Foreign Travellers and English naturalists

Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, a romantic painter and print maker most famous for being the proprietor of the Diorama, changed the nature of visual representation: Photography. Each of his daguerreotype was taken with astonishing precision and care, a one-of-a-kind image on a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper. Photography had a dual character - as a medium of artistic expression and as a powerful scientific tool. His earliest plates were still-life compositions due to long exposures, and lent, by association, the aura of "art" to pictures made by mechanical means.

Daguerre's image "fossils and shells" is an image that reflects both the museum culture of the nineteenth century and the Victorian obsession with collecting and classifying.

 

The act of photography is suggested as a parallel process. In a similar vain Hippolyte Bayard's photographing of garden implements as things in themselves and Talbot's "shelves of books", implies more about their own position, academic knowledge and cultural traditions within which they worked and wished their images to be read.

Sadly, on March 8, 1839 Daguerre's laboratory, Diorama along with most of his work were burnt to the ground. Fewer than 25 securely attributed photographs by Daguerre survive - a mere handful of still- life's, Parisian views, and portraits from the dawn of photography.

Step forward in photography

1851 saw the progression from the dauerreotype to the collodion process, an invention by Frederic Scott Archer. By the end of that decade the collodion process had almost entirely replaced the daguerreotype. During the 1880's the collodion process was in turn replaced by gelatin dry plates - glass plates with a photographic emulsion of silver halides suspended in gelatin. The dry gelatin emulsion was more convenient, more sensitive and reduced exposure time.

"Collodion process", was very inconvenient requiring the photographic material to be coated, sensitised, exposed and developed within a span of about 15 minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. The process also used in humid or dry form, came at great cost, increasing exposure time, therefore,unsuitable for the usual work of a photographer - portraiture. Their use was mainly confined to landscape photography. Use within the printing industry continued well into the 1960's for line and tone work (cheaper than gelatin film).

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

Carroll referred to photography as devotion, entertainment, fascination, practise, chief interest, and his "one amusement". His long career as a photographer (1856 - 1880) coincides with the "Golden era" of nineteenth-century photography, which centred on the wet collodion negative process and the corresponding positive albumen print process. The resulting prints typically had a lustrous surface and a broad tonal range. Carroll's surviving glass negatives and paper prints display a mastery of the technique which only a devoted practitioner could accomplish. They were the product of his own special looking - glass: the camera.

Over 3000 photographs were taken by Dodgson, but only 1000 have survived. Fifty percent of Dodgson's surviving work is of young girls, but he also photographed skeletons, dolls, families,statues and trees.

Alice Pleasance Liddell (1854 - 1934), is a lady who inspired Charles Dodgson greatly, so much so, that the children's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, whose protagonist Alice is said to be named after her.

                           

Social networking

Think 'Facebook' Victorian style! Carte-de-visite photographs were small albumen prints mounted on cards 2-1/2 by 4 inches. It was popular for relatives and friends to exchange portraits, knowing they would find a way into the recipients family album. Unlike processes such as daguerreotypes and ambrotype, cartes de visite could be sent through the post without the need for cases or fragile cover-glass.

  

               

Patented in Paris, France by photographer Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi in 1854, the carte de visite was slow to gain widespread use until 1859, when Disderi published Emperor Napoleon 111's photos in this format. This made the format an overnight success, spreading throughout the world, and widely used to photograph prominent persons. Queen Victoria was not one to miss out on this unique and popular craze. While in mourning the loss of her husband Prince Albert for nearly 40 years her picture could be sold for 1p on a carte de visite.

By the early 1870's, carte de visite were supplanted by "Cabinet Cards", also albumen prints, but larger, mounted on cardboard backs 5.5in by 6.5in. Cabinet cards remained popular into the early 20th century, when Kodak introduced the Brownie Camera and home snapshot photography became a mass phenomenon.  

Staid Victorian To Contemporary Scandals

By the 1850's photography was well established and altered the way Britons saw themselves forever. Photography had a great impact on social and cultural changes, as well as on science and medicine, and how asylum doctors used it. Photography transformed our understanding of places - and eventually our views of the British Empire. The role of photography changed in everyday life - from the staid Victorian family portrait to contemporary scandals over pornography.

One photographer who stood apart from mainstream photographic practise of the collodion era was Nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon). His aim in portraiture was to 'seek'. He took his first photographs in 1853 and pioneered the use of artificial lighting in photography and later on in 1874, he lent his studio to a group of painters thus making the first exhibition of the Impressionists possible. He was very much a part of the romantic movement through which a generation of artists in France strove to find a manner of expression truer to the inner life of man than the constraints of the classical period. He wrote, "that instant of understanding that puts you in touch with the model - helps you sum him up, guides you to his habits, his ideas, and character, and enables you to produce....... a really convincing portrait."

 Sarah Bernhardt  (1844 - 1923) This portrait taken 1865 by Nadar.

This portrait typifies Nadars ability to organise the baroque forms of drapery, a truncated classical column, and the dramatic contrasts of hair and skin and still suggest character - In this case the vulnerability and theatricality of the young actress.

Roger Fenton is another widely regarded photographer from the "golden age" of the 1850s, a pioneer of this 'new magic photo media'. He left a career in law to devote himself to photography. He went to the Crimea to produce the world's first war coverage at the urging of Prince Albert, who wanted to show to the British public the horrors of war. Fenton however was very 'selective', capturing nothing of the devastation's that came with war. This is said to be partly due to the limitations of photographic techniques of the period, but also because of official wish to glamorise the war and shift public attention away from government and military mismanagement, for which Crimean campaign became infamously known. Today, however, we recognise Fenton's remarkable accomplishments not only for his keen artistic eye but as one of the first professional war photographers.

 'The valley of the shadow of death' - 1855 (which one came first?)


Consider Henry Peach Robinson an English pictorialist photographer best known for his pioneering combination printing - joining multiple negatives to form a single image, the precursor to photo montage.


 Albumen print 'Fading Away'- 1858

Photograph shows a young girl on her deathbed surrounded by her family. Five different negatives were used to make one complete print. The photograph was controversial when it was exhibited, with many believing it was not a suitable subject for photography.

Too far?


 young mother holding dead baby.

Cheaper and quicker methods of photography provided the middle-classes with a means for memorialising dead loved ones. Why? Childhood mortality rates were extremely high, and a post-mortem photograph might have been the only image of the child the family ever had. The carte de visite was used to mass produce and circulate the photograph via post to family and friends who may not of seen the dead loved one before.

 "Golden age" of quackery




Demonstration of the mechanics of facial expression.

Yes its true the Victorians had mad ideas! The era of 'Enlightenment' had its counter 'Quackery' closely at its side. In the early 19th century, phrenology gained a rapidly growing interest. It was the belief that the shape of the skull, facial expressions, closeness of ones eyes could determine various traits of character and intelligence of that person. From the middle of the century forward, it gained in popularity despite an increasing debunking of it by the medical profession. Many phrenologists dabbled in a wide range of "alternative" therapies. It was often seen as a joke by Victorians. Light theatrical pieces, tended to use it and practitioners were seen as either charlatans or dupes.

The flip side of these questionable Victorian practises came revolutionary advancements in medicine that medical students and selected few were able to view as an audience. One such area of great development was early operations under anaesthetic, using ether.


                                                                                   re-enactment of the October 16, 1846 ether operation; daguerreotype by Southworth and Hawes.

Spooky advancements

Sometime in the 1860s, photographer William Mumbler accidentally discovered how to do a double exposure. He then decided to make money on the Victoran obsession with the supernatural and take "spirit photographs" for those willing to pay. It's hard to believe that anyone was credulous enough to accept it as being real. But we have to remember that although photography was still in its infancy, alot was happening in Victorian life. As mentioned earlier conflicts like the Crimean war meant people lost alot of family members. As well as those, infant mortality rates were incredibly high and otherwise healthy adults died of simple infections that would these days be treated quickly by antibiotics. So we shouldn't be too suprised that people were keen to believe that their loved ones were still around and watching over them. Literally.

                        (a)                              (b)

Image (b) is one of mumbler's most famous pictures, purportedly showing Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband, Abraham Lincoln.

Overview

The Victorians invented the notion that one can create solutions to problems, that man can create new means of bettering himself and his environment.
-  In religion, the Victorians experienced doubt, calling into question institutional christianity.
-  In literature and the arts, the Victorians attempted to combine romantic emphasis upon self, emotion, and imagination.
-  In politics, society, the Victorian's created astonishing innovation and change: democracy, feminism, unionization of workers, marxism and so on.
-  Victoria's reign lasted so long that it comprised several periods. It was the age of paradox and power. More than anything else what makes Victorians Victorian is their sense of social responsibility.

  This photograph 'The Crawlers' was taken between 1876 and 1877 by Scottish photographer John Thomson. It gives an insight into the world of 'unfortunates' in London and was intended to help middle class Victorians gain some understanding of the depth of misery that was the crawlers existence. This image is from a series of publications called 'street life in London', issued monthly. The biographical text was written by Thomson's fellow worker, Adolphe Smith.

The abscence of a social welfare system meant wealthy philanthropists took it upon themselves to improve the lot of the destitute city dwellers. It was around this time that Dr Thomas John Barnardo established over 50 orphanages in london. Likewise, Thomas Annan, a Scottish photographer, notable for being the first to record the poor housing conditions of the poor.