Foreign Travelers and English Naturalists

Frederick Scott Archer (1813 – 1857) invented the wet collodion process which was introduced in the 1850’s. This photographic process made it possible for portraits to be taken indoors. The process has to be done quickly and must have a darkroom available to produce an image. The wet collodion process required the photographic material to be coaed, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, meaning that a darkroom would be needed. Collodion was normally used in a wet form but the material could also be used in humid (preserved) or dry form, but doing this would greatly increase the exposure time. Professional photographers who mainly shot portraiture couldn’t use the dry form therefore it was landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable.

Advantages of the wet collodion process:

-         It produced a negative image on a transparent support (glass)

-         Combination of the calotype (ability for the photographer to theoretically make unlimited number of photographs from a single negative) and daguerreotype (clarity and sharpness which could not be achieved by paper negatives)

-         Faster process, only seconds for the exposure

-         Relatively inexpensive.

Disadvantages of the wet collodion process:

-         The entire process, from coating to developing, had to be completed before the plate dried. The photographer had about 10 minutes to complete the process.

-         Inconvenient for field use as the process requires a darkroom.

-         The plate dripped silver nitrate solution, causing stains and troublesome build-ups in the camera and plate holder.

Charles Dodgson / Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alices Adventures in 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 Liddell photographed by
Charles Dodgson.

 Photographic connotations in Alice in Wonderland.

-         The white rabbit talks about time, this could relate to the lengthy process for photographs to be taken, how they would take minutes and now seconds.

-         The whole in which Alice falls down could be a connotation for the aperture in the lens on the camera.

-         Cameras were quite abstract at the time and very different, wonderland could refer to the inside view of a camera.

-         The book as a whole speaks about pictures.

Carte-de-visite

Andre Adolphe-Eugene Diseri patented the carte-de-visite in 1854. It was a type of small photograph and usually made of albumen print, this was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. Disderi also patented a method of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate, this reduced the production costs. The side of the photograph was that of a visiting card, these photographs became enormously popular and were traded among friends and visitors. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors.

Victorians started to become preoccupied with death due to the high mortality rate. In photography deaths began to be staged and photographs of dead children became common, it was a way of the family having a lasting memory of their loved ones. This then lead onto operation theaters being photographs and physicians photographing their work. It also lead to spirit photography, where a living person would be photographed, but before they would bring in photographs of the loved one they wished to get in contact with, the photographer then merged the two photographs together making it appear the deceased was in the photograph.

Henry Peach Robinson - Fading Away 1858. Made of several negatives using the wet collodion process.