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Transition / Connections The developing Portrait: Painting towards photography Liz Rideal
General Historical Background
In the early twenty-first century we are so familiar with the photograph and technically reproduced imagery, that to imagine a world without these visuals is hard. The invention of photography was such an astonishing achievement in the mid nineteenth century that perhaps its only imaginable equivalent might be the first human steps taken on the moon's surface and robotic vehicles landing on Mars.
Photography now relates to everything within society and art. In portraiture, the impact of photography is huge; the correlation between 'reality' and 'likeness' as perceived within the format of the photograph is undeniable. This combination of illusion and real life, guarantees its continuing success as a medium for this purpose, whether digital, moving or other lens based methods of making portraits.
Although the invention of photography is dated at approximately 1839, it is more correct to date the fixing of an image at this time. The basic principles of the medium were known to the Chinese in 5th century B.C., but it was the chemistry that accompanied the camera obscura which was unknown. The camera obscura, from the latin camera = room, obscura = dark, is literally a darkened room. (see http://brightbytes.com/cosite/what.html)
A completely darkened room with a small hole in one wall will produce an image on the wall opposite (try this and see). The image will be an inverted picture of what is outside. The bigger the hole, the brighter but more blurred the image. A pin hole camera works the same way.
The Italian, Daniele Barbaro (1513-70), suggested adding an old man's spectacle lens (this is a biconvex lens prescribed for correcting long-sightedness), to be placed in the pinhole, in order to sharpen the focus of the image. (La Practtica della Perspecttiva, Barbaro, Venice, Italy. 1569.Ch.5.p.192)
The mirror correcting the inversion was demonstrated by Giovanni Battista Benedetti (1530-90) in 1585. He showed how the addition of a mirror at 45º to the plane of the lens would turn the previous inverted image the right way up. The clarity of the image then depends on the quality of the lens and mirror.
Even though the telescope was introduced in 1609, astronomers continued to use a camera obscura for solar observations because of the danger to their eyes when looking directly at the sun. Portable camera obscuras were introduced in the 17th century and became popular with artists as an aid to accurate perspective drawing.
These portable camera obscuras were typically shaped like a pyramid with a mirror and lens at the top. Inside, the image was focused on a sheet of paper, and the artist could trace round the picture accurately. These tents, were consequently refined to the type of 'writing desk' style of equipment used by Robert Boyle, (1627-91) , a chemist and natural philosopher, who in his tract, Of the Systematicall and Cosmical Qualities of Things, (Oxford, 1669), wrote about a portable box camera he had constructed. Having described how to make a piece of opaque paper transparent by greasing it, he goes on to recount the delights of such a box.
Robert Boyle by John Chapman after Johann Kerseboom, 1800	"If a pretty large box be so contrived that there may be towards one end of it a fine sheet of paper stretched like the leather of a drum head at a convenient distance from the remoter end, where there is to be left a hole covered with a lenticular [shaped like a lentil or lens] glass fitted for the purpose, you may, at a little hole left at the upper part of the box, see upon the paper such a lively representation not only of the motions but shapes and colours of outward objects as did not a little delight me when I furst caused this portable darkened room, if I may so call it, to be made ... since when divers ingenious men have tried to imitate mine (which you know was to be drawn out or shortened like a telescope, as occasion required) or improved the practice."
In 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833), made the first photograph (see http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/wfp/). His research was continued in 1839, by his then partner, Louis-Jaques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) and independently by an English scientist, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 -1877). Photography, one might argue, was invented by both men when placing light-sensitive material onto the screen of a camera obscura. From then on, portable photographic camera obscuras evolved into the miniature precision instruments we now use to take our own pictures.
Daguerreotypes (named after Daguerre) were unique, small images made by the action of light on silver-based chemicals coating a silver copper plate. The marvel was the pin-sharp quality of the image; the disadvantage was the difficulty in reading the mirror-like polished surface, where the picture, using a direct positive, was literally reversed.
The first commercial daguerreotype studio in the world was opened by Richard Beard (1802/3-1885) in 1841, and 'daguerreotypomania' soon swept Europe and America (see http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/beard.htm).
In 1849, 100,000 daguerreotype portraits were taken in Paris alone. At last, having a portrait made was no longer the prerogative of the very rich. For twelve years the daguerreotype remained supreme in the photographic studios of the world. These daguerreotypes measure 55x44mm (2 1/8x1 3/4) inches and 90x38mm (3 1/2x1 1/2 inches):
Maria Edgeworth by Richard Beard, 1841	George Francis Robert Harris, 3rd Baron Harris by Richard Beard, c.1840
The following quotation from a letter written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, gives us some idea of the impact of these small portraits:
"My dearest Miss Mitford, do you know anything about that wonderful invention of the day, called the Daguerreotype? - that is, have you seen any portraits produced by means of it? Think of a man sitting down in the sun and leaving his facsimile in all its full completion of outline and shadow, steadfast on a plate, at the end of a minute and a half! The Mesmeric disembodiment of spirits strikes me as a degree less marvellous. And several of these wonderful portraits . . .like engravings - only exquisite and delicate beyond the work of the engraver - have I seen lately - longing to have such a memorial of every Being dear to me in the world. It is not merely the likeness which is previous in such cases - but the association, and the sense of nearness involved in the thing . . . the face of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed for ever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think - and it is not at all monstrous in me to say what my brothers cry out against so vehemently . . . that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist's work ever produced."	Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Field Talfoud, 1859
Unlike Daguerre's, W. H. Fox Talbot's process was a reproductive one; he had invented the paper negative and his work was ultimately preferred to the daguerrotype. It provided the seeds of the modern photographic process, as the negative allowed for the production of multiple prints.
It was the astronomer Sir John Herschel, 1st Bt (1792-1871) who invented the word photography, taken from the Greek photos = light and graphein = to draw. He was also the first to use the words negative and positive for Fox Talbot's two stage process. His later discovery of sodium thiosulphate (commonly known as hypo) as a more effective fixing agent than the sodium chloride (common salt) used by Talbot and Daguerre, further advanced the chemical technology. Fox Talbot made his experiments at his home Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. He used sensitive paper in a dry state which needed an exposure time of up to half an hour. He wrote the following with reference to the copying of engravings, in a paper presented to the Royal Institution entitled:	Sir John Herschel, 1st Bt by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1867

"The Art of Photogenic Drawing" . . . . "If the picture so obtained is first preserved (i.e. fixed) so as to bear sunshine, it may be afterwards itself employed as an object to be copied, and by means of this second process the lights and shadows are brought back to their original disposition. In this way we have indeed to contend with the imperfections arising from two processes instead of one, but I believe this will be found merely a difficulty of manipulation. I purpose to employ this for the prupose more particularly of multiplying at small expense copies of rare or unique engravings."
In other words, he had what we now know of as a negative. Talbot's breakthrough came accidentally on 20/21 September 1840, re-using a batch of exposed paper (that had failed to produce a visible image), on re-sensitizing the paper (with gallo-nitrate of silver) the latent image appeared. This chemical had accelerated the process . . .
"I now had to watch it (the camera) for barely a minute or so. Portraits were now easily taken in moderate daylight, a condition essential to success."
It took three minutes for the first portraits to be made in this way. Talbot patented this process on 8th February 1841, and called the result a calotype from the Greek *kalos* meaning beautiful (see http://www.nls.uk/news/quarto/issues/quarto13.pdf).
The Scottish partnership Hill and Adamson employed this method in 1844 to help document the 447 faces of all those to appear in the monumental (152cm x 345cm) painting, "The first General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, signing the Act of Separation and the Deed of Demission" , which took David Octavius Hill (1802-1817) twenty-three years to paint. It includes the physicist Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), together with Robert Adamson (1821-1848) with his camera and Hill (1802-1870) with sketchbook and pencil.

'Study for... the first General Assembly of the Free Church' by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843	Sir David Brewster by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843
David Octavius Hill by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, c.1843	Robert Adamson by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, c. 1843-1848
Hill and Adamson jointly produced photographic albums depicting fishing folk from Newhaven on the south east coast. These provide the first photographic documentation of the working classes, and are a fascinating social record.
Newhaven Fisher Callants by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, c. 1843-1848	Mrs Logan, Mrs Seton, and two unknown fishermen by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, c. 1843-1848

The next improvement came from Frederick Scott Archer whose wet collodion process (March 1851) was faster and of better quality than any of its predecessors. It revolutionised commercial photography and stimulated amateurs such as Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and David Wilkie Wynfield (1837-1887). Even though the photographer may not have made the exposure themselves, these portraits are definitely 'self-styled' and as such can be regarded as identity reflections, that is self-portraits.
Lewis Carroll by Lewis Carroll, 1857	Julia Margaret Cameron by Julia Margaret Cameron, c.1860
David Wilkie Wynfield by David Wilkie Wynfield, 1860s	The boost given to photography by the wet collodium process was enormous; in 1851, fifty-one photographers were registered in England; ten years later the number approached 3,000.



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