Foreign Travellers & English Naturalists

Thinking Photography

Foreign Travellers and English Naturalists 1840-60's

The use of photography became more popular during the 1840’s. As the process of photography became more widely available, it was used as evidence and to document all manner of events. When photography was used in   operation theatres, it was used as a medium (by a medium) that could reveal spirits of the dead. Examples by John Adams Whipple in Hypnotism (1845) also recorded individuals supposedly under hypnosis. All the early indication of photography show it as a means to exploit and manipulate for individual gain.

Despite the initial recognition of the photographic art, and steps forward in printing paper allowing for better results (with the calotype), the daguerreotype and calotype methods did not achieve longevity. They were made mostly redundant past 1850 due to their long exposure times and the resulting restrictions due to capturing moving subjects and the bright daylight conditions required.

Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857) invented the wet colodion process (1851)

Positive: 

• Faster Process 
• Portable

Negative:

• Needed a darkroom
• Had to be quick
• Huge responsibility

Alice In Wonderland - Charles Dodgson aka. Lewis Carroll

Alice in wonderland / Alice takes a trip to wonderland:

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy- chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat- pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again."

 Alice in Wonderland in relation to photography:

• White Rabbit talks of time which is related to the lengthy process in which it takes photographs to be taken. 
• The hole that Alice falls down could be related to the aperture of the lens on the camera.
• Wonderland could be a reference to the inside view of a camera, as it was an abstract thing at the time. 
• The entire book talks of pictures and books. 

Artists within the 1840-60's:

Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi - carte-de-visite/calling cards.

Nadar (Gaspard Mix Tournachan)  - Photographed famous people with risque photographs.

J.F.A Claudet - Stereoscopic daguerreotype - developed an early version of 3D.

Francis Frith - First Pylon view of great temple - Wet Collodion.

Roger Fenton - Cookhouse of 5th Hussar - Documentary photography.

Gustave Le Gray - First known composite

Classical to Romantics:

• Era of Romanticsm
• Feelings/Expressions
• What it is to be human.
• Shakespearean notions.

Victorian obsession with death by Henry Peach Robinson (1830 - 1891)

Henry Robinsons image (above) was made using 7 different negatives.

Post-Mortem Photographers:
Oscar Gustav Rejlander (1817-1875)
-Believed there were two ways of life.
-Made a composite of 14 negatives.
-Used Wet Collodion process.
-Victorian principle of mortality.

Duchenne de Boulonge
Paris - the mechanism of Human Expression

-Used insane patients to recreate human expression via electrodes.
-Believed he could tell a character by the face.
-Phrenology, telling someone's character by the shape of their head.
-Counter to enlightenment

Operating Theatre - a performance
"We perform operations"