History Lecture #2

• Roger Fenton, first war photographer
• photographed the Crimean War
• Matthew Brady, American War
• sent people out to take pictures and took credit
• Timothy O'Sullivan, one of his photographers
• American Civil War, wet plate process
• Harvest of Death
• magnesium flares
• in Panama after Civil War
• geological survey
• William Henry Jackson
• Yellowstone, Rocky Mountains
• hot springs, geysers
• in 1875, on the Rocky Mountains with 12 glass plate negs the size of 20x24 and his camera
• used the collodion process
• sold "postcards"
• aerial photography, Nadar
• 1854, aerial pictures of Paris
• in hot air balloon naked, using wet plate process
• wet plate process cumbersome, achieves detail
• around 1851-1880, was popular
• Richard Maddox 1871, discovers gelatin a carrier of silver salts
• Richard Kemnet and Charles Bennet
• 1879 gelatin a practical process
• use of faster shutter speeds, more light sensitive
• 1882, Edward Weston
• standardization in photographic process with gelatin
• 1876 experiments with photo sensitivity
• Hurter and Driffield
• finding published in 1890
• lead to simplification in developing process and developing in the dark
• prior black and white negs developed in red light development of neg material that could record color
• replace glass plates
• 1854 flexible film base was experimented with
• 1888 George Eastman invented flexible film base
• not transparent
• emulsion separate from backing
• goal to simplify
• buy box camera preloaded with 100 negs
• circular, 2.5 inches
• send back to company, and sent back contact print and reloaded
• $25 for camera, first roll of film and contact print
• $10 after first development
• 27mm f/9 box camera
• buckeye, bullseye, eclipse, PDQ, Tomthumb, Kodak Box
• by 1891 using transparent film with nitrate cellulose
• same process we use today, essentially
• invented by Hannibal Goodwin, came up with nitrate cellulose but could not patent until 1898
• Kodak offered free camera to children under 12 or 13
• "a photographic notebook..." Eastman
• more sensitive film base, less flammable
• better lenses and now new grinding techniques
• larger apertures
• developed color positive and led to the color negative
• 1930 electric flashes
• 1931 photo electric light meters
• 1947 instant photography, Edward Land, Polaroid
• more automatic and now digital
• read pages 256-269
• photography not considered as a visual art until 1998
• painters turned photographers
• photographs created like paintings
• Oscar Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson
• The Two Ways of Life, 1857 (Rejlander)
• combination print from 30 images, took 6 weeks, 31x16 inches
• displayed in Manchester 1857
• purchased by Queen Victoria
• Bringing Home the May, 1862 (Robinson)
• Dawn and Sunset, 1885
• Carolling, 1887
• sketched out picture before taking it
• Fading Away, 1858 made from 5 negs
• people thought it was horrible, because at the time people believed photos had to tell the truth
• Julia Margaret Cameron
• myth and fable, allegory
• one negative
• straight forward portraits
• photographed Charles Darwin
• Allegorical portraits
• Head of a Child
• "deliberate blur"
• Kiss of Peace
• Rosebud of a Girl
• 1880s, Peter Henry Emmerson
• art form independent from painting
• Coming Home From the Marshes, 1886
• an honesty to his work
• Gathering Water Lillies, 1886
• Setting the Bow, 1886
• "photographs should mimic what the eye sees"
• In the Barley Harvest, 1888
• The Pond, 1888
• fuzzygraphs, soft focus photos
• pictorialism
• 1890-1920 group pictorialists
• accept as a fine art
• Alfred Stieglitz in North America
• in New York group the Photo Secession
• View of Montreal, 1852
• Clarence White
• Ring Toss, 1899
• Gertrud Casbur, Photo Secession
• The Sketch, 1902
• Harvesting Black Forest in Germany, Stieglitz
• 1903-1917, magazine Camera Work
• reproductions of modern art
• 291 Gallery in New York
• shifted to straight photography
• photographic images should be produced without any overt manipulation
• subject matter grew to be more abstract but maintained a straight photography field
• Edward Steichen, Photo Secession
• The Pond, 1898
• Lotus, 1915
• attention to form, clarity of focus
• fine art and commercial photography
• worked for Vogue
• final issue of Photo Works published Paul Strand