André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, former merchant, actor, and daguerreotypist, patented his invention, the carte-de-visite (visiting card) photograph, in 1854. At nine-by-six centimeters, cartes were primarily portraits, about the size of a conventional calling card and soon just as popular. Disdéri established his photographic practice with the manufacture of these tiny photographs; he divided a single glass plate negative to make ten different exposures and then printed them simultaneously. By 1862 he had expanded his operation to include a second studio in Paris, devoted entirely to equestrian portraits. Studios in London followed, and Disdéri, ever the showman and enterprising businessman, developed numerous photographic gimmicks to keep business afloat. The carte-de-visite was popular until the late 1860s, when it was replaced by the larger cabinet card format. Disdéri photographed views of the siege of Paris in 1870 and 1871, but the changed political and social climate contributed to the demise of his studio business. Following several bankruptcies, he moved to Nice in 1877 and ran a series of photography studios there. He returned to Paris in the late 1880s and died in an institution. Friday, 30 September 2011
How they mass produced in our period
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, former merchant, actor, and daguerreotypist, patented his invention, the carte-de-visite (visiting card) photograph, in 1854. At nine-by-six centimeters, cartes were primarily portraits, about the size of a conventional calling card and soon just as popular. Disdéri established his photographic practice with the manufacture of these tiny photographs; he divided a single glass plate negative to make ten different exposures and then printed them simultaneously. By 1862 he had expanded his operation to include a second studio in Paris, devoted entirely to equestrian portraits. Studios in London followed, and Disdéri, ever the showman and enterprising businessman, developed numerous photographic gimmicks to keep business afloat. The carte-de-visite was popular until the late 1860s, when it was replaced by the larger cabinet card format. Disdéri photographed views of the siege of Paris in 1870 and 1871, but the changed political and social climate contributed to the demise of his studio business. Following several bankruptcies, he moved to Nice in 1877 and ran a series of photography studios there. He returned to Paris in the late 1880s and died in an institution. 
how they reproduced photos for publishing in our period
The term Woodburytype refers to both a photomechanical process and the print produced by this process. The process produces continuous tone images in slight relief. A chromated gelatin film is exposed under a photographic negative, which hardens in proportion to the amount of light. Then it is developed in hot water to remove all the unexposed gelatin and dried. This relief is pressed into a sheet of lead in a press with 5000 psi. This is an intaglio plate. It is used as a mold and is filled with pigmented gelatin. The gelatin layer is then pressed onto a paper support.
The Woodburytype was developed by Walter B. Woodbury in 1864, first used in a publication in 1866 and widely used for fine book illustration from about 1870 to 1900.[1] It was the only commercially successful method for producing illustration material capable of replicating the subtleties and details of a photograph. It is the only mechanical printing method ever invented which produces true middle values and does not make use of a screen or other image deconstruction method.
Nāser al-Dīn Shah - Shah of Persia - Carte de Visite Woodburytype-Print from Felix Nadar Paris
The Woodburytype was developed by Walter B. Woodbury in 1864, first used in a publication in 1866 and widely used for fine book illustration from about 1870 to 1900.[1] It was the only commercially successful method for producing illustration material capable of replicating the subtleties and details of a photograph. It is the only mechanical printing method ever invented which produces true middle values and does not make use of a screen or other image deconstruction method.Thursday, 29 September 2011
Visiting card photographs popular in our period - carte de visite CDV
The carte de visite (abbreviated CdV or CDV, and also spelled carte-de-visite or erroneously referred to as carte de ville) was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris, France by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero.[1][2] It was usually made of an albumen print, which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 2⅛ × 3½ inches mounted on a card sized 2½ × 4 inches. In 1854, The format an overnight success, and the new invention was so popular it was known as "cardomania"[4] and eventually spread throughout the world.
1860s recipe for the preparation of positive paper
Hi Ladies, maybe we could prepare some Albumen paper to hand out for our class engagement exercise? I've also bid on some 1860-1880's photos on ebay to hand around, I am hoping the price doesn't go to high, (as the shipping is dear enough from England).
Here is the way the albumen paper is prepared.
Allow the filtered albumen to settle for twelve hours; it is then ready for use. Draw sufficient quantity off into a shallow glass or Porcelain dish, without disturbing the sediment. It is a good precaution to strain it through a piece sponge placed in the neck of a glass or porcelain funnel. When circumstances permit, it is best to allow the albumen to repose four or five days before use. It appears to clarify itself, and gives a more brilliant surface to the positive paper.
2. Preparation of the Paper:--The positive paper must be carefully selected, and experimented upon. before the preparation of a large quantity is undertaken. If it be unequally sized, it will give uneven proofs and unsatisfactory results. Even the cutting of the paper to the required size demands much care, and only one sheet should be cut at a time, with an ivory paper-knife, without pressure or creasing.
Mark the back of the paper, and place it, sheet by sheet, carefully on the albumen without allowing the liquid to flow on to the back of the paper. This operation is best performed in damp weather, for then the albumen takes to the paper more readily, without forming bubbles, and the paper also dries more slowly and evenly. The first sheet floated is almost always defective.
Some little dexterity is required in floating the paper on the albumen ; the description of which is difficult, and necessarily unsatisfactory.
The time which the paper should be allowed to float upon the albumen will vary with the thickness and sizing of the paper: two minutes and a half may be taken as the average. It must not be reversed until it lies flat on the surface of the liquid. When this ensues, take the sheet by the two most distant corners, which, before it was floated on the albumen, have been previously folded back, and raise it slowly and regularly, so that the albumen forms a continuous, even coating over the whole surface. If the paper be raised too quickly, the albumen will flow down the paper in streaks, and the surface will dry uneven. By taking the paper at the corners most distant from each other, and suspending it to drain and dry in that position, the risk of drying unevenly is avoided.
3. Hanging and Drying the Paper.--The manner of hanging and drying the paper is one of the most important points, to avoid unevenness. The following method has always been successful, without causing any embarrassment to the operator:--Take two pieces of stout whipcord, and wax them, to prevent any fragments falling on to the wet paper; and string on each pieces of thin cork, of about an inch or an inch-and-half square, with holes pierced in the centre, through which the cord can freely pass. The cords are fastened to two walls, parallel to each other, with three bars of wood placed at equal distances along the cords to keep them apart; the distance must be a little greater than the width of the albumenised paper. Through each piece of cork a black-varnished pin must be passed upwards in a slanting direction, which penetrates the corners of the paper without difficulty. Care must be taken that the paper hangs fully distended and even, for, if it becomes curved, the albumen will dry upon its surface unequally. and spoil the proofs taken upon it. According to the extent of the operations, so may these suspending appliances be inch plied; they have the advantage of taking tip but little room, and are easily removed when the operation is over. The albumen that drains from the paper en be collected in dishes or on sheets of waste paper spread on the floor.
SIR,--In mechanically preparing albumen for photography the thorough and complete disintegration of every particle is indispensable.
By the ordinary fork process this is generally a long and tiresome job. I long contemplated making a machine to assist in the work, and have recently constructed a rough one, which answers completely, taking six minutes only to beat the albumen up instead of twenty-five, and producing a much better article, so much so that I think it would be impossible to make it as well by the fork.
The apparatus is simple: a suitably shaped beater is rotated amongst the albumen in a basin (slowly at first, the speed being increased as the froth rises), by means of a pair of pulleys, in the proportion of about six to one, connected by a crossed band; a speed of upwards of five hundred revolutions per minute being easily attained. The standard, carrying the pulleys and beater shaft, slants at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and may be fastened to a table or board by a clamp.
When in use the large pulley is turned by the right hand, the basin containing the albumen, &c., being held in the left, so that the beater can have the proper dip, and every bit of the froth subjected to it effectually.
The enclosed print will show you the arrangement.
Here is the way the albumen paper is prepared.
THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS, June 29, 1860, p.101
ON THE PREPARATION OF POSITIVE PAPER.
BY M. ALEO.1. Preparation of the Albumen:--Break the eggs into a graduated measure, carefully avoiding the mixture of yolk with the whites, and when the desired quantity of albumen is obtained separate the germs and pour the whites into a glazed earthen vessel, and to every 100 parts add 5 parts of a soluble chloride (that of ammonium is best), first dissolving it in as little water as possible. The quantity of water must not exceed one-tenth of the albumen, if a very brilliant surface on the proofs is desired. Beat the whites into a froth, and, after allowing it to settle for five minutes, remove the froth with a fork into a hair sieve, or muslin strainer placed over a second vessel. This operation to be continued whole of the whites are beaten into a froth and strained.Allow the filtered albumen to settle for twelve hours; it is then ready for use. Draw sufficient quantity off into a shallow glass or Porcelain dish, without disturbing the sediment. It is a good precaution to strain it through a piece sponge placed in the neck of a glass or porcelain funnel. When circumstances permit, it is best to allow the albumen to repose four or five days before use. It appears to clarify itself, and gives a more brilliant surface to the positive paper.
2. Preparation of the Paper:--The positive paper must be carefully selected, and experimented upon. before the preparation of a large quantity is undertaken. If it be unequally sized, it will give uneven proofs and unsatisfactory results. Even the cutting of the paper to the required size demands much care, and only one sheet should be cut at a time, with an ivory paper-knife, without pressure or creasing.
Mark the back of the paper, and place it, sheet by sheet, carefully on the albumen without allowing the liquid to flow on to the back of the paper. This operation is best performed in damp weather, for then the albumen takes to the paper more readily, without forming bubbles, and the paper also dries more slowly and evenly. The first sheet floated is almost always defective.
Some little dexterity is required in floating the paper on the albumen ; the description of which is difficult, and necessarily unsatisfactory.
The time which the paper should be allowed to float upon the albumen will vary with the thickness and sizing of the paper: two minutes and a half may be taken as the average. It must not be reversed until it lies flat on the surface of the liquid. When this ensues, take the sheet by the two most distant corners, which, before it was floated on the albumen, have been previously folded back, and raise it slowly and regularly, so that the albumen forms a continuous, even coating over the whole surface. If the paper be raised too quickly, the albumen will flow down the paper in streaks, and the surface will dry uneven. By taking the paper at the corners most distant from each other, and suspending it to drain and dry in that position, the risk of drying unevenly is avoided.
3. Hanging and Drying the Paper.--The manner of hanging and drying the paper is one of the most important points, to avoid unevenness. The following method has always been successful, without causing any embarrassment to the operator:--Take two pieces of stout whipcord, and wax them, to prevent any fragments falling on to the wet paper; and string on each pieces of thin cork, of about an inch or an inch-and-half square, with holes pierced in the centre, through which the cord can freely pass. The cords are fastened to two walls, parallel to each other, with three bars of wood placed at equal distances along the cords to keep them apart; the distance must be a little greater than the width of the albumenised paper. Through each piece of cork a black-varnished pin must be passed upwards in a slanting direction, which penetrates the corners of the paper without difficulty. Care must be taken that the paper hangs fully distended and even, for, if it becomes curved, the albumen will dry upon its surface unequally. and spoil the proofs taken upon it. According to the extent of the operations, so may these suspending appliances be inch plied; they have the advantage of taking tip but little room, and are easily removed when the operation is over. The albumen that drains from the paper en be collected in dishes or on sheets of waste paper spread on the floor.
THE PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNAL. April 1, 1859. p.8
APPARATUS FOR FROTHING ALBUMEN.
To the EDITOR.SIR,--In mechanically preparing albumen for photography the thorough and complete disintegration of every particle is indispensable.
By the ordinary fork process this is generally a long and tiresome job. I long contemplated making a machine to assist in the work, and have recently constructed a rough one, which answers completely, taking six minutes only to beat the albumen up instead of twenty-five, and producing a much better article, so much so that I think it would be impossible to make it as well by the fork.
When in use the large pulley is turned by the right hand, the basin containing the albumen, &c., being held in the left, so that the beater can have the proper dip, and every bit of the froth subjected to it effectually.
The enclosed print will show you the arrangement.
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
double exposure ghost photos for you Elizabeth
Hi Elizabeth, in lieu of what we were discussing for your photograph yesterday, here are some double exposure ghost photographs on ebay, like the idea you had for your photo..??
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Old-Photo-Antique-Bike-Double-Exposure-Ghost-1920s-/120783495754?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item1c1f41e24a
Also this book below would be great if you get it from the library
'Ghosts Caught on Film' presents an extraordinary collection of strange and unexplained photographs that offer the exciting possibility of ghosts and paranormal activity captured on film. It covers every aspect of the paranormal, from early photographs of psychics, mediums and ghostly happenings, to celebrated recent photos and the most interesting examples of the unexplained, as collected in the archive of the Society for Psychical Research. Each picture is accompanied by a description of its circumstances and the steps taken by researchers to establish that there is no 'normal' explanation for the phenomena. The incredible photographs will stimulate the interest of everyone who sees them. Whether you are a sceptic or a believer, you can't help but be drawn into the mystery
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Old-Photo-Antique-Bike-Double-Exposure-Ghost-1920s-/120783495754?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item1c1f41e24aAlso this book below would be great if you get it from the library
'Ghosts Caught on Film' presents an extraordinary collection of strange and unexplained photographs that offer the exciting possibility of ghosts and paranormal activity captured on film. It covers every aspect of the paranormal, from early photographs of psychics, mediums and ghostly happenings, to celebrated recent photos and the most interesting examples of the unexplained, as collected in the archive of the Society for Psychical Research. Each picture is accompanied by a description of its circumstances and the steps taken by researchers to establish that there is no 'normal' explanation for the phenomena. The incredible photographs will stimulate the interest of everyone who sees them. Whether you are a sceptic or a believer, you can't help but be drawn into the mystery
ebay props
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Monday, 26 September 2011
Dallmeyer camera used by Nadar
Wet Plate Sliding Box Camera c1865 Dallmeyer J.H, London, England.
J.H. Dallmeyer, a British company, founded in 1860. Their main business was to manufacture lenses, but they also sold cameras. Some of these were manufactured by Dallmeyer themselves, some were made elsewhere, then equipped with Dallmeyer lenses and sold under that name.
Nadar invented a horizontal shutter for the camera, and concealed the camera under a black curtain
http://www.photographica.nu/dall273.htm
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Red Cloud and other Sioux indians mathew brady
Hi Girls I found this fascinating photo + glass, wet collodion process
TITLE: Red Cloud and Indians. Standing - Red Bear (Sons Are?), Young Man Afraid of his Horse, Good Voice, Ring Thunder, Iron Crow, White Tail, Young Spotted Tail. Seated - Yellow Bear, Red Cloud, Big Road, Little Wound, Black Crow
CALL NUMBER: LC-BH832- 1049
[P&P] MEDIUM: 1 negative : glass, wet collodion. CREATED/PUBLISHED: [between 1865 and 1880] NOTES: Title from unverified information on negative sleeve. Annotation from negative, scratched into emulsion: 1049, 528 [crossed out], [illegible] Indians. Brady's Camera Man pp. 222-224. Forms part of Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress). SUBJECTS: Gay Pride. FORMAT: Portrait photographs 1860-1880. Glass negatives 1860-1880. REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA DIGITAL ID: (digital file from original neg.) cwpbh 04626 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpbh.04626 CARD #: brh2003001903/PP
Thursday, 22 September 2011
wet plate collodian video
this video is in welsh.. but really shows the wet plate collodian very wellhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwRR8NBg-8U&feature=related
and this video is in english + more technical http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyf8fQOdvDs
and this video is in english + more technical http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyf8fQOdvDs
Video Grab
Hi guys do you think we should put this video grab into the presentation, it has all the right Civil War music + the cameras..
I cant comment on any of the posts for some reason (despite clearing my cookies + using another browser)
here's the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=ADJwAGuEnxo
also did you see the point re Ben wants no more than 3 points on each power point slide, followed by 2 slides with photos, intro music, video grabs, + something to engage the audience with handouts of some sort or another
Love the adjectives in your post Elizabeth!!
Got a great book on Nadar, some wonderful photos in it.. what a personality he was..
I cant comment on any of the posts for some reason (despite clearing my cookies + using another browser)
here's the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=ADJwAGuEnxo
also did you see the point re Ben wants no more than 3 points on each power point slide, followed by 2 slides with photos, intro music, video grabs, + something to engage the audience with handouts of some sort or another
Love the adjectives in your post Elizabeth!!
Got a great book on Nadar, some wonderful photos in it.. what a personality he was..
Monday, 19 September 2011
believing is seeing . . .
"The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult", Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
by Carol Armstrong
On first and second sight, "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a very weird show. I wouldn't call it fabulous--too many of the photographs in it are revolting little things--but it is fascinating. And it is puzzling on a number of fronts. How were these things made? The wall texts and catalogue do not always tell us, unless we are meant to suspend disbelief and give some credit to occult concepts like "vital fluid" and ectoplasm. The caption for one plate in the catalogue matter-of-factly claims that photographer Frederick Hudson "probably incorrectly" identified the spirit of the daughter of a seventeenth-century buccaneer. Indeed, (But who knows?)Did their makers and consumers believe in these "documents," even when they were in on the artifices involved in their production, even when they were intelligent, modern people like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who was a proponent of such pictures and whose spirit was supposedly captured in a few)? Not clear. How are we to distinguish between hoaxes and serious investigations? Not clear either: Both partake of gimmickry and experimentalism. And yet it's too easy just to say that it all comes down to photographic deception. Not least of the show's puzzles is what to make of the curators' intentions: Were they entirely serious? Or are they putting us on just a little? The "just the facts, ma'am" presentation of this odd material is a bit too solemn and scrupulously objective to be believed, quite. And so one wonders if there isn't something tongue-in-cheek about this caricature of scholarly neutrality. Finally, what, if any, is the larger point of this show? Does it offer a different way of understanding the "perfect medium" of photography? Or is it just a side trip to the lunatic fringes of photography's history?
I'll choose the first road, though I see no reason why a little play can't be added to the equation. We are told at the outset of the catalogue that there are three different ways of taking the occult photographs in it: from the believer's point of view; as aesthetic objects; or with the detachment of an historian (the view the exhibition purports to take). I propose a fourth option, and that is to take a speculative path and to think a little about what all this might do for our understanding of what a photograph is and what its history tells us. After all, photography and speculation--thought experiments as well as other kinds of trial-and-error--have gone together from the beginning.
"The Perfect Medium" is full of neologisms, the most wonderful of which is the "skotograph," a spirit photograph taken without a camera or light but by pressing a phorographic plate against the face. To the "radiograph," the "electrograph," and the "thoughtograph," we could add some of our own inventions: the "indexograph" (or "digitograph"), the "somogram," the "chemograph" or "obscurograph," and perhaps even the "occultograph." The word "photography" is just such a neologism itself, and its history is rife with further neologisms. This tells us that photography has always been a science-fiction concoction whose experimenters constantly speculated about what kind of medium it was, and what defined it.
"Drawing-by-light" is the definition that was settled on. (Contrary to what is commonly thought, the photograph was never considered simply a camera-made image. It still isn't, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which includes no mention of the camera in its definition of the word "photography.") But light is only half the story, for darkness--the obscurity in the camera obscura--is also needed to make a photograph: both the darkness of darkrooms and camera interiors, and the occlusion of light that is necessarily part of any photographic inscription. And this brings me to another point: The obscure and the occult are almost synonymous with one another, sharing a sense of the dark, of the secret and mysterious, the hidden and imperceptible. What the occult adds to the mix of obscurity is the experimental and the magical, as well as forms of "science" that belong either to the past (alchemy, for example) or to the future (much of modern physics, say, from Einstein on).
So, "The Perfect Medium" is not as much a side trip as it might first appear; rather, it taps deep into photography's dark heart. Any photograph is a trick, after all--a conjury of optics and a chemical reaction, which happens below the threshold of sight. In it, magic and science are not far apart: Indeed, what is the difference between the two, if not that magic is a science uncoded, outmoded, and not subject to proof, and science, by contrast, is a magical art proven, systematized, and entered into the book of accepted up-to-date knowledge? "The Perfect Medium" speaks directly to the way photography is situated at the shifting borderline between the two. Its double-exposure ghosts, its seance documents, its records of the flow of ectoplasmic material from mouths, noses, and navels, and its experiments with "vital fluid" impressions made with the dark--rather than light--side of the photographic equation are all located at that borderline.
The "photographs" of hands and fingers made with electricity, heat, sweat, and other invisible energies, but without light or the camera, are both the most arresting and the most serious of the various sorties into the occult presented here. They are also the most interesting, because they are the most truly speculative in their quest into the invisible end of the photographic spectrum, that place where alchemy and chemistry, physics and metaphysics meet. It is in them that the "surrealist conditions of photography," to invert Rosalind Krauss's famous formulation, deserve the most respect. And it is in these "occultographs," more than in all those camera-made pictures of mostly female mediums, that another, possibly gendered, meaning of the "perfect medium" comes to light. It allows us to consider photography a "feminine" medium, more fundamentally a matter of volatile internal processes hidden from the eye than of technological mastery and scopophilic command.
photography video in the 1806-1880s - civil war cameras
This video + wet plate camera, ties in with the wet plate collodian process, I have posted above. Cheers Sue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=ADJwAGuEnxo
Curator of Technology Todd Gustavson discusses two examples of Civil War-era cameras- a stereo camera and the Lewis wet-plate camera. From the exhibition "Between the States"
stereoscope camera used by Matthew Brady who took it upon himself to photograph the Civil War, funded at his own expense
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=ADJwAGuEnxo
stereoscope camera used by Matthew Brady who took it upon himself to photograph the Civil War, funded at his own expense
Trying to find a common theme between our photographers + the time line
Time lines
1861: Scottish physicist James Clerk-Maxwell demonstrates a color photography system involving three black and white photographs, each taken through a red, green, or blue filter. The photos were turned into lantern slides and projected in registration with the same color filters. This is the "color separation" method.
1861-65: Mathew Brady and staff (mostly staff) covers the American Civil War, exposing 7000 negatives
1868: Ducas de Hauron publishes a book proposing a variety of methods for color photography.
1870: Center of period in which the US Congress sent photographers out to the West. The most famous images were taken by William Jackson and Tim O'Sullivan.
1871: Richard Leach Maddox, an English doctor, proposes the use of an emulsion of gelatin and silver bromide on a glass plate, the "dry plate" process.
1877: Eadweard Muybridge, born in England as Edward Muggridge, settles "do a horse's four hooves ever leave the ground at once" bet among rich San Franciscans by time-sequenced photography of Leland Stanford's horse.
1878: Dry plates being manufactured commercially.
1880: George Eastman, age 24, sets up Eastman Dry Plate Company in Rochester, New York. First half-tone photograph appears in a daily newspaper, the New York Graphic.
1861 – The first color photograph, an additive projected image of a tartan ribbon, is shown by James Clerk Maxwell.
1868 – Louis Ducos du Hauron patents a method of subtractive color photography.
1871 – The gelatin emulsion is invented by Richard Maddox.
1876 – F. Hurter & V. C. Driffield begin systematic evaluation of sensitivity characteristics of photographic emulsions – science of sensitometry.
1878 – Eadweard Muybridge made a high-speed photographic demonstration of a moving horse, airborne during a trot, using a trip-wire system.
1861
Oliver Wendell Holmes invents stereoscope viewer.
1865
Photographs and photographic negatives are added to protected works under copyright.
1871
Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process - negatives no longer had to be developed immediately.
1880
Eastman Dry Plate Company founded.
All metal "Perfecscope" stereo card viewer, c. 1905.
Made of polished tin or some sort of chromed sheet metal, including the curved surfaces of the hood. The only parts that are not metal are the wooden handle, which pivots and then locks in the proper viewing position, and, of course, the excellent glass viewing lenses. An unusual variation on the wooden Holmes-Bates style stereo viewer. To the right is an Anthony CDV portrait of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), physician and professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, writer, stereoviewer inventor, and the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, the Supreme Court Justice.
Courtesy, David Silver, President, International Photographic Historical Organization.
| Queen Victoria is photographed by Mayall. Abraham Lincoln is photographed by Matthew Brady for political campaigning. | |
| 1861 | The single lens reflex plate camera is patented by Thomas Sutton. This is still an extremely common camera design today. The lens used to make the photograph is also the viewing lens, and a movable mirror permits both of these functions without having to remove the plate or film. |
| 1861 | James Clerk Maxwell, to test the three-colour theory of light (see 1801 above) instructs Thomas Sutton in an experiment which is demonstrated at the Royal Institute in London. A small piece of tartan ribbon is photographed on three plates and through red, green, and blue-violet filters. Three positive plates are produced and projected through the same filters. When these images are combined a reasaonably fully-coloured image is produced. This tended to confirm Young's theory of three-colour perception and is also the first reproducible colour photograph. |
| 1861-65 | Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and colleagues provide a searchingly honest photographic record of the American Civil War. |
| 1862 | Nadar takes aerial photographs over Paris. |
| 1863-75 | Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) uses long lenses in her distinctive portraiture work. |
| 1868 | Thomas Annan begins documenting slum areas of Glasgow. |
| 1869 | Louis Ducos du Hauron publishes Les Coleurs en Photographie: Solution du Probleme in which he outlines how colour photographs can be made as either prints or transparencies. He prophecies how three colour separation and dot screens could produce full colour images on a page (the process we now call photolithography), He also showed how by making three plates electively sensitive to three different colours, a colour image could be produced in one exposure. |
| 1869 | Henry Peach Robinson publishes Pictorial Effect in Photography, trying to acquaint fellow photographers with aesthetic concepts. |
| 1871 | Dry photographic plates invented. Within the decade these were being mass produced, factory-packed, and could readily be stored. |
| 1874 | Julia Margaret Cameron undertakes photographs to illustrate Tennyson's Idylls of the King. |
| 1877 | The first electrically-lit photographic studio is opened in Regent Street, London. |
| 1877-78 | John Thompson teams up with the journalist Adolphe Smith to investigate and show the day to day conditions of the London poor. The series of pamphlets resulting from this, Street Life in London, is the first photographically illustrated work to deal with social life. |
| 1878 | Edward Muybridge in the USA analyses the movement of animals through sequential photographs using a series of cameras and trip devices. Among other things he produces the first evidence that a horse in full gallop does at a particular point have all four hooves off the ground. From 1884 he begins work at the University of Pennsylvania to produce a massive collection of photographs of animals in motion, ultimately to be published as Animal Locomotion. |
| 1879 | Lewis Carroll (the Rev. Charles Dodgson) an assiduous photographer, especially of young girls, begins a new phase in his photographic career by portraying nude little girls. This causes some local scandal. |
| 1880 | Half-tone engraving process first used to produce newpaper photographs (in New York). |
| 1880 | The first twin lens reflex camera is produced in London. Such cameras employ a viewing lens that is matched to the 'taking lens', and focussed by the same mechanism. Rolleiflex are the best-known manufacturer of these. |
Oliver Wendell Holmes invents stereoscope viewer.
Photographs and photographic negatives are added to protected works under copyright.
Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process - negatives no longer had to be developed immediately.
Eastman Dry Plate Company founded.
All metal "Perfecscope" stereo card viewer, c. 1905.
Made of polished tin or some sort of chromed sheet metal, including the curved surfaces of the hood. The only parts that are not metal are the wooden handle, which pivots and then locks in the proper viewing position, and, of course, the excellent glass viewing lenses. An unusual variation on the wooden Holmes-Bates style stereo viewer. To the right is an Anthony CDV portrait of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), physician and professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, writer, stereoviewer inventor, and the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, the Supreme Court Justice.
Courtesy, David Silver, President, International Photographic Historical Organization.
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Nadar was as journalist, caricaturist, and writer as well as aviator
Apart from being a photographer, Nadar was as journalist, caricaturist, and writer. His caricatures appeared in the 1840ís in leading periodicals including, Charivari , and culminated in Le Pantheon Nadar (1854), a collection of satirical representations of contemporary figures. Like Manet, Nadar placed great emphasis on the importance of the inner psychology of his subjects. His subjects are usually photographed from a three-quarters angle against a plain dark background, under the diffused light from the glass roof door of his studio. Nadar wrote novels and essays including his autobiography, My Life as a Photographer in 1899.
A caricature of Nadar that appeared in Le Boulevard in 1862. The caption reads: "Elevating photography to the condition of art"
From The Best of Popular Photography 1951, H.M. Kinzer writes on Nadar: “he succeeded in photographing the Arc de Triomphe for the first time as the birds saw it.” it themselves.
The flying darkroom Some technical details: “A big orange-and-black tent, impermeable to light, was suspended from the rigging above, and a smoky safelight was mounted inside. ‘It was warm inside,’ recalled Nadar, ‘but our collodion plates didn’t mind, submerged in their cool baths." None of Nadar’s hard-won aerial photographs seem to have survived in the intervening years.
http://meggangould.net/blog/?p=41
Above) Félix Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), by way of contrast, was quite successful indeed at caricature and photography. He took the first aerial photographs, and his exploits were sufficiently popular that he had to invent crowd-control barriers. 1897. Call number: LOT 13400, no. 97.
http://actuphoto.com/photographes/profil/felix-nadar-1975.html
A caricature of Nadar that appeared in Le Boulevard in 1862. The caption reads: "Elevating photography to the condition of art"
From The Best of Popular Photography 1951, H.M. Kinzer writes on Nadar: “he succeeded in photographing the Arc de Triomphe for the first time as the birds saw it.” it themselves.
The flying darkroom Some technical details: “A big orange-and-black tent, impermeable to light, was suspended from the rigging above, and a smoky safelight was mounted inside. ‘It was warm inside,’ recalled Nadar, ‘but our collodion plates didn’t mind, submerged in their cool baths." None of Nadar’s hard-won aerial photographs seem to have survived in the intervening years.
http://meggangould.net/blog/?p=41
Above) Félix Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), by way of contrast, was quite successful indeed at caricature and photography. He took the first aerial photographs, and his exploits were sufficiently popular that he had to invent crowd-control barriers. 1897. Call number: LOT 13400, no. 97. http://actuphoto.com/photographes/profil/felix-nadar-1975.htmlSaturday, 17 September 2011
Showmanship, mapmaking from a balloon, carrier pigeons and micro photography
Nadar, French writer, caricaturist, and photographer who is remembered primarily for his photographic portraits, which are considered to be among the best done in the 19th century.
As a young man, he studied medicine in Lyon, France, but, when his father’s publishing house went bankrupt in 1838, he was forced to earn his own livelihood. He began to write newspaper articles that he signed “Nadar.” In 1842 he settled in Paris and began to sell caricatures to humour magazines. His success stemmed partly from his sense of showmanship. He had the entire building that housed his studio painted red and his name printed in gigantic letters across a 50-foot (15-metre) expanse of wall. The building became a local landmark and a favourite meeting place of the intelligentsia of Paris. When in 1874 the painters later known as Impressionists needed a place to hold their first exhibit, Nadar lent them his gallery. He was greatly pleased by the storm the exhibit raised; the notoriety was good for business. Nadar was a tireless innovator. In 1855 he patented the idea of using aerial photographs in mapmaking and surveying. Nadar also wrote novels, essays, satires, and autobiographical works. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/401417/Nadar
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| Sarah Bernhardt has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known" Sarah Bernhardt in Costume, circa 1860 |
Nadar, French writer, caricaturist, and photographer who is remembered primarily for his photographic portraits, which are considered to be among the best done in the 19th century.
As a young man, he studied medicine in Lyon, France, but, when his father’s publishing house went bankrupt in 1838, he was forced to earn his own livelihood. He began to write newspaper articles that he signed “Nadar.” In 1842 he settled in Paris and began to sell caricatures to humour magazines. His success stemmed partly from his sense of showmanship. He had the entire building that housed his studio painted red and his name printed in gigantic letters across a 50-foot (15-metre) expanse of wall. The building became a local landmark and a favourite meeting place of the intelligentsia of Paris. When in 1874 the painters later known as Impressionists needed a place to hold their first exhibit, Nadar lent them his gallery. He was greatly pleased by the storm the exhibit raised; the notoriety was good for business. Nadar was a tireless innovator. In 1855 he patented the idea of using aerial photographs in mapmaking and surveying. Nadar also wrote novels, essays, satires, and autobiographical works. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/401417/Nadar
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He conceived the idea of mapmaking and surveying from a balloon, completing his first aerial photographs c.1858.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/library/Columbia%20Encyclopedia%20%252D%20People-cid-655457
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In 1857, Nadar began to experiment with electric lighting and then opened the Salon of Electric Photography in Paris. In 1858, Nadar took the first aerial photographs of Paris from a hot air balloon. Nadar was named Inspector General of Photographers of the French Army in 1861. From 1861 to 1862, Nadar made photographic reportages on the sewers and catacombs of Paris. In 1870 Nadar organized a carrier-pigeon and micro photography system to deliver messages out of the beseiged city of Paris.http://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=&role=&nation=&subjectid=500005199
He conceived the idea of mapmaking and surveying from a balloon, completing his first aerial photographs c.1858.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/library/Columbia%20Encyclopedia%20%252D%20People-cid-655457
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In 1857, Nadar began to experiment with electric lighting and then opened the Salon of Electric Photography in Paris. In 1858, Nadar took the first aerial photographs of Paris from a hot air balloon. Nadar was named Inspector General of Photographers of the French Army in 1861. From 1861 to 1862, Nadar made photographic reportages on the sewers and catacombs of Paris. In 1870 Nadar organized a carrier-pigeon and micro photography system to deliver messages out of the beseiged city of Paris.http://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=&role=&nation=&subjectid=500005199
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| Gustave Eiffel, photographed by Nadar. French civil engineer renowned for the tower in Paris that bears his name. |
Thursday, 15 September 2011
Nadar + wife in the balloon
Artist Nadar (French, Paris 1820–1910 Paris)Descriptive Title [Nadar with His Wife, Ernestine, in a Balloon]
Date ca. 1865
Medium Gelatin silver print from glass negative ___________________________________________
Nadar encouraged the development of aerial navigation, and flew the biggest balloon ever built, the Géant.
source below
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/all/nadar_with_his_wife_ernestine_in_a_balloon_nadar/objectview.aspx?page=1&sort=6&sortdir=asc&keyword=Nadar, or Tournachon, Gaspard Félix&fp=1&dd1=0&dd2=0&vw=1&collID=0&OID=190039654&vT=1&hi=0&ov=0
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Le Géant - ,Nadar’s balloon Le Géant, the gondola of Nadar’s balloon. Circa 1863. Albumen print. 9,5 x 12,5 cm. Mounted to board (minimal soiling). Nadar was an industrious inventor who realized early on the importance of aerial views for cartography and military intelligence. He undertook the first attempts to photograph from a balloon in 1855 and in 1863 he had a very large balloon constructed, known as “Le Géant”, which had a circumference of 100 meters. The gondola was made of wicker, was circa four meters high, had four beds, a toilet and a darkroom as well as a lithograph press to print short reports which could be thrown from the balloon. After landing, wheels could be attached to the car so that horses could pull it. During his second flight in October 1863, Nadar had to make an emergency landing near Hanover, which also explains why this spectacular photo found its way into the collection of Ernst August von Hannover. - Slight surface scuffing, otherwise in very good condition with strong contrasts. Provenance: The estate of Ernst August von Hannover, 3rd Duke of Cumberland
Salted paper print from glass negative
Salted paper print from glass negative
Gioacchino Rossini, 1856
Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820–1910)Salted paper print from glass negative
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The salt print was the dominant paper-based photographic process for producing positive prints during the period from 1839 through approximately 1860.The salted paper print was the first type of paper print used in photography, and remained the most popular paper print until the introduction of the albumen print process in the 1850s. Salt prints could be made from both paper and glass negatives. Paper negatives produced a grainy and slightly mottled image. Glass negatives produced a sharp, crisp image. Salt prints have white highlights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_print
Studio of Nadar at 35 Boulevard Des Capucines, Paris, with his name displayed accross the front of it
In 1860, Nadar moved to 35 Boulevard des Capucines. The rent was astronomical but Nadar's expenditures bought the triumph of his name—a gigantic signature scrawled on the glass facade of his palace and in the consciousness of the public. Photo from another source, text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art - http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nadr/hd_nadr.htm#thumbnails
Facts from the Metropolitian Museum on the photographic techniques popular in the period we are studying
An old deteriorated wet plate featuring Theodore Roosevelt:
"the new collodion-on-glass negatives produced portraits as sharp as daguerreotypes, but more easily and in multiple copies."
Source: Nadar (1820–1910)
Thematic Essay
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The collodion process is an early photographic process. It was introduced in the 1850s and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype. During the 1880s the collodion process, in turn, was largely replaced by gelatin dry plates—glass plates with a photographic emulsion of silver halides suspended in gelatin. The dry gelatin emulsion was not only more convenient but could be made much more sensitive, greatly reducing exposure times.
"Collodion process" is usually taken to be synonymous with the "collodion wet plate process", a very inconvenient form which required the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. Although collodion was normally used in this wet form, the material could also be used in moist ("preserved") or dry form, but at the cost of greatly increased exposure time, making these forms unsuitable for the usual work of most professional photographers—portraiture. Their use was therefore confined to amateur landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable.Collodion processes were capable of recording microscopically fine detail, so their use for some special purposes continued long after the advent of the gelatin dry plate. The wet plate collodion process was still in use in the printing industry in the 1960s for line and tone work (mostly printed material involving black type against a white background) as for large work it was much cheaper than gelatin film. One collodion process, the tintype, was still in limited use for casual portraiture by some itinerant and amusement park photographers as late as the 1930s, by which time tintypes were already regarded as quaintly old-fashioned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion_process
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
please click on the orange link below then I can add your text bit by bit
please take a look at the booklet to get an idea of how it is shaping uphttp://issuu.com/mchats/docs/research_and_apply_information_on_the_traditions_w
Monday, 12 September 2011
Which photographer?
Hi Bloggees
First, I reckon it's "History of PhoTOgraphy" :)
Second, sorry this is in the comments in TEST as well, I was logged in as me and just posted.
Third, I'm torn. Do you think an Australian photographer of criminal types and other things(Thomas Nevin) or a British photographer of ghostly types (Frederick A Hudson or William Mumly) is a better choice?
And any thoughts on what topics ought to be covered in our report?
My thoughts are technical advances and fantasy vs reality ie art vs document and the crossover to start.
Mr Brady is important here with his recreated photographs of the civil war and how influential they were in the politics of the war. And that this was done not because he wasn't there but because he couldn't take an action shot with his equipment.
My 2 photographer options both play into the question of fantasy vs reality. Both were interested in evidence. And also technology. Nevin used dry plates and stereographic equipment. Hudson was known to have faked up some of his photos with customised cameras, but surprisingly not all, leaving some doubt . . .
Whaddya think?
First, I reckon it's "History of PhoTOgraphy" :)
Second, sorry this is in the comments in TEST as well, I was logged in as me and just posted.
Third, I'm torn. Do you think an Australian photographer of criminal types and other things(Thomas Nevin) or a British photographer of ghostly types (Frederick A Hudson or William Mumly) is a better choice?
And any thoughts on what topics ought to be covered in our report?
My thoughts are technical advances and fantasy vs reality ie art vs document and the crossover to start.
Mr Brady is important here with his recreated photographs of the civil war and how influential they were in the politics of the war. And that this was done not because he wasn't there but because he couldn't take an action shot with his equipment.
My 2 photographer options both play into the question of fantasy vs reality. Both were interested in evidence. And also technology. Nevin used dry plates and stereographic equipment. Hudson was known to have faked up some of his photos with customised cameras, but surprisingly not all, leaving some doubt . . .
Whaddya think?
Alicia's Research Photographer
Hello ladies, I'll be researching Mathew Brady, whom is widely considered as the "Father of photojournalism". My major research will be covering the american civil war and how it affect photojournalism in the later days.
Although it is not of our time period, but I think the essay will be more complete if I also mention a little about the Mexican-American War, when the first war photo was took in 1847, and the Crimean War (1853-1856).
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
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