Before Photography

Before Photography

The enlightenment or the age of reason was an era that was challenging the Christian faith and religious dogma. The age of reason rejected the thought of the supernatural and focused on nature as experienced by human beings, this was called empiricism and the enlightenment took this as its main drive

Prior to the age of reason religious dogma had been the explanation for all things. It was sparked by Physicist Isaac Newton, philosopher John Locke and Pierre Bayle. Photography was born of an era of classicism which barks back to an ancient Greek and Roman sources. The Greeks adopted this view of thinking and called it philosophy which means “The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.”

Joseph Wright of Derby, an English artist painted pictures of scientific scenes. This shows that through scientific method it challenged the ideas that were grounded in tradition and faith. A painting called “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” 1768 shows people gathered around a table looking at an experiment that took air away from a bird which showed the nature of the air and the ability to support live.

The camera obscura meaning room (Camera) and dark (obscura) is an optical device that produces an image of its surrounds onto a surface. Artists found it hard to draw correct perspective of places such as landscapes and cities so the camera obscura allowed artists such as Vermeer to trace accurate representations.  It was used in the renaissance period artists such as Vermeer used this device as a way to capture highly detailed drawings of his subjects. Another artist called Filippo Brunelleschi observed that with a fixed single point of view, parallel lines appear to converge at a single point in the distance. Brunelleschi applied a single vanishing point to a canvas, and discovered a method for calculating depth.

In a famous noted experiment, Brunelleschi used mirrors to sketch the Florence baptistry in perfect perspective. He was able to mathematically calculate the scale of objects within a painting in order to make them appear realistic.

In 1727 a professor of anatomy named Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver salts darkened when exposed to the sun, and in 1777 is was discovered that silver nitrate darkens quicker with blue light. In 1799 Francois Chaussier read that new combinations of sulphur and alkalis meant that an image could be fixed.

In 1815  Joseph Nicephore Niepce was the first to officially fix an image using Hyposulphurous acid and its compounds. He fixed an image called “View from the Window at Le Gras” (1826) which took 8 hours to expose.

1839 photography was born!

Jacques Mande Daguerre announced his invention in 1839 using a piece of polished copper plate, polished to a mirror like finish, the surface was fumed with iodine and exposed to produce a fixed image. 

His first image of a boulevard in France required an exposure of at least 10 minutes. This makes the street below look empty but any moving objects would have been lost during the exposure.

Also In 1839 Hippolyte Bayard invented his own process that gave a direct positive onto paper.

At the same time but in the UK Henry Fox Talbolt invented the Calotype which used paper coated in silver iodine. His first negative was of “The Latticed Window” taken at Laycock Abbey in August 1835. Talbot had also experimented with items such as lace and flowers which was another way of preserving.

The British empire in 1838 was obsessed with collecting objects and sent people all over the world to discover new things. Exotic items, animals and even people were brought back to the UK for the purpose of documenting, categorising and collecting. A photograph became increasingly seen as means of documenting and recording.  Thus the museum was established.

Sir John Frederick William Herschel invented the word “ Photography” which means “Light drawing”

America - Tintype
French - Daguerreotype
England - Calotype