid-
ing richand poor in housing, education and leisure. His famous picture of
an unemployed miner searching for coal (III. 251) epitomizes the grimness
of the economic depression.
Also in the mid-’thirties, but in the United States, a number of photo-
graphers recording for the Farm Security Administration the appalling
conditions in depressed areas during the economic crisis produced outstand-
ing pictures which shocked America by their starkness, for they were the
commentary of socially conscious observers on the misdeeds of their time.
Walker Evans’s photographs (III. 253), as one writer said, ‘put the physiog-
nomy of the nation on your table’. The ramshackle dreariness revealed in
his photographs and those of his colleagues Dorothea Lange (III. 254),
250 ROBERT CAPA. DEATH OF A REPUBLICAN SOLDIER, SPANISH CIVIL WAR, 1936
251 BILL BRANDT. COAL-SEARCHER AT EAST DURHAM, 1936
White’s book You Have Seen Their Faces (1937) contains haunting pictures
that go far beyond the mere documentation of conditions in the Southern
States, and especially of negro chain-gangs. Photography had become a
powerful weapon in awakening the social conscience, as Jacob Riis first came
to realize. What Gustave Dore accomplished in his dramatic pen drawings of
London slums in the 1870s can today be achieved with even greater force-
fulness by a photographer equal in his powers of expression to Dore.
A photographer of sensitivity cannot record poor social conditions ob-
jectively; the deeper his compassion goes, the greater will be the impact of
his pictures. It is probably true that most great reportage photographers
257
252 ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN. HOME OF POSTMASTER BROWN, OLD RAG, VIRGINIA, 1935
grapher in the world (III. 255). Capa photographed five wars in eighteen
years, and finally paid with his life for his courage.
Cornell Capa has like his elder brother made human interest his main
theme, but in more peaceful surroundings (III. 256).
Warsaw-born David Seymour, a founder-member with Cartier-Bresson
and Robert Capa of the Magnum Group in 1947, was killed in action while
covering the invasion of Egypt during the Suez crisis. He made picture-
stories in many countries (111.257), and is particularly remembered for
his compassionate photographs of children.
Mario de Biasi caught the violence of the avenging crowds surging through
Budapest as no other photographer of the Hungarian revolution did.
257 DAVID SEYMOUR. SPANISH CIVIL WAR. AIR RAID ON BARCELONA, 1936
LI
Thousands of pictures taken at the end of the war by the allied armies
liberating Nazi extermination camps (III. 258) will remain for ever a
reminder of the unspeakable brutality and flagrant violation of human
rights committed by the criminals of the Thousand Year Reich.
Werner Bischof’s reportages on refugees, war-scarred districts of France,
Holland and Germany, and famine in India (III. 260) leave no doubt that
he was sick at heart at what he had to report. Some of his finest work is
contained in his books Japan (1954) (III. 259) and Unterwegs (1957).
Suppression of Bert Hardy’s reportage on an incident in the Korean War
led to Tom Hopkinson’s resignation as editor of Picture Post: the indictment
of the South Korean Government, an ally of the Western Powers, that
allowed totalitarian behaviour within its own ranks, was inconveniently
outspoken. A dramatic series of action pictures involving American troops
in Korea was taken by Life photographer David Douglas Duncan.
Eugene Smith’s wonderful picture-story ‘The Spanish Village’ (1950) ex-
plores the eternal themes of life and death in a poor community whose life
265
265 WERNER BISCHOF. BOLIVIAN BOY, 1954
It however not only wars and bad social conditions but the whole of
is
life which modern photography depicts more convincingly than any other
266
involved. Such pictures are Elliott Erwhitt’s intimate family scene (III. 267)
and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s classic ‘Sunday on the Banks of the Marne’
(III. 269), which perfectly conveys the atmosphere of a typical French
working-class family’s ideal Sunday outing. This is only one of the many
fine pictures in his first book Images a la Sauvette (1952). Kurt Hutton’s
‘Scenic Railway’ (III. 268) evokes all the fun of the fair, although the scene
was carefully rehearsed, which rather invalidates it as reportage.
The Dutchman Ed van der Elsken became internationally known with
his book Love on the Left Bank (1956) -the rather sordid story of a young
girl, who eventually returned home to Canada pregnant. More cheerful and
equally good are Leonard McCombe’s You are My Love and de Carava’s
The Sweet Flypaper of Life that appeared soon afterwards.
268
268 KURT HUTTON. SCENIC
RAILWAY AT THE FAIR, 1938
272
The fact that a great photographer will produce fine pictures even if he
has to work in an unfamiliar was shown during World War II by the
field
276
press photographs which Gernsheim retrieved from neglected picture files.
A classic news one of the most striking ever taken, shows
picture, indeed
the explosion of the giant airship ‘Hindenburg’ on landing at Lakehurst,
New Jersey, in 1937 (111.275). A more recent example that caused world-
wide protest and made Sharpeville, like Lidice, a byword for mass murder,
shows the ground strewn with Africans after the police fired on and killed
fifty them (III. 277). Photographers covering such events require great
of
presence of mind and courage.
over the world, obviously only a small proportion can be discussed within
the limits of this book.
COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY "S
2
§8*
During 1948-51 Man applied the principles of black and white photo-
journalism, without additional artificial light sources, to colour film, which
then had only about one-quarter of today’s speed. He made for Picture
Post the first important indoor colour reportage -a canonization in St Peter’s,
by available light (1950). The following year he produced for Life the first
colour reportage at night -the Festival of Britain (III. 247) -and the first
book Eight European Artists (1954) (III. 244). The documentary value of
such reportages is greatly increased by the inclusion of the artist’s canvases
or sculpture.
Improved colour film and greater speed have now solved all practical
difficulties in taking colour photographs. The main obstacle to the wider
application of colour in the illustration of books and magazines remains
today the prohibitive cost of printing. The re-creation of the colour photo-
grapher’s achievement in print makes very high demands on the skill of the
blockmaker and printer, who canmake or mar the picture. The chief diffi-
culty is that the opaque pigments of the printing ink do not correspond very
closely with the translucent dyes used in the colour transparency. For this
reason a certain amount of colour-masking and hand correction is necessary
to compensate for the shortcomings of the printing colours. This accounts
for the high cost of colour printing, and, in turn, for the comparative rarity
of books illustrated entirely or largely with colour photographs. Up to now,
the finest colour printing comes from the presses of a few Swiss printing
firms.
283
283 IDA KAR. FISH, 1963
285
287
has the largest number of glossy magazines in the world. The high circula-
tion of the leading ones enables them to offer fees and opportunities that
attract the cream of European photographers. There now remains only one
weekly magazine in Europe of high photographic quality -Paris Match ,
founded in March 1949. With few exceptions, the others endeavour to excite
their public with sensational pictures rather than satisfy them with creative
ones. People of discernment with a taste for good photography may find
certain monthly magazines like Du (Zurich), Realites (Paris) and Magnum
(Cologne) more appealing. But the best of contemporary European photo-
graphy is now to be found in books rather than magazines, and a library
of photo-books, despised only by philistines, is as vital to visually-sensitive
289
Select Bibliography
General Works
baier, Wolfgang: Quellendarstel- without much consideration of the
lungen zur Geschichte der Fotogra- purpose for which they were devis-
fie. Halle & London, 1964. 703 pp. ed — the production of pictures.
inch 313 illus. freund, Giselle: La photographie
boni, Albert (ed.): Photographic en France au dix-neuvieme siecle:
Literature: an International Biblio- Essai de sociologie et d’esthetique.
graphical Guide to General and Paris, 1936. 154 pp. Illus.
Specialized Literature . New York, gernseieim, Helmut: Masterpieces of
1962. 333 pp. Victorian Photography. London,
doty, Robert: Photo-Secession: Pho- 1951. 107 pp. inch 72 pi.
tography as a Fine Art. Rochester, gernsheim, Helmut: Creative Pho-
N.Y., 1960. 104 pp. inch 32 pi. tography: 1839-1960. London &
eder, J. M.: Geschichte der Photo- Boston, U.S.A., 1962. 258 pp. inch
graphie. 4th edition, 2 vols. Halle, 244 illus.
1932. 1108 pp. Illus. gernsheim, Helmut and Alison: The
English translation by Edward Ep- History of Photography from the
stean, New York, 1945. 860 pp. Earliest Use of the Camera Obscura
For readers who know German the in the Eleventh Century up to 1914.
well-illustrated German edition is London 8c New York, 1955. 395
infinitely preferable to the transla- pp. plus 359 illus.
tion, which has no illustrations. As gernsheim, Helmut and Alison:
Eder was a chemist, his History is Historic Events: 1839-1939. London,
largely taken up with the descrip- 1960. 254 pp. 260 illus. Published
tions of inventions and processes, in New York, 1960 under the title
291
The Recording Eye. A Hundred ward Epstean. New York, 1936.
Years of Great Events as Seen by 272 pp.
the Camera: 1839-1939. The translation, which was limited
gruber, L. Fritz: Grdjle Photogra- to 300 copies, lacks the illustrations
phen unseres Jahrhunderts. Darm- of the original. Potonniee’s History
stadt, 1964, 208 pp. Illus. deals with the period up to 1851,
kempe, Fritz: Fetisch des Jahrhun- and exclusively from the French
derts. Diisseldorf 8c Vienna, 1964. point of view.
380 pp. plus 64 plate pages. potonniee, Georges: Cent ans de
lecuyer, Raymond: Histoire de la photographie 1839-1939. Paris,
Photographie. Paris, 1945. 452 pp. 1940, 178 pp.
incl. approx. 500 illus. skopec, Rudolf: Photographie im
morosov, Sergej: The Art of Seeing Wandel der Zeiten. Prague, n. d.
(in Russian). Moscow, 1963. 272 pp. (1964). 317 pp. incl. numerous illus.
numerous illus. stenger, Erich: Siegeszug der Pho-
newhall, Beaumont: The History tographie in Kultur, Wissenschaft ,
of Photography from 1839 to the Technik. Seebruck, 1950. 278 pp.
Present Day. New York, 1964. 256 Illus.
292
A -.
293
sure: an Autobiography. New York, Salomon, dr erich: deriihmte Zeit-
341 pp. Illus.
n. d. (1940). genossen in unhewachten Augen-
martin, paul: Victorian Snapshots. blicken. Stuttgart, 1931. 48 pp. plus
London, 1939. 72 pp. plus 79 pi. 112 illus.
nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon): steichen, edward: A Life in Pho-
Quand j’etais photographe. Paris, tography. New York & London,
n. d. (1899). 312 pp. 1963. 249 pp. Illus.
nadar: Nadar by Rudolf skopec. stieglitz, Alfred: America and Al-
Prague, 1960. 64 pp. Illus. fred Stieglitz: a Collective Portrait.
negre, Charles: Charles Negre by (A symposium). New York, 1934.
Andre jammes. Paris, 1963. Illus. 339 pp. plus 32 pi.
penn, irving: Moments Preserved. strand, paul: Paul Strand, Photo-
Lucerne, London & New York, graphs 1915-1945 by Nancy new-
1960. 151 pp. incl. numerous illus. hall. New York, 1945. 32 pp. incl.
ray, man: Man Ray: Photographs 23 pi.
1920-1934. Hertford, U.S.A., 1934. strand, paul: Paul Strand by
10 pp. plus 104 plates. vrba. Prague, 1961. 64 pp. Illus.
ray, man: Self Portrait. New York, weston, edward: Edward Weston
Paris & London, 1963. 398 pp. by Nancy newhall. New York,
Illus. 1946. 36 pp. incl. 23 pi.
ray, man: Man Ray by L. Fritz The Day-books of Edward Weston
Gruber and man ray. Giitersloh, edited by Nancy newhall. Part I,
1962. Illus. Rochester, N.Y., 1962.
Acknowledgements
The major portion (213) of the illustrations in this book are from the
Gernsheim Collection at the University of Texas. The authors and pub-
lishers wish to express their gratitude to the Chancellor of the University
for permission to publish them. They also thank the contemporary photo-
graphers as well as museums and institutions for permission to reproduce
some of the illustrations.
294
Gernsheim Collection, University of Texas: 2-6, 8-15, 18-23, 25-41,
44-48, 50, 52-56, 58-67, 69, 70, 72, 74-80, 83-127, 129-140, 142-149,
151-157, 160, 161, 163-174, 176-179, 182-194, 197-201, 203-205, 209,
212, 214-217, 219-224, 227-229, 231, 234-236, 238, 239, 242-244, 248,
249, 251, 259, 260, 262, 263, 268, 269, 272
Gr aphis: 175
Hans Hammarskiold: 159
Imperial War Museum, London: 258
Andre Jammes: 71
Keystone: 277
Library of Congress: 81, 252-254
Life: 261
Magnum Photos, The John Hillelson Agency: 180, 250, 255-257,
265-267, 274, 279-281, 284
Museum fur Hamburgische Geschichte: 57
Paul Popper Ltd: 82
Radio Times Hulton Picture Library: 264, 271
Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain: 141, 150, 158
Mrs Saul: 241
Science Museum, London: 24, 49
Societe Fran£aise de Photographic: 51, 68
Stenger Collection: 73
The late Prof. Robert Taft: 43
United Press International: 275
Victoria and Albert Museum, London: 7
Warburg Institute, University of London: 203
Harold White: 17, 59
295
List of Illustrations
296
>
roux and Daguerre’s signature, 40 Sheet of ‘postage stamp’ photo-
1839 graphs with portrait of George
25 Complete daguerreotype outfit Washington Wilson, 1888
26 Wolcott’s mirror camera, 1840 Withdrawn for lese-majeste
27 ‘The photographer deprives the 41 Ermanox camera with Ernostar
artist of his livelihood’. Cari- lens F 2, 1924
297
V
298
81 Timothy H. O’Sullivan. The 100 Nadar. George Sand, 1866
Canyon de Chelle, 1873 101 Honore Daumier. ‘Nadar rais-
82 Herbert Ponting. The ‘Terra ing photography to the height
Nova’ in the Antarctic, 1912 of Art’. Lithograph 1862
83 Robert MacPherson. Garden of 102 Julia Margaret Cameron. Sir
the Villa d’Este, Tivoli, c. 1857 John Herschel, 1867
84 Henry White. Bramble and ivy, 103 Julia Margaret Cameron.
1857 Charles Darwin, 1869
85 Gustave Le Gray. ‘Brig upon 104 Robert Howlett. Isambard
the water’, 1856 Kingdom Brunei, 1857
86 James Mudd. Dam-burst at 105 Paul Nadar. F. T. Nadar inter-
Sheffield, 1864 views the centenarian M. E.
87 P. H. Delamotte. Opening cere- Chevreul, August 1886
mony by Queen Victoria of 106 Melandri. Sarah Bernhardt in
the rebuilt Crystal Palace, Sy- her studio, 1876
denham, 10 June 1854 107 Elliot & Fry. Sir Joseph Wilson
88 P. H. Delamotte. Upper gal- Swan, 1904
lery of the Crystal Palace, Sy- 108 Self-portrait of Dr G. B. Du-
denham, 1854 chenne using his electrization
89 Robert MacPherson. Relief on apparatus, 1862
Arch of Titus, Rome, c. 1857 109 Maull & Polyblank. Rober Ste-
90 James Anderson. Base of Tra- phenson, 1856
jan Column, Rome, c. 1860 110 Thomas Annan. Dr David
91 Carlo Ponti. Piazza San Marco, Livingstone, 1864
Venice, c. 1862 111 Eugene Dutilleux. Camille
92 Edouard Baldus. The Pont du Corot at Arras, 1871
Gard near Nimes, c. 1855 112 Paul Sescau. Double portrait
93 Henry Dixon. The office of of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,
the ‘Daily News’, founded by c. 1892
299
119 James Robertson. Crimean 134 G. W. Wilson. Greenwich Pier,
War, interior of the Redan 1857
after withdrawal of the Rus- 135 Charles A. Wilson. Oxford
sians, September 1855 Street, London, 1887
120 Timothy H. O’Sullivan. ‘The 136 Eadweard Muybridge. Gallop-
Harvest of Death’. The battle- ing horse, 1883-85
field of Gettysburg, July 1863 137 Prof. E. J. Marey. Flying duck,
121 Franco-Prussian War, German c.1884 (reproduction)
troop train blown up by the 138 Prof. E. J. Marey. Jumping
French near Mezieres, August man, c. 1884 (reproduction)
1870 139 Prof. Hubert Schardin. Bullet
122 Paris Commune insurrection, passing through candle flames,
the fallen Vendome Column, and the sound waves caused
16 May 1871. The bearded by it. c. 1950
man in second row is Gustave 140 Harold E. Edgerton. Multiple-
Courbet flash photograph of the golfer
123 Copying pigeon post dispatches Dennis Shute, c. 1935. 100
during the Siege of Paris, flashes per second
1870-71 141 O. G. Rejlander. ‘The Two
124 Reinhold Thiele. Boer War, fir- Ways of Life’, 1857
ing ‘Joe Chamberlain’ at Mag- 142 H. P. Robinson. Study for a
ersfontein, 1899 composition picture, c. 1860
125 John Thomson. ‘Ha’penny Ices’, 143 H. P. Robinson.' ‘Dawn and
Italian ice cream seller in Lon- Sunset’, 1885 (detail)
don, 1876 144 J. Bridson. Picnic, c. 1882
126 John Thomson. Junkshop in 145 International Exhibition, Paris,
London, 1876 1889. Eiffel Tower and Troca-
127 Jacob Riis. ‘Bandits’ Roost’, dero
New York slum, 1888 146 Oscar van Zel. Skating in
128 Lewis W. Hine. Carolina cot- Vienna, c. 1887
ton mill, 1908 147 P. H. Emerson. Gathering
129 Sir Benjamin Stone. Ox-roast- water-lilies, 1885
ing at Stratford-on-Avon ‘Mop’, 148 B. Gay Wilkinson. Sand dunes.
c. 1898 Original photogravure, c. 1890
130 Nahum Luboshez. Famine in 149 Lyddell Sawyer. The Castle
Russia, 1910 Garth, Newcastle. Original
131 Paul Martin. Street accident in photogravure, 1888
London, 1895 150 George Davison. ‘The Onion
132 Paul Martin. Piccadilly Circus Field’, 1890 (reproduction)
at night, 1895 151 Lacroix. Park-sweeper. Photo-
133 Eugene Atget. Basket and gravure of a gum print, c. 1900
broom shop in Paris, c. 1910 152 Robert Demachy. ‘Behind the
300
Scenes’. Photogravure of a gum to Helmut Gernsheim, giving
print, 1904 his reason for taking up photo-
c
153 Frau E. Nothmann. In the graphy, 1949
Garden’. Photogravure of 169 Richard Polak. Photograph in
a gum print, c. 1897 the style of Pieter de Hoogh,
154 Heinrich Kuhn. Venice. Gum 1914 (reproduction)
1897 (reproduction)
print, 170 Alfred Stieglitz. The Steerage.
155 Hans Watzek. A peasant. Photogravure, 1907
Photogravure of a gum print, 171 Alvin Langdon Coburn. ‘The
1894 Octopus’, New York. Photo-
156 Theodor and Oskar Hofmeister: gravure, 1912
Great-grandmother, Cuxhafen, 172 Edward VII and Queen Alex-
August 1897. Photogravure of andra, 28 June 1904
a gum print 173 Paul Strand. Shadow pattern,
157 Hugo Erfurth. Lady with hat. New York. Photogravure, 1915
Negative print, 1907 174 Paul Strand. The White Fence.
158 Alexander Keighley. The Bridge. Photogravure, 1915
Photogravure of a bromoil print, 175 Arno Hammacher. Torn paper
1906 on wood, designed by Walter
159 Edward Steichen. Auguste Herdeg as cover of ‘Graphis
Rodin with his sculpture of Annual 6L62’
Victor Hugo and ‘The Thinker’. 176 Alvin Langdon Coburn.
Gum print, 1902 ‘Vortograph’, 1917
160 Title-page of exhibition cata- 177 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Photo-
logue, Hamburger Kunsthalle, gram, 1922
1899 178 Early X-ray photograph,
161 J. Craig Annan. The painter
c. 1896-97
and etcher Sir William Strang.
179 Advertisement of X-ray ex-
Photogravure, c. 1900
hibition, London, 1896
162 Frederick H. Evans. Aubrey
180 Ernst Haas. Poster, 1959
Beardsley. Platinum print,
181 Photomicrograph from ‘Form
c. 1895
in Art and Nature’ by Georg
163 Maurice Bucquet. ‘Effet de
Schmidt and Robert Schenk,
Pluie’. Paris, c. 1899
Basle, 1960
164 Alvin Langdon Coburn. Reflec-
182 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. View
tions. Photogravure, 1908
165 Clarence White. Lady in black. from radio tower, Berlin, 1928
Photogravure, c. 1907 183 Man Ray. Solarized portrait,
301
N
186 Winifred Casson. Surrealist from monument in West-
photograph, c. 1935 minster Abbey, 1942
187 Angus McBean. Surrealist com- 206 Andreas Feininger. Oil derricks,
position including self-portrait, Signal Hill, California
1949 207 Peter Cornelius. Canal
188 Winifred Casson. ‘Accident’, St-Martin, Paris 1958
c. 1935 208 Yousuf Karsh. Sir Winston
189 Andre Kertesz. Distortion Churchill, 1941
study, 1934 (reproduction) 209 Ida Kar. William Scott, 1961
190 Clarence J. Laughlin. ‘Elegy 210 Eliot Elisofon. Louis Armstrong
for Moss Land’, 1947 211 Andreas Feininger. Caterpillar
191 Albert Renger-Patzsch. Driv- of spicebush swallowtail,
ing-shaft of a locomotive, 1923 c. 1960
192 Eugene Atget. Tree roots at 212 Brian Seed. Patrick Heron,
St. Cloud, c. 1910 1959
193 Helmar Lerski. Metal-worker, 213 Philippe Halsman. Professor
1930 Albert Einstein, 1948
194 Edward Steichen. Paul Robeson 214 Richard Avedon. Igor Stra-
as The Emperor Jones, 1933 vinsky, 1958
195 Albert Renger-Patzsch. Tower 215 Toni Schneiders. Air-bubbles in
of the Hofkirche in Dresden, ice, 1953
302
226 Raymond Moore. Decayed 243 Felix H. Man. Igor Stravinsky
ceiling, 1964 conducting at a rehearsal, 1929
227 Clarence J. Laughlin. Window, 244 Felix H. Man. Marc Chagall
1963 at Vence, 1950
228 Hans Hammarskiold. Bark of 245 Alfred Eisenstaedt. Ethiopian
a tree, 1952 soldier, 1935
229 Brett Weston. Cracked paint, 246 Felix H. Man. The Thames at
1954 Chelsea, 1949
230 Heinz Hajek-Halke. Light 247 Felix H. Man. The Festival of
patterns, 1960 Britain, 1951
231 Sir George F. Pollock. Vitro- 248 Henri Cartier-Bresson. Mexi-
graph, 1964 can prostitute, 1934
232 Aaron Sisskind. Wall pattern, 249 Brassa’i. Tramp sleeping in the
1960 street, Paris, 1937
233 Harry Callahan. Eleanor, 1948 250 Robert Capa. Death of a Re-
234 Bill Brandt. Nude, 1958 publican soldier, Spanish Civil
235 Prof. Hubert Schardin. Temper- War, 1936
ature around
distribution a 251 Bill Brandt. Coal-searcher at
heated metal tube, c. 1950 East Durham, 1936
236 Norman Tudgay. ‘Cliche- 252 Arthur Rothstein. Home of
verre’, 1955 Postmaster Brown, Old Rag,
237 Gyorgy Kepes. Light-drawing, Virginia, October 1935
1950 253 Walker Evans. At Vicksburg,
238 French machine gun detachment Pennsylvania, 1936
under fire at Helly during 254 Dorothea Lange. Seasonal farm
World War I, 1918 labourer’s family, 1935-36
239 The revolt of the masses. ‘Red 255 Robert Capa. Allied landing on
Thursday’ demonstration in Normandy beaches, 6 June 1944
Paris, 1925 256 Cornell Capa. Talmudic teach-
240 James Jarche. At the Serpen- er, Israel, 1955
303
263 George Oddner. Spain, 1952 275 Sam Shere. The ‘Hindenburg’
264 Bert Hardy. ‘Le raconteur’, disaster at Lakehurst, New Jer-
1948 sey, 6 May 1937
265 Werner Bischof. Bolivian boy, 276 Andreas Feininger. Jupiter
1954 rocket and the moon, c. 1960
266 Brian Brake. Monsoon, 1962 277 Massacre of Africans at
267 Elliott Erwhitt. Family scene, Sharpeville, 1960
1953 278 Heinz Hajek-Halke. Nude,
268 Kurt Hutton. Scenic Railway
1959
at the fair, 1938
279 Hiroshi Hamaya. Autumn
269 Henri Cartier-Bresson. Sunday
trees, c. 1960
on the Banks of the Marne,
280 Ernst Haas. Moss, 1959
1938
281 George Rodger. Initiation cere
270 Erwin Fieger. Oxford Street,
mony, Africa, 1956
London, in rain, 1959
282 Arno Hammacher. Reeds in
271 Bert Hardy. The colour prob-
the Camargue, 1963
lem in Liverpool, 1949
272 Cecil Beaton. Remains of a tank 283 Ida Kar. Fish, 1963
in the Libyan Desert, 1942 284 Bruce Davidson.
273 Walter Boje. ‘The Tides’, ballet London life,
304
,
Index of Names
The numbers in italics refer to the plates, When known, dates have been given of
persons connected with photography.
Abbot, Berenice (b. 1898) 213 Atget, Eugene (1857-1927) 152, 190, 204,
Abbruzzi, Duke of 104 256. 133, 192
Academie des Beaux-Arts, Paris 22 ‘The Athenaeum’ 66
Academie des Sciences, Paris 22, 28, 74 Auerbach, Erich (b. 1911) 224
Adams, Ansel (b. 1902) 213, 214. 201 Avedon, Richard (b. 1923) 226. 214
202
Adam-Salomon, Antoine (1811-1881) Babbitt, Platt D. 61. 44
121. 98 Bacon, Roger 10
Adamson, Robert (1821-1847) 82, 84, 85, Baldus, Edouard (b. 1820) 92, 114, 115.
87. 62,63,64 92
Aguado, Comte Olympe 116 Bandi, H. 252
Albert, Prince Consort 117, 161, 162 Bandi, Ina 252
Albert, Josef (1825-1886) 133 Bankes, Thomas 97
Alexandra, Queen 172 Barbaro, Daniello 12
Alhazen 10 Bardi, Luigi 113
Alinari, Giuseppe (1836-1890) 113 Barnack, Oskar (1879-1936) 50
Alinari, Leopoldo 113 Barnett, E. Walter (1862-1934) 133
Amboise, Cardinal d* 19,21. 9 Barraud, Herbert 133
American Society of Magazine Photo- Barrett, Arthur 246. 241
graphers 278 Barrett, Elizabeth (Browning) 64
Anderson, James (1813-1877) 112. 90 Barry, Sir Charles 66
Andriesse, Emmy 279 Barton, Mrs. 188
Angerer, Ludwig (1827-1879) 118 Baudelaire, Charles 121. 99
Anglonnes, Prince Giron des 93 Bauer, Franz Andreas (Francis) 21
Annan, James Craig (1864-1946) 172, Bauhaus 194, 195, 204, 209, 227
182. 161 Bauhaus, New (Illinois Institute of
Annan, Thomas (1829-1887) 115, 133. Design) 241, 242
94, 110 Bayard, Hippolyte (1801-1887) 27, 28,
Anschutz, Ottomar (1846-1907) 157, 158 74,90,93, 108. 68
Anthony, Edward (1818-1888) 60, 154 Bayer, Herbert (b. 1900) 209
Arago, Franfois Jean Dominique Beard, Richard 62, 64, 66, 74, 146
(1786-1853) 22,26,28,69. 14 Beardsley, Aubrey 133. 162
Archer, Frederick Scott (1813-1857) Beato, A. 142
32, 33, 96 Beaton, Cecil (b. 1904) 198, 226, 273,
Armstrong, Louis 210 276,287. 1,184,272
‘The Art Union* 82 Beck, R. & J. 48
305
,
306
Chevreul, Michel-Eugene 129. 105 Edouard 116
Delessert,
Chilton, James 59 Demachy, Robert (d. 1937) 174. 152
Chisholm, Alexander 17 ‘Dephot’ 250, 252
Churchill, Sir Winston 221. 208 Derussy 75
Cini, Count Vittorio 113 Dietrich, Marlene 226
Civiale, Aime (1821-1893) 101 Disderi, Andre Adolphe (1819-c. 1890)
Claudet, Antoine Francis Jean ( 1 797— 46,116,117,118,143. 31,36
1867) 66,74,82,98. 17,48,55 Dixon, Henry 115. 93
Clerk-Maxwell, Sir James (1831-1879) Dodero, Louis 116
52, 53 Doisneau, Robert 278
Clifford, Charles (d. 1863) 94, 107. 73 Donne, Alfred (1801-1878) 71
Coburn, Alvin Langdon 1882)
(b. 182, Dore, Gustave 257
189, 190, 192. 164, 171, 176 Dorffel, Theodor 75
Collen, Henry 53, 56, 79, 81 Downey, W. & D. 133
Constant, Eugene 93 Draper, John William (1811-1882) 59,
Cornelius, Peter 287. 207 60,198. 43
Corot, Camille 133. Ill Dresden Albuminpapier Fabrik 34
Coster, Howard(1885-1959) 211. 199 ‘Du’ 289
Courbet, Gustave 169. 122 Duboscq, Louis Jules (1817-1886) 43
Creative Photo Group 279 Du Camp, Maxime (1822-1894) 91,94,
Cros, Charles (1842-1888) 54 99
Cunningham, Imogen (b. 1883) 213,214 Duchenne, Guillaume Benjamin Amant
(1806-1875) 131. 108
Dada 192, 194 Ducos du Hauron, Louis (1837-1920)
Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mande (1787- 53,54. 42
1851) 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, Diihrkoop, Rudolph (1848-1918) 178
36, 59, 62, 66, 69, 71, 96. 11, 16, 24, Duncan, David Douglas 225, 263
51, 52 Durheim, Carl 94
‘The Daguerreian Journal’ 61 Dutilleux, Eugene 133. Ill
‘The Daily Graphic’ 145 Dyke, Willard van 214
‘The Daily Mirror’ 244
‘Die Dame’ 250 Eakins, Thomas (1844-1916) 157
Dancer, John Benjamin (1812-1887) 43. Eastlake, Sir Charles (1793-1865) 162
33 Eastman, George (1854-1932) 48, 49
Danti, Egnatio (1536-1586) 12 Echagiie, Jose Ortiz 178
Darwin, Charles 124. 103 Edgerton, Harold E. (b. 1903) 158. 140
Daumier, Honore 121,124. 50,53,101 Edward VII, King 99, 245. 172
Davidson, Bruce 284 Edwards, J. M. 60
Davison, George (1856-1930) 169, 171, Egerton, Philip H. 102
172. 150 Einstein, Albert 221, 225. 213
Davy, Sir Humphry (1778-1829) 17 Eisenstaedt, Alfred (b. 1898) 250, 253.
Day, F. Holland 188 245
Deckel, Friedrich 52 Eisenstein, Serjei M. 206
Degas, Edgar 167, 174 Elisofon, Eliot 287. 285
Delacroix, Eugene 92, 121 Elliot & Fry 107
Delamotte, Philip Henry (1820-1889) Ellis, Alexander John (1814-1890) 68.
87, 107, 111. 87,88 49
Delaroche, Paul 23, 93, 114, 163, 187 Elsken, Ed van der (b. 1925) 268, 287
307
•s
308
‘Hamburger Illustrierte Zeitung’ 250 Howie 68
Hammacher, Arno (b. 1927) 279, 289. Howlett, Robert (d. 1858) 128. 104
175 , 282 Hubmann, Hans 278
Hammarskiold, Caroline (b. 1930) 233. Hughes, Alice 133
222 Hugo, Charles Victor (1826-1871) 139
Hammarskiold, Hans (b. 1925) 233, 235. Hugo, Victor 121, 139. 159
224 228
,
Hunt, Martita 287. 1
Hanfstaengl, Franz (1804-1877) 94 Hurley, Frank (c. 1885-1962) 104
Hansen, Georg 118 Hiirlimann, Martin 209
Hardy, Bert (b. 1913) 263, 266, 272. Hutton, Kurt (formerly Hiibschmann)
264 271
,
(1893-1960) 250,252,268. 268
‘Harper’s Bazaar’ 226
Hartlaub, Gustav 204 ‘The Illustrated Daily News’ 238
Hasselblad, Victor 51 ‘The Illustrated London News’ 76, 197
Hauer, Hans 12 ‘Illustration’ 250
Haussmann, Georges Eugene 114 Impressionists 124, 171
Hawarden, Viscountess (1822-1865) Ingres, Jean Dominique 93
137, 139. 115 International Society of Pictorial
Hawes, Josiah John 1901) 60
(d. Photographers 172
Hege, Walter (1893-1955) 209. 196 Irving, Sir Henry 133
Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdi- Isabella II, Queen 94
nand von 52 Isabey, Eugene 154
Henneman, Nicolaas (b. 1813) 80, 82 Isabey, Jean Baptiste 76
Herdeg, Walter 175 Isenring, Johann Baptist (1796-1860)
Heron, Patrick 224. 212 79, 94
Herschel, Sir John Frederick William Ives, Frederick Eugene (1856-1937) 55
(1792-1871) 26,27,31,45, 124. 102 ‘Izis’, see Bidermanas
Herzog 56
Hielscher, Kurt (1881-1948) 209 Jackson, William Henry (1843-1942)
Hill, David Octavius (1802-1870) 82, 104
84, 85, 87, 88, 164. 62 63,64
,
Jarche, James 240
Hiller, Lejaren a 188 Johnson, John 59, 60
Hine, Lewis Wickes (1874-1940) 149, Joly, Charles Jasper (1864-1906) 54
190. 128 ‘Le Journal Illustre’ 129
Hinton, Alfred Horsley (1863-1908) 178
Hitler,Adolf 227 Kalisher, Simpson (b. 1926) 272
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 246 Kandinsky, Wassily 195, 227
Hofmeister, Oskar (1871-1937) 178. 156 Kar, Ida (b. 1908) 224, 289. 209 , 283
Hofmeister, Theodor (1868-1943) 178. Karsh, Yousuf (b. 1908) 221. 208
156 Kasebier, Gertrude (1852-1934) 182
Hollyer, Frederick H. (1837-1933) 133, Keetman, Peter (b. 1916) 227,229. 216 ,
182 217
Hoogh, Pieter de 186, 187. 169 Keighley, Alexander (1861-1947) 178.
Hopker, Thomas 279 158
Hopkinson, Tom 263 Keith, George S. 88
Hoppe, Emil Otto (b. 1878) 133,209. Keith, Thomas (1827-1895) 87,88. 66
197 Kennedy, President John F. 244
Horgan, Stephen H. 146,244 Kennett, Richard (1817-1896) 35
Kepes, Gyorgy 242. 237 Lewitzky, Serjej L. (1819-1898) 118
Kepler, Johann (1571-1630) 13. 3 Lichtwark, Alfred (1852-1914) 180
Kertesz, Andre (b. 1894) 202. 189 ‘Life’ 253, 263, 283
Kibble, John 42 Linked Ring 172
Kilburn, William Edward 68 Lippmann, Gabriel (1845-1921) 55
Kircher, Athanasius (1601-1680) 13. 4 ‘The Literary Gazette’ 62
Klee, Paul 195, 227 Livingstone, David 133. 110
Klein, William 1925) 272
(b. Locherer, Alois (1815-1862) 94. 74
‘The Knickerbocker* 59 ‘The London &
Edinburgh Philosophical
Kobell, Franz von (1803-1875) 28 Magazine’ 60
Kollwitz, Kathe 198 London Salon 172, 217
‘Kolnische Illustrierte Zeitung’ 250 London Stereoscopic Company 99
‘Die Koralle’ 250 Lorant, Stefan 250, 252
Kratochwila, Franz 77, 79 Lorent, August Jacob (1813-1884) 94
Krone, Hermann (1827-1916) 111 Luboshez, Nahum (1869-1925) 150. 130
Kuhn, Heinrich (1866-1944) 174. 134 Ludwig II, King 133
Lullin, Theodor 158
Lacroix 131 Lumiere, Auguste (1862-1954) 55
Land, Edwin H. 52 Lumiere, Louis (1864-1948) 55
Lange, Dorothea (b. 1895) 256. 234 ‘La Lumiere’ 72
Langenheim, Frederick (1809-1879) 32, ‘Luminograph’ 229
60, 96
Langenheim, William (1807-1874) 32, Macaire, Hippolyte 61, 153, 154
60, 96 McBean, Augus (b. 1905) 200. 183 , 187
Laroche, Silvester 96 McCombe, Leonard 268
Lartigue, Jacques Henri (b. 1896) 168 Macglashon, A. 164
Laughlin, Clarence J. (b. 1905) 202. Mach, Ernst (1838-1916) 158
190 227
, MacPherson, Robert (1811-1872) 107,
Lawrence, M. M. 60 112. 83,89
Lawrence, Sir Thomas 62, 66 Maddox, Richard Leach (1816-1902) 34
Lazi, Adolf 209 Madler, Johann Heinrich (1794-1874) 27
Lebeck, Robert 278 Magnum Group 260, 278
Lechenperg, Harald 250 ‘Magnum’ 289
Le Gray, Gustave (1820-1862) 32, 91, Man, Felix H. (b. 1893) 51, 224, 246,
92, 108 250, 252, 283.243 244 246 247
, , ,
1870) 19 Margarite 94
Lendvai-Dircksen, Erna (1884-1962) Martens, Friedrich (1809-1875) 72
207 Martin, Adolphe Alexandre (1824-1886)
Leonardo da Vinci 10 34
Lerebours, N. P. (1807-1873) 38, 72, 74 Martin, L. A. 94
Lerski, Helmar (1871-1956) 207. 193 Martin, Paul (1864-1942) 150, 152.
Le Secq, Henri 92, 94 131, 132
Letault, Elzeard Desire 62 Marville, Charles 93, 114
Levy-Roth 50 Marx, Alfred 250
Lewis, William (1714-1781) 17 Masclet, Daniel 278
310
*
Maull & Polyblank 133. 109 Napoleon III, Emperor 101, 117, 131,
Mayall, John Jabez Edwin (1810-1901) 142
60,66, 117, 118, 161. 11,96 Nash, Paul 276
Mayall, J. P. 129 Nasmyth, James 62
Mayer &: Pierson 131 Natterer, Johann (1821-1900) 77, 153
Mayhew, Henry 146 Natterer, Joseph (1819-1862) 77, 153
Mayne, Roger 272 Nay a 113
Meade, Charles R. 60 Negre, Charles (1820-1879) 93, 139. 71
Meisenbach, Georg (1841-1912) 146 ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’, see New Objectivity
Melandri 129. 106 Newhall, Nancy 214
Melhuish, A. J. 39, 48 Newman, Cardinal 133
Mestral, O. 92 New Objectivity 107, 204, 205, 206,
Meynell, Alice 133 207, 212, 214, 217, 235, 239
Mili, Gion 229 Newton, Sir Isaac 55
Millais, Sir John Everett 124 ‘The New York Daily Graphic’ 244
Millet,Jean Frangois 169 ‘The New York Tribune’ 148
‘Miroir du Monde’ 250 Niepce, Claude (1763-1828) 17, 21
Misonne, Leonard (1870-1943) 178 Niepce, Isidore (b. 1795) 22, 62
Niepce, Joseph Nic6phore (1765-1833)
Mitford, Mary Russell 64
16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 36.
Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo (1895-1946)
9 , 10 , 12
194, 195, 197, 198, 227, 242. 177 , 182
Molard, Baron Humbert de Niepce de Saint-Victor, Abel (1805-
(d. 1 874) 93.
72 1870) 31
Montmirel, E. T. 71
Oddner, George (b. 1923) 233, 265.
Montmirel, E. 71
262 263
Moore, Raymond (b. 1920) 239, 289.
,
311
s
312
Schott, Kaspar (1608-1666) 13 Stephenson, Robert 133
Schuh, Karl (d. 1865) 77 Stevenson, Robert Louis 133
Schuh, Gotthard 279 Stiba, Julius (d. 1851) 75
Schulthess, Emil (b. 1913) 285, 287 Stieglitz, Alfred (1864-1946) 172, 182,
Schulze, Johann Heinrich (1687-1744) 188, 189, 190, 191. 166 170 ,
313
V
Turner, Benjamin Bracknell (1815— ‘Weekly Illustrated’ 252
1894) 82 ‘Weltspiegel’ 250
Turner, Joseph Mallord William 82 West, Francis 36
Twain, Mark 133 Weston, Brett 213, 214, 239. 229
Tzara, Tristan 192, 194 Weston, Edward (1886-1958) 212, 213,
214, 239. 200
314