LESSON 79
History I: 1826 to 1900
From a pewter plate to a box camera.
IN THIS LESSON
- Before the first photograph
- The first fixed images
- Negatives, glass and copies
- Who used it, and how
- In practice: looking at early pictures
Before the first photograph
Photography rests on two old discoveries: the camera obscura, which projects an image through a small hole, and the fact that some substances change in light. Around 1717 Johann Heinrich Schulze made fleeting copies of stencilled letters on a bottle of light-sensitive slurry. Around 1800 Thomas Wedgwood captured detailed photograms, but neither he nor Humphry Davy could fix them, and Davy's account was published in 1802. In 1816 Nicéphore Niépce photographed camera images on paper coated with silver chloride, but they were negatives and darkened when viewed. This lesson complements lesson 15, which follows the materials and formats from 1827 onward.
The first fixed images
The oldest surviving camera photograph is Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras, made in 1826 or 1827 on a pewter plate coated with bitumen; the exposure was traditionally said to be eight hours but is now believed to have taken several days. Niépce died in 1833 and left his notes to Louis Daguerre. Daguerre found that a faint latent image on a silvered plate could be developed with mercury fumes, which cut exposures to minutes. The daguerreotype was announced on 7 January 1839, and full instructions were made public on 19 August 1839. The word photography is usually credited to John Herschel in the same year.
Negatives, glass and copies
In Britain, Henry Fox Talbot made stabilised paper negatives by 1835 and in 1841 introduced the calotype, which used a developed latent image to shorten exposures to minutes. Unlike a daguerreotype, a calotype negative could make many prints by contact. Its softness was even seen as kind to faces. Talbot patented it and fought many lawsuits, which limited its use. In 1851 Frederick Scott Archer introduced the collodion process on glass, which joined the sharpness of the daguerreotype with the many prints of the calotype and was used for decades. Daguerreotypes remained the most common process until the late 1850s.
Who used it, and how
Demand for portraits from the growing middle classes, which painting could not meet in cost or number, drove early photography. By 1851 a broadsheet by the daguerreotypist Augustus Washington advertised prices from 50 cents to 10 dollars. Roger Fenton's Crimean War pictures helped establish photography as a record of events, and others used it to record landscapes, architecture and travel. The first colour photograph, three black and white exposures through red, green and blue filters, was made by Thomas Sutton in 1861 for James Clerk Maxwell. In July 1888 George Eastman's Kodak camera went on sale with the slogan You press the button, we do the rest.
In practice: looking at early pictures
This section is working practice. When you look at a nineteenth century photograph, ask what the process allowed. Long exposures explain stiff poses, empty streets and blurred water. Plain backgrounds, and mothers hidden in the frame to keep children still, were working solutions, not tastes. A daguerreotype is a single mirror-like plate with no negative, so each is unique. Many museum collections are online with dates and processes; reading those labels next to the pictures is the fastest way to learn to recognise each one. Look also at who is missing. Early photographs show who could afford a sitting, who was thought worth recording, and who held the camera.
Try it today
- 01Look up View from the Window at Le Gras and describe what you can and cannot see.
- 02Find one daguerreotype and one calotype in an online museum collection and compare their detail.
- 03Note the exposure time each process needed, and how it shows in the pictures.
- 04Find a Crimean War photograph by Roger Fenton and note what it does not show.
- 05Write three sentences on how long exposures shaped early portraits.