History of photography
Table of Contents
Introduction
General considerations
Inventing the medium
Photography�s early evolution,
Perfecting the medium,
Contemporary photography,
History of photography, method of recording the image of an object through the action of light, or related radiation, on a light-sensitive material. The word, derived from the Greek
This article treats the historical and aesthetic aspects of still photography. For a discussion of the technical aspects of the medium,
As a means of visual communication and expression, photography has distinct aesthetic capabilities. In order to understand them, one must first understand the characteristics of the process itself. One of the most important characteristics is immediacy. Usually, but not necessarily, the image that is recorded is formed by a lens in a camera. Upon exposure to the light forming the image, the sensitive material undergoes changes in its structure, a latent (but reversed) image usually called a negative is formed, and the image becomes visible by development and permanent by fixing with sodium thiosulfate, called �hypo.� With modern materials, the processing may take place immediately or may be delayed for weeks or months.
The essential elements of the image are usually established immediately at the time of exposure. This characteristic is unique to photography and sets it apart from other ways of picture making. The seemingly automatic recording of an image by photography has given the process a sense of authenticity shared by no other picture-making technique. The photograph possesses, in the popular mind, such apparent accuracy that the adage �the camera does not lie� has become an accepted, if erroneous, clich�.
This understanding of photography�s supposed objectivity has dominated evaluations of its role in the arts. In the early part of its history, photography was sometimes belittled as a mechanical art because of its dependence on technology. In truth, however, photography is not the automatic process that is implied by the use of a camera. Although the camera usually limits the photographer to depicting existing objects rather than imaginary or interpretive views, the skilled photographer can introduce creativity into the mechanical reproduction process. The image can be modified by different lenses and filters. The type of sensitive material used to record the image is a further control, and the contrast between highlight and shadow can be changed by variations in development. In printing the negative, the photographer has a wide choice in the physical surface of the paper, the tonal contrast, and the image colour. The photographer also may set up a completely artificial scene to photograph.
The most important control is, of course, the creative photographer�s vision. He or she chooses the vantage point and the exact moment of exposure. The photographer perceives the essential qualities of the subject and interprets it according to his or her judgment, taste, and involvement. An effective photograph can disseminate information about humanity and nature, record the visible world, and extend human knowledge and understanding. For all these reasons, photography has aptly been called the most important invention since the printing press. Inventing the medium Antecedents
The forerunner of the camera was the camera obscura, a dark chamber or room with a hole (later a lens) in one wall, through which images of objects outside the room were projected on the opposite wall. The principle was probably known to the Chinese and to ancient Greeks such as Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. Late in the 16th century, the Italian scientist and writer Giambattista della Porta demonstrated and described in detail the use of a camera obscura with a lens. While artists in subsequent centuries commonly used variations on the camera obscura to create images they could trace, the results from these devices depended on the artist�s drawing skills, and so scientists continued to search for a method to reproduce images completely mechanically.
In 1727 the German professor of anatomy Johann Heinrich Schulze proved that the darkening of silver salts, a phenomenon known since the 16th century and possibly earlier, was caused by light and not heat. He demonstrated the fact by using sunlight to record words on the salts, but he made no attempt to preserve the images permanently. His discovery, in combination with the camera obscura, provided the basic technology necessary for photography. It was not until the early 19th century, however, that photography actually came into being. Early experimentsHeliography
Nic�phore Ni�pce, an amateur inventor living near Chalon-sur-Sa�ne, a city 189 miles (304 km) southeast of Paris, was interested in lithography, a process in which drawings are copied or drawn by hand onto lithographic stone and then printed in ink. Not artistically trained, Ni�pce devised a method by which light could draw the pictures he needed. He oiled an engraving to make it transparent and then placed it on a plate coated with a light-sensitive solution of bitumen of Judea (a type of asphalt) and lavender oil and exposed the setup to sunlight. After a few hours, the solution under the light areas of the engraving hardened, while that under the dark areas remained soft and could be washed away, leaving a permanent, accurate copy of the engraving. Calling the process heliography (�sun drawing�), Ni�pce succeeded from 1822 onward in copying oiled engravings onto lithographic stone, glass, and zinc and from 1826 onto pewter plates.
In 1826/27, using a camera obscura fitted with a pewter plate, Ni�pce produced the first successful photograph from nature, a view of the courtyard of his country estate, Gras, from an upper window of the house. The exposure time was about eight hours, during which the sun moved from east to west so that it appears to shine on both sides of the building.
Ni�pce produced his most successful copy of an engraving, a portrait of Cardinal d�Amboise, in 1826. It was exposed in about three hours, and in February 1827 he had the pewter plate etched to form a printing plate and had two prints pulled. Paper prints were the final aim of Ni�pce�s heliographic process, yet all his other attempts, whether made by using a camera or by means of engravings, were underexposed and too weak to be etched. Nevertheless, Ni�pce�s discoveries showed the path that others were to follow with more success. Daguerreotype
Louis-Jacques-Mand� Daguerre was a professional scene painter for the theatre. Between 1822 and 1839 he was coproprietor of the Diorama in Paris, an auditorium in which he and his partner Charles-Marie Bouton displayed immense paintings, 45.5 by 71.5 feet (14 by 22 metres) in size, of famous places and historical events. The partners painted the scenes on translucent paper or muslin and, by the careful use of changing lighting effects, were able to present vividly realistic tableaux. The views provided grand, illusionistic entertainment, and the amazing trompe l�oeil effect was purposely heightened by the accompaniment of appropriate music and the positioning of real objects, animals, or people in front of the painted scenery.
Like many other artists of his time, Daguerre made preliminary sketches by tracing the images produced by both the camera obscura and the camera lucida, a prism-fitted instrument that was invented in 1807. His attempt to retain the duplication of nature he perceived in the camera obscura�s ground glass led in 1829 to a partnership with Ni�pce, with whom he worked in person and by correspondence for the next four years. However, Daguerre�s interest was in shortening the exposure time necessary to obtain an image of the real world, while Ni�pce remained interested in producing reproducible plates. It appears that by 1835, three years after Ni�pce�s death, Daguerre had discovered that a latent image forms on a plate of iodized silver and that it can be �developed� and made visible by exposure to mercury vapour, which settles on the exposed parts of the image. Exposure times could thus be reduced from eight hours to 30 minutes. The results were not permanent, however; when the developed picture was exposed to light, the unexposed areas of silver darkened until the image was no longer visible. By 1837 Daguerre was able to fix the image permanently by using a solution of table salt to dissolve the unexposed silver iodide. That year he produced a photograph of his studio on a silvered copper plate, a photograph that was remarkable for its fidelity and detail. Also that year, Ni�pce�s son Isidore signed an agreement with Daguerre affirming Daguerre as the inventor of a new process, �the daguerreotype.�
In 1839 Ni�pce�s son and Daguerre sold full rights to the daguerreotype and the heliograph to the French government, in return for annuities for life. On August 19 full working details were published. Daguerre wrote a booklet describing the process,
The antecedents of photogenic drawing can be traced back to 1802, when Thomas Wedgwood, son of the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood, reported his experiments in recording images on paper or leather sensitized with silver nitrate. He could record silhouettes of objects placed on the paper, but he was not able to make them permanent. Sir Humphry Davy published a paper in the
In 1833 the French-born photographer Hercules Florence worked with paper sensitized with silver salts to produce prints of drawings; he called this process �photography.� However, since he conducted his experiments in Brazil, apart from the major scientific centres of the time, his contributions were lost to history until 1973, when they were rediscovered. Others in Europe, including one woman, claimed to have discovered similar photographic processes, but no verifiable proof has come to light.
William Henry Fox Talbot, trained as a scientist at the University of Cambridge, could not draw his scientific observations, even with the aid of a camera lucida; this deficiency inspired him to invent a photographic process. He decided to try to record by chemical means the images he observed, and by 1835 he had a workable technique. He made paper light-sensitive by soaking it alternately in solutions of common salt (sodium chloride) and silver nitrate. Silver chloride was thus produced in the fibres of the paper. Upon exposure to light, the silver chloride became finely divided silver, dark in tone. Theoretically, the resulting negative, in which tonal and spatial values were reversed, could be used to make any number of positives simply by putting fresh sensitized paper in contact with the negative and exposing it to light. Talbot�s method of fixing the print by washing it in a strong solution of sodium chloride was inadequate, however, and the process was not successful until February 1839, when his astronomer friend Sir John Herschel suggested fixing the negatives with sodium hyposulphite (now called sodium thiosulfate) and waxing them before printing, which reduced the grain of the paper.
When news of Daguerre�s process reached England in January 1839, Talbot rushed publication of his �photogenic drawing� process and subsequently explained his technique in complete detail to the members of the Royal Society�six months before the French government divulged working directions for the daguerreotype. Early views of the medium�s potential
Photography�s remarkable ability to record a seemingly inexhaustible amount of detail was marveled at again and again. Still, from its beginnings, photography was compared�often unfavourably�with painting and drawing, largely because no other standards of picture making existed. Many were disappointed by the inability of the first processes to record colours and by the harshness of the tonal scale. Critics also pointed out that moving objects were not recorded or were rendered blurry and indistinct because of the great length of time required for an exposure.
Despite these deficiencies, many saw the technique of photography as a shortcut to art. No longer was it necessary to spend years in art school drawing from sculpture and from life, mastering the laws of linear perspective and chiaroscuro. Others saw these realizations as threatening. For example, upon first seeing the daguerreotype process demonstrated, the academic painter Paul Delaroche declared, �From today, painting is dead�; although he would later realize that the invention could actually aid artists, Delaroche�s initial reaction was indicative of that of many of his contemporaries. Such artists at first feared what Daguerre boasted in a 1838 broadsheet: �With this technique, without any knowledge of chemistry or physics, one will be able to make in a few minutes the most detailed views.�
Photography�s early evolution,
Daguerre�s process rapidly spread throughout the world. Before the end of 1839, travelers were buying daguerreotypes of famous monuments in Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Spain; engravings of these works were made and then published in two volumes as
Experiments were begun in Europe and the United States to improve the optical, chemical, and practical aspects of the daguerreotype process to make it more feasible for portraiture, the most desired application. The earliest known photography studio anywhere opened in New York City in March 1840, when Alexander Wolcott opened a �Daguerrean Parlor� for tiny portraits, using a camera with a mirror substituted for the lens. During this same period, J�zsef Petzval and Friedrich Voigtl�nder, both of Vienna, worked on better lens and camera design. Petzval produced an achromatic portrait lens that was about 20 times faster than the simple meniscus lens the Parisian opticians Charles Chevalier and N.M.P. Lerebours had made for Daguerre�s cameras. Meanwhile, Voigtl�nder reduced Daguerre�s clumsy wooden box to easily transportable proportions for the traveler. These valuable improvements were introduced by Voigtl�nder in January 1841. That same month another Viennese, Franz Kratochwila, freely published a chemical acceleration process in which the combined vapours of chlorine and bromine increased the sensitivity of the plate by five times.
The first studio in Europe was opened by Richard Beard in a glasshouse on the roof of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London on March 23, 1841. Unlike the many daguerreotypists who were originally scientists or miniature painters, Beard had been a coal merchant and patent speculator. Having acquired the exclusive British license for the American mirror camera (he later also purchased the exclusive rights to Daguerre�s invention in England, Wales, and the colonies), Beard employed the chemist John Frederick Goddard to try to improve and accelerate the exposure process. Among the techniques Goddard studied were two that Wolcott had tried: increasing the light sensitivity of the silver iodide with bromine vapours and filtering the blindingly bright daylight necessary for exposure through blue glass to ease the portrait sitter�s eye strain. By December 1840 Goddard had succeeded well enough to produce tiny portraits ranging in size from 0.4 inch (1 cm) in diameter to 1.5 by 2.5 inches (4 by 6 cm). By the time Beard opened his studio, exposure times were said to vary between one and three minutes according to weather and time of day. His daguerreotype portraits became immensely popular, and the studio made considerable profits the first few years, but competition soon appeared, and Beard lost his fortune in several lawsuits against infringers of his licenses.
The finest daguerreotypes in Britain were produced by Claudet, who opened a studio on the roof of the Royal Adelaide Gallery in June 1841. He was responsible for numerous improvements in photography, including the discovery that red light did not affect sensitive plates and could therefore be used safely in the darkroom. The improvements that had been made in lenses and sensitizing techniques reduced exposure times to approximately 20 to 40 seconds.
Daguerreotyping became a flourishing industry. Practitioners such as Hermann Biow and Carl Ferdinand Stelzner worked in Germany, and William Horn opened a studio in Bohemia in 1841. It was the United States, however, that led the world in the production of daguerreotypes. Portraiture became the most popular genre in the United States, and within this genre, standards of presentation began to develop. Certain parts of the daguerreotype portrait, usually the lips, eyes, jewelry, and occasionally the clothing, were hand-coloured, a job often done by women. Because of their fragile nature, daguerreotype images always were covered with glass and encased in a frame or casing made of leather-covered wood or gutta-percha, a plasticlike substance made from rubber.
In the late 1840s every city in the United States had its own �daguerrean artist,� and villages and towns were served by traveling photographers who had fitted up wagons as studios. In New York City alone there were 77 galleries in 1850. Of these, the most celebrated was that of Mathew B. Brady, who began in 1844 to form a �Gallery of Illustrious Americans,� a collection of portraits of notables taken by his own and other cameramen. Several of these portraits, including those of Daniel Webster and Edgar Allan Poe, were published by lithography in a folio volume.
In Boston, Josiah Johnson Hawes" class="md-crosslink">Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes opened a studio in 1843 that was advertised as �The Artists� Daguerreotype Rooms�; here they produced the finest portraits ever made by the daguerreotype process. The partners avoided the stereotyped lighting and stiff posing formulas of the average daguerreotypist and did not hesitate to portray their sitters unprettified and �as they were.� For example, in his portrait Lemuel Shaw, a judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, stands with a crumpled coat and unruly locks of hair under a glare of sunshine; in her portrait Lola Montez�adventurer, dancer, actress�lolls over the back of a chair, a cigarette between her gloved fingers.
Cities and towns, as well as their inhabitants, were also photographed by American daguerreotypists: the rapid growth of San Francisco was documented month by month, and the first history of the city, published in 1855, was illustrated with engravings made from daguerreotypes.
Daguerreotyping spread throughout the world during the 1850s as photographers from England, France, and the United States followed colonialist troops and administrators to the Middle East, Asia, and South America. Army personnel and commercial photographers portrayed foreign dignitaries, landscape, architecture, and monuments in order to show Westerners seemingly exotic cultures. Particularly notable were daguerreotypes made in Japan by the American photographer Eliphalet Brown, Jr., who accompanied the 1853�54 mission led by Matthew C. Perry to open Japan to Western interests.
While most of the initial photographic work in these places was by Westerners, by the 1860s local practitioners had begun to open studios and commercial establishments. Marc Ferrez in Brazil, Kusakabe Kimbei in Japan, the (French-born) Bonfils family in Lebanon, and Kassian C�phas in Indonesia were among the international photographers who set up studios to supply portraits and views during this period. Development of the calotype
The popularity of the daguerreotype surpassed that of the photogenic drawing, but Talbot, convinced of the value of duplicability, continued to work to improve his process. On September 21�23, 1840, while experimenting with gallic acid, a chemical he was informed would increase the sensitivity of his prepared paper, Talbot discovered that the acid could be used to develop a latent image. This discovery revolutionized photography on paper as it had revolutionized photography on metal in 1835. Whereas previously Talbot had needed a camera exposure of one hour to produce a 6.5-by-8.5-inch (16.5-by-21.6-cm) negative, he now found that one minute was sufficient. Developing the latent image made photography on paper as valued as the daguerreotype, although the image still was not as clearly defined. Talbot named his improved negative process the calotype, from the Greek meaning �beautiful picture,� and he protected his discoveries by patent.
The first aesthetically satisfying use made of this improved process was in the work of David Octavius Hill, a Scottish landscape painter, and his partner, Robert Adamson, an Edinburgh photographer. In 1843 Hill decided to paint a group portrait of the ministers who in that year formed the Free Church of Scotland; in all, there were more than 400 figures to be painted. Sir David Brewster, who knew of Talbot�s process from the inventor himself, suggested to Hill that he make use of this new technique. Hill then enlisted the aid of Adamson, and together they made hundreds of photographs, not only of the members of the church meeting but also of people from all walks of life. Although their sitters were posed outdoors in glaring sunlight and had to endure exposures of upward of a minute, Hill and Adamson managed to retain a lifelike vitality. Hill�s aesthetic was dominated by the painting style of the period in lighting and posing, particularly in the placement of the hands; in many of Hill�s portraits, both the sitter�s hands are visible, placed in a manner meant to add grace and liveliness to a dark portion of an image. Indeed, many of his calotypes are strikingly reminiscent of canvases by Sir Henry Raeburn and other contemporary artists. Proving the calotype�s artistic qualities, William Etty, a royal academician, copied in oils the calotype Hill and Adamson made of him in 1844 and exhibited it as a self-portrait. In addition to their formal portraiture, the partners made a series of photographs of fishermen and their wives at Newhaven and in Edinburgh, as well as architectural studies.
The calotype, which lent itself to being manipulated by chemicals and paper, was used in the 1850s to create exceptionally artistic images of architectural monuments. Development of stereoscopic photography
Stereoscopic photographic views (stereographs) were immensely popular in the United States and Europe from about the mid-1850s through the early years of the 20th century. First described in 1832 by English physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone, stereoscopy was improved by Sir David Brewster in 1849. The production of the stereograph entailed making two images of the same subject, usually with a camera with two lenses placed 2.5 inches (6 cm) apart to simulate the position of the human eyes, and then mounting the positive prints side by side laterally on a stiff backing. Brewster devised a stereoscope through which the finished stereograph could be viewed; the stereoscope had two eye pieces through which the laterally mounted images, placed in a holder in front of the lenses, were viewed. The two images were brought together by the effort of the human brain to create an illusion of three-dimensionality.
Stereographs were made of a wide range of subjects, the most popular being views of landscapes and monuments and composed narrative scenes of a humorous or slightly suggestive nature. Stereoscopes were manufactured for various price ranges and tastes, from the simple hand-held device introduced by Oliver Wendell Holmes (who promoted stereography through articles in
Photography was revolutionized in 1851 by the introduction of the collodion process" class="md-crosslink">wet collodion process for making glass negatives. This new technique, invented by the English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer, was 20 times faster than all previous methods and was, moreover, free from patent restrictions. Paper prints could easily be made from glass-plate negatives. The process had one major drawback: the photographer had to sensitize the plate almost immediately before exposure and expose it and process it while the coating was moist. Collodion is a solution of nitrocellulose (guncotton) in alcohol and ether; when the solvents evaporate, a clear plasticlike film is formed. Since it is then impervious to water, the chemicals used for developing the exposed silver halides and removing the unexposed salts cannot penetrate the coating to act upon them. The wet collodion process was almost at once universally adopted because it rendered detail with great precision that rivaled that of the daguerreotype. It reigned supreme for more than 30 years and greatly increased the popularity of photography, despite the fact that it was unequally sensitive to different colours of the spectrum.
At first the positive prints made from the glass plate negatives were produced by Talbot�s salt paper method, but from the mid-1850s on they were made on albumen paper. Introduced in 1850 by Louis-D�sir� Blanquart-Evrard, albumen paper is a slow printing-out paper (i.e., paper that produces a visible image on direct exposure, without chemical development) that had been coated with egg white before being sensitized. The egg white gave the paper a glossy surface that improved the definition of the image.
A new style of portrait utilizing albumen paper, introduced in Paris by Andr�-Adolphe-Eug�ne Disd�ri in 1854, was universally popular in the 1860s. It came to be called the carte-de-visite because the size of the mounted albumen print (4 by 2.5 inches [10.2 by 6 cm]) corresponded to that of a calling card. Disd�ri used a four-lens camera to produce eight negatives on a single glass plate. Each picture could be separately posed, or several exposures of the same pose could be made at once. The principal advantage of the system was its economy: to make eight portraits the photographer needed to sensitize only a single sheet of glass and make one print, which was then cut up into separate pictures. At first cartes-de-visite almost invariably showed the subjects standing. Over time, backgrounds became ornate: furniture and such architectural fragments as papier-m�ch� columns and arches were introduced, and heavy-fringed velvet drapes were hung within range of the camera. With the advent of the cabinet-size (6.5 by 4 inches [16.5 by 10.2 cm]) picture in 1866, the decorative strategies of the photographer became yet more pronounced, so that in 1871 a photographer wrote: �One good, plain background, disrobed of castles, piazzas, columns, curtains and what not, well worked, will suit every condition of life.�
The new wet collodion process was also used to produce positive images on glass called ambrotypes, which were simply underexposed or bleached negatives that appeared positive when placed against a dark coating or backing. In pose and lighting, these popular portraits were similar to daguerreotypes in sizes and were enclosed in similar types of cases. They did not approach the brilliancy of the daguerreotype, however.
Tintypes, first known as ferrotypes or melainotypes, were cheap variations of the ambrotype. Instead of being placed on glass, the collodion emulsion was coated on thin iron sheets that were enameled black. At first they were presented in cases, surrounded by narrow gilt frames, but by the 1860s this elaborate presentation had been abandoned, and the metal sheets were simply inserted in paper envelopes, each with a cutout window the size of the image. Easy to make and inexpensive to purchase, tintypes were popular among soldiers in the Civil War and remained a form of folk art throughout the 19th century. Poses of sitters in tintypes were often informal and sometimes humorous. Because they were cheap and easy to produce, tintypes became a popular form of street photography well into the 20th century. Street-corner photographers, often equipped with a donkey, were common in European countries. Development of the dry plate
In the 1870s many attempts were made to find a dry substitute for wet collodion so that plates could be prepared in advance and developed long after exposure, which would thereby eliminate the need for a portable darkroom. In 1871 Richard Leach Maddox, an English physician, suggested suspending silver bromide in a gelatin emulsion, an idea that led, in 1878, to the introduction of factory-produced dry plates coated with gelatin containing silver salts. This event marked the beginning of the modern era of photography.
Gelatin plates were about 60 times more sensitive than collodion plates. The increased speed freed the camera from the tripod, and a great variety of small hand-held cameras became available at relatively low cost, allowing photographers to take instantaneous snapshots. Of these, the most popular was the Kodak camera, introduced by George Eastman in 1888. Its simplicity greatly accelerated the growth of amateur photography, especially among women, to whom much of the Kodak advertising was addressed. In place of glass plates, the camera contained a roll of flexible negative material sufficient for taking 100 circular pictures, each roughly 2.5 inches (6 cm) in diameter. After the last negative was exposed, the entire camera was sent to one of the Eastman factories (Rochester, New York, or Harrow, Middlesex, England), where the roll was processed and printed; �You Press the Button, We Do the Rest� was Eastman�s description of the Kodak system. At first Eastman�s so-called �American film� was used in the camera; this film was paper based, and the gelatin layer containing the image was stripped away after development and fixing and transferred to a transparent support. In 1889 this was replaced by film on a transparent plastic base of nitrocellulose that had been invented in 1887 by the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin of Newark, New Jersey.
Photography of movement
A few years before the introduction of the dry plate, the world was amazed by the photographs of horses taken by Eadweard Muybridge in California. To take these photographs, Muybridge used a series of 12 to 24 cameras arranged side by side opposite a reflecting screen. The shutters of the cameras were released by the breaking of their attached threads as the horse dashed by. Through this technique, Muybridge secured sets of sequential photographs of successive phases of the walk, the trot, and the gallop. When the pictures were published internationally in the popular and scientific press, they demonstrated that the positions of the animal�s legs differed from those in traditional hand-drawn representations. To prove that his photographs were accurate, Muybridge projected them upon a screen one after the other with a lantern-slide projector he had built for the purpose; the result was the world�s first motion-picture presentation. This memorable event took place at the San Francisco Art Association in 1880.
Muybridge, whose early studies were made with wet plates, continued his motion studies for some 20 years. With the new gelatin plates, he was able to improve his technique greatly, and in 1884�85, at the invitation of the University of Pennsylvania, he produced 781 sequential photographs of many kinds of animals as well as men and women engaged in a wide variety of activities. He was aided in this project by painter Thomas Eakins, who also made motion studies.
Muybridge�s photographic analysis of movement coincided with studies by French physiologist �tienne-Jules Marey to develop chronophotography. Whereas Muybridge had employed a battery of cameras to record detailed, separate images of successive stages of movement, Marey used only one, recording an entire sequence of movement on a single plate. With Marey�s method, the images of various phases of motion sometimes overlapped, but it was easier to see and understand the flow of movement. Marey was also able to record higher speeds at shorter intervals than Muybridge. Both his and Muybridge�s work greatly contributed to the field of motion study and to the development of the motion picture. Early attempts at colour
Photography�s transmutation of nature�s colours into various shades of black and white had been considered a drawback of the process from its inception. To remedy this, many portrait photographers employed artists who hand-tinted daguerreotypes and calotypes. Artists also painted in oils over albumen portraits on canvas. Franz von Lenbach in Munich, for example, was among the many who projected onto canvas an image that had been made light-sensitive, whereupon he painted freely over it. In Japan, where hand-coloured woodcuts had a great tradition and labour was cheap, some firms from the 1870s onward sold photographs of scenic views and daily life that had been delicately hand-tinted. In the 1880s photochromes, colour prints made from hand-coloured photographs, became fashionable, and they remained popular until they were gradually replaced in the first decades of the 20th century by Autochrome plates. Establishing genresPortraiture
From the medium�s beginnings, the portrait became one of photography�s most popular genres. Some early practitioners such as Southworth and Hawes and Hill and Adamson broke new ground through the artistry they achieved in their portraits. Outside such mastery, however, portraiture throughout the world generally took on the form of uninspired daguerreotypes, tintypes, cartes-de-visite, and ambrotypes, and most portraitists relied heavily on accessories and retouching. Such conventions were broken by several important subsequent photographers, notably Gaspard-F�lix Tournachon, a Parisian writer, editor, and caricaturist who used the pseudonym of Nadar; �tienne Carjat, likewise a Parisian caricaturist; and Julia Margaret Cameron.
Nadar took up photography in 1853 as a means of making studies of the features of prominent Frenchmen for inclusion in a large caricature lithograph, the �Panth�on Nadar.� He posed his sitters against plain backgrounds and bathed them with diffused daylight, which brought out every detail of their faces and dress. He knew most of them, and the powers of observation he had developed as a caricaturist led him to recognize their salient features, which he recorded directly, without the exaggeration that he put in his drawings. When Nadar�s photographs were first exhibited, they won great praise in the
Carjat depicted the prominent Parisian artists, actors, writers, musicians, and politicians of his day. These portraits display dignity and distinction like those of Nadar, his contemporary and rival, but with a sometimes startling level of intensity in the sitters� gazes.
Cameron took up photography as a pastime in 1864. Using the wet-plate process, she made portraits of such celebrated Victorians of her acquaintance as Sir John F.W. Herschel, George Frederick Watts, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. For her portraits, a number of which were shown at the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, Cameron used a lens with the extreme focal length of 30 inches (76.2 cm) to obtain large close-ups. This lens required such long exposures that the subjects frequently moved. The lack of optical definition and this accidental blurring was criticized by the photographic establishment, yet the power of her work won her praise among artists. This can be explained only by the intensity of her vision. �When I have had these men before my camera,� she wrote about her portraits of great figures,
my whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty toward them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner man as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus obtained has almost been the embodiment of a prayer.
Besides these memorable portraits, Cameron produced a large number of allegorical studies, as well as images of children and young women in costume, acting out biblical scenes or themes based on the poetry of her hero, Tennyson. In making these pictures�which some today find weak and sentimental�she was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite painters, who portrayed similar themes in their work. Photojournalism
From the outset, photography served the press. Within weeks after the French government�s announcement of the process in 1839, magazines were publishing woodcuts or lithographs with the byline �from a daguerreotype.� In fact, the two earliest illustrated weeklies�The Illustrated London News" class="md-crosslink">
Photography as an adjunct of war reportage began when Roger Fenton sailed from London to the Crimea to photograph the war between England, Russia, and Turkey in 1855. He was sent to provide visual evidence to counter the caustic written reports dispatched by William Russell, war correspondent for The Times" class="md-crosslink">
When the Civil War broke out in the United States, Mathew B. Brady, a New York City daguerreotypist and portraitist, conceived the bold plan of making a photographic record of the hostilities. When told the government could not finance such an undertaking, he invested his own savings in the project, expecting to recover his outlay by selling thousands of prints. Brady and his crew of about 20 photographers�among them Alexander Gardner and Timothy H. O�Sullivan, who both left his employ in the midst of hostilities�produced an amazing record of the battlefield. At his New York gallery, Brady showed pictures of the dead at Antietam. The
Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.�It seems somewhat singular that the same sun that looked down on the faces of the slain, blistering them, blotting out from the bodies all semblance to humanity, and hastening corruption, should have thus caught their features upon canvas, and given them perpetuity for ever. But so it is.
Throughout the remainder of the 19th century, intermittent conflicts in Asia and Africa arising from imperialist ambitions were documented by photographers working for news media and for companies that manufactured stereographs. For the most part, war images were accepted as truthful depictions of painful events. However, after images of the Communard uprising in Paris in 1871 were shown to have been doctored, the veracity of such camera documentation no longer could be taken for granted.
Regular use of photographs in magazines began with the perfection of the halftone process, which allowed the camera image to be printed at the same time as the type and thereby reduced the cost of reproduction. The first newspaper halftone in the United States appeared in 1888, and shortly thereafter newspapers turned to photography for reporting topical events, making the profession of newspaper illustrator obsolete. Although technical advances improved reproduction quality, apart from impressive examples of combat photography, the subjects and styles of early journalistic photography were generally unimaginative and dull. Documentary photographyLandscape and architectural documentation
From the earliest days of the medium, landscape, architecture, and monuments were appealing subjects for photographers. This sort of photography, which was collected by artists, scientists, and travelers, was impelled by several factors. In Europe one powerful factor was the maneuverings among western European powers for control of portions of North Africa and Asia. From the late 1850s through the 1870s, British photographers were particularly active in recording the natural landscape and monuments of the empire�s domains: Francis Frith worked in Egypt and Asia Minor, producing three albums of well-composed images; Samuel Bourne photographed throughout India (with a retinue of equipment bearers); John Thomson produced a descriptive record of life and landscape in China; and French photographer Maxime Du Camp traveled to Egypt with Gustave Flaubert on a government commission to record landscape and monuments.
Both for patriotic reasons and as a commodity for travelers, photographers also were active in recording the landscape of western Europe in the 1850s and �60s. Important British photographers included Roger Fenton, who worked in England and Wales; Charles Clifford, who worked in Spain; Robert Macpherson, who photographed Rome; and George Washington Wilson, who photographed Scotland. French photographer Adolphe Braun recorded the landscape around his native Alsace, as well as the mountainous terrain of the French Savoy, as did the brothers Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson. Herman Krone in Germany and Giacchino Altobelli and Carlo Ponti in Italy were also intent on recording the beauties of their regional landscapes.
Photographs of specific historical buildings were made for a number of purposes: to satisfy antiquarian curiosity, to provide information for restoration, to supply artists with material on which to base paintings, or to effect preservation efforts. Practically from photography�s inception, such documentation was commissioned by public and private authorities. In western Europe and the United States, photographs captured the building of the industrial infrastructure, from bridges to railroad lines, from opera houses to public places to monumental statuary. In the early 1850s Philip Henry Delamotte was hired to document the progress of the construction of the Crystal Place in London, and a few years later Robert Howlett depicted the building of the Great Eastern transatlantic steamship. Alfred and John Bool and Henry Dixon worked for the Society for Photographing Old London, recording historical buildings and relics. In the 1850s the French government commissioned several photographers to document historical buildings. Working with cameras making photographs as large as 20 by 29 inches (51 by 74 cm), Henri Le Secq, Charles Marville, and Charles N�gre produced remarkable calotypes of the cathedrals of Notre-Dame (Paris), Chartres, and Amiens, as well as other structures that were being restored after centuries of neglect. An establishment was set up in Lille, France, by Blanquart-Evrard at which these paper negatives could be printed in bulk.
In the United States explorations of the lands beyond the Great Plains led to the apogee of landscape photography during the period. Before the Civil War, relatively few exceptional images of the Western landscape had been made. In the postwar era railroad companies and government commissions included photographers among their teams sent to determine mineral deposits, rights of way, and other conditions that would be suitable for settlement. Of the photographers confronting the spectacular landscape of the American West in the 1870s and �80s, William Henry Jackson, O�Sullivan, and Carleton Watkins produced particularly notable work. Both O�Sullivan, who helped survey Nevada and New Mexico, and Watkins, who worked in California and Oregon, were able to convey through their work a sense of the untamed and extraordinary quality of the Western landscape. As a testament to the power of his images, Jackson�s photographs of the Grand Canyon and the Yellowstone River were influential in getting public land set aside for Yellowstone National Park. The work these and other photographers of the American West produced usually was made available in several sizes and formats, from stereographic images to mammoth-sized works.
Landscapes in places outside the United States and Europe were usually portrayed by European photographers during this period. However, exceptions included the Chinese photographer Afong Lai and the Brazilian photographer Marc Ferrez, both of whom produced excellent views of their native countries. In particular, Lai�s serene compositions reflected the conventions of the long-standing tradition of Chinese landscape painting. Social documentation
The recognition of the power of photography to persuade and inform led to a form of documentary photography known as social documentation, or social photography. The origins of the genre can be traced to the classic sociological study issued by Henry Mayhew in 1851,
Social documentation became more focused in the work of Jacob A. Riis, a police reporter in New York City in the 1880s who spent about four years depicting slum life. Employing cameramen at first, Riis eventually learned the rudiments of the medium so that he could himself portray the living and working conditions of immigrants whose social circumstances, he believed, led to crime and dissolution. Reproduced by the recently developed halftone process, the photographs and drawings based on them illustrated
In European countries especially, there was also an awakened interest in documenting social customs during this period. Sometimes this meant recording those European customs that were being replaced by advancing industrialization. This interest led to the establishment of photographic archives, such as the National Photographic Record Association, set up in the mid-1890s by Benjamin Stone, a British member of Parliament. Left to the city of Birmingham, the collection included photographs taken by Stone and others of vanishing local customs. Other times this led to an interest in the particularities of dress and custom of those living in distant regions. William Carrick, a Scotsman, portrayed daily life in Russia. In addition to portraying nature and artifacts, John Thomson, Felice Beato, and Samuel Bourne also depicted indigenous peoples in China and India. In 1888 the journal
Photography as artEarly developments
Photographic societies�made up of both professionals and amateurs enticed by the popularity of the collodion process�began to form in the mid-19th century, giving rise to the consideration of photography as an aesthetic medium. In 1853 the Photographic Society, parent of the present Royal Photographic Society, was formed in London, and in the following year the Soci�t� Fran�aise de Photographie was founded in Paris. Toward the end of the 19th century, similar societies appeared in German-speaking countries, eastern Europe, and India. Some were designed to promote photography generally, while others emphasized only artistic expression. Along with these organizations, journals promoting photography as art also appeared.
At the first meeting of the Photographic Society, the president, Sir Charles Eastlake (who was then also president of the Royal Academy), invited the miniature painter Sir William Newton to read the paper �Upon Photography in an Artistic View� (
In response to this desire to create photographs that would fit an established conception of what �art� should be, several photographers began to combine several negatives to make one print. These consisted of compositions that were considered too complicated to be photographed in a straightforward manner and thus pushed photography beyond its so-called mechanical capabilities. A famous example of this style was by O.G. Rejlander, a Swede who had studied art in Rome and was practicing photography in England. He joined 30 negatives to produce a 31-by-16-inch (79-by-41-cm) print entitled
Rejlander�s technique stimulated Henry Peach Robinson, a professional photographer who had been trained as an artist, to produce similar combination prints. He achieved fame with a five-negative print,
Robinson became an articulate member of the Photographic Society, and his teaching was even more influential than his photography. In 1869 the first of many editions and translations of his book,
So long as photographers maintained that the way to photography as art was the emulation of painting, art critics were reluctant to admit the new medium to an independent aesthetic position. Portraits, when done as sensitively and as directly as those produced by Hill and Adamson, Nadar, and Cameron, won praise. But sentimental genre scenes, posed and arranged for the camera and lacking the truthfulness thought to be characteristic of photography, were the subject of considerable controversy. This debate would reach a crescendo at the end of the century. Naturalistic photography
Opposing the strategies advocated by Robinson, in the 1880s the English physician and photographer Peter Henry Emerson proposed that photographs should reflect nature, offer �the illusion of truth,� and be produced without using retouching techniques, recombining multiple prints, or utilizing staged settings, models, and costumes. He believed that the unique qualities of tone, texture, and light inherent in photography made it a unique art form, making any embellishments used for the sake of �art� unnecessary. This is not to say his own photographs were purely documentary�in fact, his work in some ways mimicked the artistic effects of the Barbizon school and Impressionist painting�but they eschewed the manipulated artistic effects of his contemporaries. Emerson�s views, known as naturalistic photography, gained a considerable audience through his widely read 1889 publication entitled
The ideas of Newton, Rejlander, Robinson, and Emerson�while seemingly varied�all pursued the same goal: to gain acceptance for photography as a legitimate art form. These efforts to gain acceptance were all encompassed within Pictorialism, a movement that had been afoot for some time and that crystallized in the 1890s and early 1900s, when it was promoted through a series of international exhibiting groups. In 1892 the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring was founded in Britain by Robinson, George Davison, a leader of the Art Nouveau movement, and others dissatisfied with the scientific bias of the London Photographic Society. The group held annual exhibitions, which they called salons. While the members� work varied from naturalism to staged scenes to manipulated prints, by the turn of the century it was their united belief that �through the
At the turn of the 20th century, one of the most influential Pictorialist groups was the Photo-Secession, founded in New York City in 1902 by photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The Secession�s name was taken from the avant-garde secessionist movements in Europe that sought to differentiate themselves from what they considered outmoded ways of working and thinking about the arts. With the help of Edward Steichen, Stieglitz opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession�popularly known as �291� after its address on Fifth Avenue�which exhibited the work of Modernist painters and sculptors as well as that of photographers who used a wide variety of printing processes, including gum-bichromate and bromoil printing. These procedures required considerable handwork and resulted in one-of-a-kind prints that in their softening effects resembled etchings or lithographs rather than photographs. Among the members of the Photo-Secession were Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude K�sebier, and Clarence H. White. Between 1903 and 1917 Stieglitz published 50 issues of the beautifully printed journal
Over the 15-year period of the Photo-Secession�s existence, the outlook of Stieglitz and individual members changed, reflecting the general move away from the more artificial aspects of Pictorialism as the 20th century began. Increasingly, photographers wanted their work to look like photographs, not paintings, and valued the qualities that were unique to photography. Over time, 291 began to show more painting than photography, and, as Stieglitz became even more convinced of the value of �straight,� rather than manipulated, photographic printing, several original adherents fell away, among them K�sebier and White. The final two issues of
In the period immediately following World War I, much photography was characterized by sharply defined imagery, especially of objects removed from their actual context. The clean lines and cool effects of this style�variously called the �New Objectivity,� the �new vision,� or �Precisionism��was a reflection, perhaps, of the overarching role of industry and technology during the 1920s.
Strand, continuing in the direction he had unveiled in 1917, produced powerful, highly detailed close-ups of machines and organic matter and made sparkling landscapes in Gasp�, Quebec, and the American West. His approach changed again when he was invited to Mexico to produce educational films for the government. There he made a series of portraits (again with the prism lens) and landscapes, which he published in 1940 as gravure prints. Steichen, who had been in command of aerial photography for the American Expeditionary Forces, abandoned his earlier impressionistic handling in favour of crisp, sharply focused celebrity, fashion, and product images, which appeared in
A preference for a straight, highly detailed presentation of natural and manufactured forms also characterized the work of California photographer Edward Weston. Using large-format (8-by-10-inch [20.3-by-25.4-cm]) equipment with lenses stopped down to the smallest aperture, Weston, whose earlier career had been in commercial portraiture, formulated a method of �rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.� Further, Weston, like Strand, did not approve of cropping or hand work of any kind on the negative; both held that the final image should be composed in the ground glass of the camera prior to exposure.
In Europe this approach of favouring extremely sharp definition was known as Neue Sachlichkeit (�New Objectivity�). Its outstanding proponents were the German photographers Karl Blossfeldt and Albert Renger-Patzsch. Blossfeldt made highly detailed and magnified images of plants, removed from their natural habitat. Renger-Patzsch, a professional photographer in Essen, was fascinated by the formal qualities of everyday objects, both organic and manufactured. Like those of his American counterparts, his images featured strong design components and stressed the materiality of substances rather than the maker�s emotional attitude toward the subject. He too believed that the final image should exist in all its completeness before the exposure was made and that it should be an unmanipulated record. His ideas and images, published in 1928 in
A similarly objective approach characterized the work of photographers interested in the artistic ideas embodied in Constructivism; the movement proposed that photographs could be a means to present the commonplace from fresh vantage points and thereby reawaken interest in routine objects and processes. This idea, which originated in the Soviet Union and spread quickly to Germany and central European countries during the late 1920s and early 1930s, granted greater latitude for experimentation with form. Its foremost spokesman was Russian painter and ideologue Aleksandr Rodchenko, who employed distinctly unusual vantage points in order to give the mundane world a new appearance. The visual ideas underpinning Constructivism appealed to Hungarian photographer L�szl� Moholy-Nagy, who reinterpreted them during his tenure first at the Bauhaus in Weimar, then in Dessau, Germany, and later at the School of Design in Chicago, where they influenced several generations of American photographers.
Similar ideas were utilized by photographers in Japan, especially following the earthquake of 1923. Among those whose imagery reflected the new sharper style, with its emphasis on form rather than atmosphere, was Yasuzō Nojima, who gained a reputation for his incisive portraits, groundbreaking nudes, and landscapes. Shinzō Fukuhara�s photographs, particularly his landscapes, were also highly regarded. Experimental approaches
By 1916 abstract ideas were appealing to a number of other photographers. Photo-Secessionist Alvin Langdon Coburn, living in England, created a series of photographs known as vortographs, in which no subject matter is recognizable. During the late 1910s, students and faculty at the Clarence H. White School of Photography (started by another former colleague of Stieglitz), in particular Bernard S. Horne and Margaret Watkins, also produced works that displayed the influence of Modernist abstraction.
Between the two World Wars, an experimental climate�promoted by Constructivist ideology and by Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus�admitted an entire range of new directions in photography. One aspect of this experimentalism involved eschewing subject matter and instead creating photographs that more closely resembled abstract paintings. Photographers again manipulated images, experimented with processes, and used multiple images or exposures. Sometimes, rather than experimenting with the camera itself, they experimented with light and sensitized paper. For a brief time this direction was allied with Dadaist ideas about accident, chance, and the subconscious. One important exponent of photographic experimentalism was the American expatriate Dada artist Man Ray, whose �rayographs,� photographs that appeared as series of swirling abstract shapes, were created without a camera by exposing objects placed on sensitized paper to light.
Cameraless photography, which came to be called �light graphics,� also appealed to Moholy-Nagy and his wife, Lucia Moholy, who called the products of their experimentation �photograms.� Photographs made by using this kind of manipulation of light could have completely abstract shapes or forms or feature recognizable objects. A number of artists in central Europe also manipulated light and objects to produce abstract images; among them were Jaroslav R�ssler and Gyorgy Kepes, who eventually taught at the Chicago Institute of Design. There Kepes was instrumental in introducing its methods to American photographers, among them Carlotta Corpron, who produced a series of abstractions by using a device, called a light modulator, favoured at the Bauhaus.
The manipulative strategies of photocollage and montage had considerable appeal during the interwar period in part because�by appropriating �content� from other sources�they could deal with complex political or psychological feelings and ideas. Czech and German artists were especially drawn to this type of experimentation. Herbert Bayer, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, and Hannah H�ch were unusually adept in their innovative use of collage and montage to make ironic comments on a range of political and social issues in German society. Heartfield, whose work appeared on book jackets and posters, savaged the political thuggery behind the rise of Nazism by juxtaposing political imagery�for example, a stock photograph of Hitler�with unexpected, provocative imagery. H�ch concentrated on portraying the role of the �new woman� emerging in the chaos of postwar German society; for example, the title of one work by H�ch,
Working mainly in the opening years of the 20th century, French photographer Eug�ne Atget documented shop fronts, architectural details and statuary, trees and greenery, and individuals who made their living as street vendors, producing some 10,000 photographs of Paris and its environs. Unlike many of the architectural photographers before him, Atget showed a remarkable attention to composition, the materiality of substances, the quality of light, and especially the photographer�s feelings about the subject matter. His work was bought mainly by architects, painters, and archivists. The visually expressive force of Atget�s work, produced with a large-format camera, is a testament to the capacity of documentation to surpass mere record making to become inspiring experience.
In like manner, although not as extensively, Czech photographer Josef Sudek created an artistic document of his immediate surroundings. He was particularly fascinated with his home and garden, often shooting the latter through a window.
Lewis W. Hine created a similarly thorough document of a subject, in his case immigrant and working-class life in the United States. One of the first to refer to himself as a social photographer, Hine began his documentation of immigrants at Ellis Island while still a teacher at the Ethical Culture School in New York. Eventually he gave up teaching to work for the National Child Labor Committee, an organization of progressives seeking to make the American industrial economy more aware of its effects on individual workers. From 1908 to 1916 Hine concentrated on photographing child workers, producing thousands of individual portraits and group scenes of underage children employed in textile mills, mines, canning establishments, and glass factories and in street trades throughout the United States. His work was effective in prompting first state regulation and eventually federal regulation of child labour.
Documentary photography experienced a resurgence in the United States during the Great Depression, when the federal government undertook a major documentary project. Produced by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) under the direction of Roy E. Stryker, who earlier had come in contact with Hine�s work, the project comprised more than 270,000 images produced by 11 photographers working for varying lengths and at different times in different places. All worked to show the effects of agricultural displacement caused by the economic downturn, lack of rain, and wasteful agricultural practices in the American South and midlands. In this project, documentation did double duty. One task was to record conditions both on nonfunctioning farms and in new homesteads created by federal legislation. Another was to arouse compassion so that problems addressed by legislative action would win support. A portrait of a migratory pea picker�s wife, made by California portraitist turned documentarian Dorothea Lange, became an icon of the anxiety generated by the Great Depression.
Walker Evans was another photographer whose work for the FSA transformed social documentation from mere record making into transcendent visual expression. On leave from the FSA, Evans worked with James Agee on
Documentary projects underwritten by other federal agencies also existed. One of more significant projects was executed by Berenice Abbott. Inspired in part by Atget�s studies of Paris, she endeavoured to photograph the many parts of New York City and to create �an intuition of past, present, and future.� She was able to interest the Works Projects Administration (WPA) in underwriting an exhibit and publication along these lines entitled
The German portraitist August Sander, intent on creating a sociological document of his own, generated a portrait of Germany during this period. His focus was on the individuals composing German society, documenting a class structure with workers and farmers on the bottom. Sander�s inclusion of types not considered Aryan by German authorities brought him into conflict with the Nazi regime, which destroyed the plates for a proposed book entitled
Among the many other amateur and professional photographers who interested themselves in the documentation of everyday life were Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, who portrayed everyday life in Russia; Manuel �lvarez Bravo, who created images that offer a psychologically nuanced glimpse of Mexican life; and Robert Doisneau and Brassa�, both of whom captured vibrant images of everyday life in Paris. Perhaps the most extensive ethnographic documentation was that of Edward S. Curtis, who produced 20 volumes of studies of Native American tribespeople over the course of some 20 years. The enormous interest in how people outside Western culture appeared and behaved was a factor in the increasing popularity of
Toward the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century, greater numbers of magazines were published throughout the world. The enlarged demand for photographic illustration, along with the appearance of lighter, easier-to-use camera equipment, led to an increase in images of war for reproduction. The Spanish-American War was documented by Jimmy Hare, the South African War by Horace W. Nicholls, the Russo-Japanese War by Luigi Barzini, and the Mexican Revolution by Augustin Victor Casasola. Although strict censorship prevailed with regard to the photographic record of World War I, the prominence of picture magazines from the 1920s through the 1950s ensured the continuance of war reportage.
A new approach to photojournalism began to emerge with the appearance of the Ermanox in 1924 and the Leica in 1925. These two German-made miniature cameras, fitted with wide-aperture lenses, required extremely short exposure times for outdoor work and were even able to photograph indoor scenes with available light. The Leica had the added advantage of using 35-mm roll film that could be advanced quickly, allowing a succession of exposures to be made of the same subject. This capability led to photographs whose informality of pose and sense of presence were remarkable.
Owing to these developments, the photojournalist was able to perceive a significant moment in a fraction of a second and to use the camera with such speed and precision that the instantaneous perception would be preserved forever. This is evident in the work of the Hungarian Andr� Kert�sz in Paris during the 1920s. The Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson began about 1930 to develop the style that he later called the search for the �decisive moment.� To him the camera was an �extension of the eye.� Preferring the miniature 35-mm-film camera, he worked unobtrusively, making numerous exposures that usually included one in which all the elements come together to form a compelling psychological and visual statement.
In 1928�29 two of the largest picture magazines in Europe, the
The example of the German picture magazines was followed in other parts of Europe and in the United States. One was the short-lived
Among
Initially
The photojournalistic style popularized by
Memorable groups of photographs were taken for the major picture magazines. Examples are Man�s
The Autochrome process, introduced in France in 1907 by Auguste and Louis Lumi�re, was the first practical colour photography process. It used a colour screen (a glass plate covered with grains of starch dyed to act as primary-colour filters and black dust that blocked all unfiltered light) coated with a thin film of panchromatic (i.e., sensitive to all colours) emulsion, and it resulted in a positive colour transparency. Because Autochrome was a colour transparency and could be viewed only by reflected light, however, researchers continued to look for improvements and alternative colour processes.
In 1935 Leopold Godowsky, Jr., and Leopold Mannes, two American musicians working with the Kodak Research Laboratories, initiated the modern era of colour photography with their invention of Kodachrome film. With this reversal (slide) film, colour transparencies could be obtained that were suitable both for projection and for reproduction. A year later the Agfa Company of Germany developed the Agfacolor negative-positive process, but owing to World War II the film did not become available until 1949. Meanwhile, in 1942 Kodak introduced the Kodacolor negative-positive film that 20 years later�after many improvements in quality and speed and a great reduction in price�would become the most popular film used for amateur photography.
Contemporary photography,
With the improvement in colour materials and processes, photographers became more interested in its creative possibilities. Beginning in the 1940s, American photographer Eliot Porter produced subtle studies of birds and nature in which colour allowed him to render an unparalleled level of nuance. Appreciated for both their scientific and their aesthetic value, these photographs embodied the potential of colour. Austrian photojournalist Ernst Haas first used colour in the photo-essay
In the period after World War II, as the United States entered a period of domestic peace and prosperity, many photographers there moved away from documentary realities and focused instead on the intrinsic qualities of photography; such experiments paralleled the ascendancy of the Abstract Expressionist art movement, which similarly looked at the intrinsic quality of painting. Minor White combined ideas about photography�s incomparable descriptive power, taken from Edward Weston, with those about its emotional expressiveness, taken from Alfred Stieglitz. Through his long career as an influential teacher and founding editor of
Other American photographers influenced by the Abstract Expressionist style of the era included Aaron Siskind, who found formal configurations in graffiti, weathered wood and plaster, and torn billboards (what he called the �detritus of the world�), and Harry Callahan, whose work demonstrated a highly developed sense of linear form. Siskind and Callahan inspired a generation of young photographers through their teachings at the Institute of Design, the school that had been started in 1937 in Chicago by Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus. Barbara Crane, Ken Josephson, and Garry Winogrand were among students who later achieved fame. In England Bill Brandt created expressive photographs of nudes, shooting his subject matter at such close range that the human body took on the appearance of series of patterns and abstract designs. In Germany Otto Steinert led the Fotoform group of photographers, who created close-up views of nature that were also nearly abstract in their effects.
By the 1960s similar styles and ideas in photography had spread to Asia, in part because photographic magazines became widely available. Japanese photographers had been aware of Modernist currents before World War II, but afterward they pursued them more openly. Among the important photographers of this generation were Shōmei Tomatsu, who made vivid images on the streets of Tokyo; Eikō Hosoe, who captured imagery evoking human sensuality; and Hiroshi Sugimoto, who was entranced by images conveying stillness and emptiness. For a period the government in China exerted control over photographic imagery, but by the late 20th century photographers had found some freedoms. Chen Changfen was able to indulge his interest in colour abstractions, and Xie Hailong produced photographic documentations of problems in contemporary Chinese society, such as the difficulties faced by rural students seeking an education.
Street photography might be considered a special aspect of documentation: the street photographer is intrigued by the serendipitous nature of street activity, but, in contrast to the social documentarian, the street photographer does not necessarily have a social purpose in mind. Important street photographers included Helen Levitt, who documented subjects such as underprivileged children and young African Americans. All her work was infused with a compelling sense of immediacy. Levitt was following the steps of Cartier-Bresson, Brassa�, and Andr� Kert�sz�the best known of the many European photographers of the 1930s�50s who used their small cameras to capture the vitality of urban life. Roy DeCarava documented his native Harlem and the civil rights movement; he said that he strove for �a creative expression, the kind of penetrating insight and understanding of Negroes which I believe only a Negro photographer can interpret.� This kind of street photography, made possible by the increasing availability of light portable cameras with fast-acting mechanisms, appealed to photographers around the world. Indian photographer Raghubir Singh, who worked in colour, sought to reveal both the inner and outer life of his people through his street photography.
Other social documentation in the postwar period used the medium to examine contemporary society from a distance. Such efforts had various labels, including �social landscape.� Inspired by Swiss-born �migr� Robert Frank, who during the 1950s viewed American culture with an ironic eye, American photographers such as Bruce Davidson, Lee Friedlander, and William Klein were among those whose work suggested the effects of contemporary culture on people in industrialized societies. Often utilizing 35-mm cameras, these photographers caught seeming mundane everyday moments in works that resembled snapshots. Beneath this seeming spontaneity lay an element of critique, however, that in some cases paralleled Pop art�s examination of the banality of contemporary consumer culture.
Several important photographers defied categorization. In the early 1960s the photographer Seydou Ke�ta, working as a commercial portraitist in Mali, allowed his sitters to arrange and costume themselves. The resulting photographs created an extensive and compelling documentation of his country�s people. In the same period, influenced by the mordant eye of the earlier Austrian �migr� photographer Lisette Model, Diane Arbus created challenging portraits of people living outside prescribed ideas of �normalcy,� such as transvestites and the intellectually disabled. Developments from the 1970s to the present
Continuing the example set by Arbus, a gritty sort of social documentation emerged beginning in the 1970s and �80s, when photographers such as Larry Clark and Nan Goldin documented alternative lifestyles involving drug addiction, transvestism, and casual sex. In particular, Goldin created an elaborate series titled
Goldin usually photographed in colour, which added to the harsh sense of reality in their work; this represented a general move toward colour among photographers of their generation. William Eggleston pushed the artistic boundaries of colour by using it to explore the banality of small-town existence; along these same lines, Candida H�fer used colour to emphasize the tedium of institutional life. Richard Misrach created a massive project, known as the
From the 1970s on, as the advent of television news began to affect the popularity of picture magazines, many photojournalists whose work had been published in magazines began to take advantage of a burgeoning interest in photographic picture books. These, often produced in conjunction with exhibits, comprised photographs of newsworthy events or topics of social interest along with informative texts. Working in black and white, Swiss-born photographer Claudia Andujar (working in Brazil) and Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide portrayed indigenous peoples�groups they believed were becoming marginalized by society�and their customs. Other important figures included English photographer Don McCullin, who portrayed the devastation brought about by wars in Vietnam and in Africa; French photojournalist Raymond Depardon, who worked in Asia, Africa, and Europe; American Mary Ellen Mark, who photographed street performers and prostitutes in India, depicted street children in Seattle, Washington, and spent time documenting the inmates of a mental hospital; and Brazilian photographer Sebasti�o Salgado, who examined work and workers throughout the world, exhibiting and publishing a number of books on that topic. For his ability to make world events come pictorially alive, American James Nachtwey was three times the winner of the International Center of Photography�s photojournalism awards. By the end of the century, the technology used by these photojournalists had changed. Digital cameras sent images directly to computers, and programs allowed images to be altered seamlessly, making newspaper and magazine darkrooms obsolete.
The documentation of artifacts, begun in the 19th century, continued to interest late 20th-century photographers. Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico and American photographer Lewis Baltz concentrated on architecture and the built environment. The German duo Bernd and Hilla Becher produced an extensive portrayal of industrial buildings such as mine tipples and factories, which they usually displayed in carefully planned arrangements of multiple prints. This sort of project combined traditional documentary conventions with postmodern concepts about typologies.
Fashion photographers found their role redefined at the end of the century. As giants of fashion photography from earlier in the century such as Irving Penn and Richard Avedon became the subjects of major museum retrospectives, fashion and celebrity photography, initially meant to illustrate fashion magazines such as
Throughout most of the 20th century, the art world was dominated by painting and sculpture, with photography seen as a separate but not necessarily equal art form. In the 1980s and �90s, however, as new media such as video, performance, and installation blurred definitions of �art,� photography became one of the art world�s most prominent media. During this period a generation of prominent photographers, many of them American, helped break down these barriers between photography and �art.� American Robert Mapplethorpe received a maelstrom of attention for his masterfully executed photographs, which ranged from still lifes to portraits to, most controversially, sadomasochistic and homoerotic themes. American photographer Cindy Sherman became an international art star for her elaborately staged self-portraits in which she posed in a variety of stereotypical feminine roles and, in so doing, critiqued these clich�s. Barbara Kruger, also American, gained prominence for her modern-day montages, in which she juxtaposed photographic images with text containing social critique�perhaps most famously, the phrases �I Shop, Therefore I Am� and �Your Body Is a Battleground.� A similar use of photography in mixed-media was pursued by American Carrie Mae Weems, who reproduced 19th-century photographs of slaves on a series of banners and scrims, presenting them in a three-dimensional arrangement that commented on the visual representation of African Americans throughout history. Naomi Rosenblum Into the 21st century: the digital age
The transformation of photography from an analog medium relying on chemically developed light-sensitive emulsions to one using digital technologies for image capture and storage began in the late 1980s with the introduction of the first consumer digital cameras and in 1990 the first version of Adobe Photoshop, a program for adjusting and manipulating digital image files. Conceived as an extension of the conventional darkroom, the program adopted many of the traditional tools of black-and-white film photography but let photographers go even further. By giving photographers the ability to easily change the structure of an image, and even its contents, it called into question long-held assumptions about photographic veracity or documentary �truth value.� To some minds, it changed the very nature of the medium.
Digital photography�s full impact was not felt until the first decade of the new century. Even as late as 2001, news events�most significantly, the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.�were photographed primarily with film cameras. But because digital images could be transmitted and edited much more quickly, by decade�s end nearly all newspapers and magazines had transitioned to a digital workflow process, and their photographers were using digital cameras designed for professionals.
The transgressive aspect of digital photography was apparent even before its widespread adoption, as in 1982 when the august
Whereas photojournalists and documentarians reacted with caution to what came to be called digital imaging, other types of photographers were generally enthusiastic about its possibilities. Many artists using photography as their medium developed creative approaches that took advantage of the seamless mutability of digitally altered images, extending a long history of photographic collage, double printing, and other pre-digital forms of manipulation. Among the early adopters were Aziz + Cucher (Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher), Andreas Gursky, and Loretta Lux, all of whom stretched the limits of what is believable about a photographic image. Digital alteration also influenced the spheres of fashion and celebrity, as photographers such as Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin (working together as Inez & Vinoodh) remade the looks of models and movie stars. Magazines began to regularly send their cover photographs to digital retouchers to eliminate blemishes and minimize their models� waistlines.
Arguably the most-profound impact of digital photography has been the proliferation of picture taking and picture sharing. Since 2007, the year Apple introduced its first iPhone, so-called smartphones have become ubiquitous, as have picture-sharing applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that enable users to upload pictures from phone to Internet in a matter of seconds. One result has been an almost unfathomable archive of images of mundane events and everyday places, a virtual map of the world that finds its commercial equivalent in Google Earth, which incorporates both satellite views and Google Street View, an assemblage of ground-level pictures of human habitation.
At the same time, commercial, governmental, and military uses of photography have expanded to include 24-hour surveillance of public sites and businesses, the remote targeting of drone missile strikes, databases of digital fingerprints, portraits on identification cards, and the development of face-recognition software to aid in the identification of criminals and terrorists. Debates about the impact of the camera on civil liberties have intensified as a result.
Photographers have reacted to digital photography�s omnipresence in a variety of ways. Some�such as Chuck Close, Sally Mann, Deborah Luster, and Jerry Spagnoli�have journeyed back to photographic processes of the 19th century, making daguerreotypes or working with wet-collodion plates, or�like Chris McCaw and Alison Rossiter�have taken to printing on outdated enlarging paper from the mid-20th century. Photographic books, predicted to be made obsolete by readily viewable online images, have experienced a resurgent popularity, not only because digital printing has reduced the cost of publication but also because books allow photographers to control the narrative sequence and context in which their images are seen.
Others have seized an opportunity to critically reflect on the new image environment in which they live. Trevor Paglen, for example, has photographed the light trails of spy satellites as they cross the night sky. In addition, the convergence of still digital photographs and moving video images and the popularity of Web design tools that allow for animation, motion control, and audio editing have produced a creative arena in which photography is but one tool in the production of multimedia experiences. In the 21st century, photography has been absorbed into both the contemporary art world and that of online digital communication, blurring its formerly distinct identity but vastly enhancing its importance as a visual medium. Andy Grundberg
Citation Information
Article Title: History of photography
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 25 January 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/technology/photography
Access Date: August 24, 2019
Additional Reading General works
General reference works on photography include International Center of Photography,
Early historical overviews of the development of the art of photography are provided in Robert Taft,
Essays on art and photography can be found in Charles H. Caffin,
Studies of particular schools and types of photography include Richard Rudisill,
Photojournalism as a separate form is discussed in Wilson Hicks,