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THIRD EDITIO
NaoMi\ R osen bin ;
BEL-TIB
770. 9 Rosenblum 1997
Rosenblum, Naomi
A world history of
photography
31111021464068

A WORLD HISTORY
OF PHOTOGRAPHY
A WORLD mm-H^
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HISTORY ,x'-f*^^

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^3/ Naomi Rosenblum

THIRD EDITION

ABBEVILLE PRESS BLISHERS

NEW^ORK LONDON PARIS
• •

r
The cover illustrations are details of pictures that appear in hill and are
credited in the captions for the following plates.

TOP ROW (LEFT TO RIGHT)

William Henry Fox Talbot. Botanical Specimen, 1839. See pi. no. 21.

Sherril V. Schell. Brooklyn Bridge, n.d. See pi. no. 540.

Arthur Rothstein. Dust Stonn, Cimarron County, 1957. See pi. no. 450.
Johann Kaspar Lavater. Silhouette Machine, c. 1780. See pi. no. 29.
Gerd Volkerling. Oak Trees in Dessau, 1867. See pi. nt). 125.

SECOND ROW
Reudinger Studio. AfZ/c. Elven, 1883. See pi. no. 63.
Jean Tomn^ssond. Army Scene, c. 1914. See pi. no. 345.

THIRD ROW
Eugene Durieu. Figure Study No. 6, c. 1853. See pi. no. 242.
Mary Ellen Mark. "Tiny" in Her Halloween Costume, Seattle, 1983.
See pi. no. 689.

FOURTH ROW
Felice Beato (attributed). Woman Using Cosmetics, c. 186^. See pi. no. 533.

Eadweard Muybridge. Studies ofForeshortenirigs: Alahomct Running, 1879.

See pi. no. 291.
Dorothea Lmgc. Aligrant Alother, Niponw, California, 1936. See pi. no. 451.
Lumiere Brodiers. Lumicre Family in the Garden at La Ciotat, c. 1907-15.
See pi. no. 342.

FIFTH ROW
Susan Meiselas. Nicaragua, 1978. See pi. no. 793.
Heinrich Tonnies. Four Tonng Blachnuths, c. 1881. See pi. no. 69.

SI.MH ROW
Disderi Camera, c. 1864. See pi. no. 226.
William Rau. Produce, c. 1910. See pi. no. 347.

SE\ ENIFI ROW

Cindy Sherman. Untitled (#10), 1985. See pi. no. "43.
Unknown. "What an Exposure!" from Amateur Photographer, Sept. 23, 1887.
See pi. no. 306.
Charles Sheeler. Industiy, 1932. See pi. no. 585.

Lumiere Brothers. Untitled, c. 1907-15. See pi. no. 343.

TITLE I'AGE
Laura Gilpin. Still Life, 1912. See pi. no. 352.

Editors: Walton Raw is, with Nancy Grubb (3d ed.)

Designers: Philip Grushkin, with Barbara Balch (3d ed.)

Produaion Editors: Robin James, with Owen Dugan (3d ed.)

Picture Editors: Jain KelK, with Paula Trotto (3d ed.)

Production Adanagers: Dana Ckile, with Lou Bilka (3d ed.)

Library of Congress Catalogtngj-tn-Publuntion Data

Roscnblum, Naomi.
A world history of photography / b\ Naomi Rosenbliim. — ;rd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
LSRN 0-7892-0028- (hardcoxer. ) ishn 0--892-0329-4 (pbk.)
I.Photograph\ — Hisror\'. I. Title.
TIU5.R67 1997
770'. 9 —dc20 96-36153

C>)mpilation — including selection of and images copyright © 1984, 1989,

text —
and 1997 by Abbeville Press. All rights reservedunder international copyright
conventions. No part of diis book may be reproduced or udlized in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
by any information storage anci retriexal s\steni, without permission in w riting
from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Abbe\ille Publishing
Group, 22 Cordandt Street, New York, N.Y. 10007. The text of this book was set

in Galliard. Printed and hound in China.

ThirtJ edition, 1997

10 987654
Contents

PREFACE 9

I.

THE EARLY YEARS: TECHNOLOGY,

VISION, USERS 1839-1875 14

2.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 1839-1890 38

The Galerie Contemporaine -Appearance

and Character in 19th-century Portraiture 84

3-

DOCUMENTATION: LANDSCAPE
AND ARCHITECTURE 1839-1890 94

The Western Landscape —Natural and Fabricated 144

4.
DOCUMENTATION: OBJECTS
AND EVENTS 1839-1890 154

A Short Technical History: Part I 192

A 19th-century Forerunner of Photojournalism —
The Execution of the Lincoln Conspirators 200

5.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART:

THE FIRST PHASE 1839-1890 208

6.

NEW TECHNOLOGY, NEW VISION,

NEW USERS 1875-1925 244

The Origins of Color in Camera Images 280

7.

ART PHOTOGRAPHY:
ANOTHER ASPECT 1890-1920 296

8.

DOCUMENTATION:
THE SOCIAL SCENE to 1945 340

Illuminating Injustice: The Camera and Social Issues 384

9.

ART, PHOTOGRAPHY,
AND MODERNISM 1920-1945 392
A Short Technical History: Part II 442

The Machine: Icons of the Industrial Ethos 454

10.
WORDS AND PICTURES:
PHOTOGRAPHS IN PRINT MEDIA 1920-1980 462

II.

PHOTOGRAPHY SINCE 1950:

THE STRAIGHT IMAGE 516

12.

PHOTOGRAPHY SINCE 1950:

MANIPULATIONS AND COLOR 568

A Short Technical History: Part III 624

NOTES 632

A PHOTOGRAPHY TIME LINE 645

GLOSSARY 650

BIBLIOGRAPHY 655

INDEX 671
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011

http://www.archive.org/details/worldhistoryofphOOrose
Preface

As a way of making images, photography has flourished in photography provoked curiosity about its origins and
unprecedented fashion ever since its origins over 150 years stimulated investigations into its invention, develop-
ago. From Paris to Peking, from New York to Novgorod, ments, and the contributions of individual photogra-
from London to Lima, camera images have emerged as phers. The first histories, which began to appear soon
the least expensive and most persuasive means to record, after 1839 and became exhaustive toward the end of the
instruct, publicize, and give pleasure. Not only are pho- century, were oriented toward technological develop-
tographs the common currency of visual communication ments. They imposed a chronology on discoveries in

in the industrialized nations, they have become the para- chemistry, physics, and applied mechanics as these
digmatic democratic art form —more people than ever disciplines related (at times tenuously) to photog-
before use cameras to record familial events or to express raphy. Exemplified by Josef Maria Eder's Gesdnchte der
personal responses to real and imagined experiences. Photojjraphie {History of Photography), first published under
Because of their ubiquity, photographs (whether originals a different tide in 1891, revised several times, and issued in

or reproductions) have been paramount in transforming English in 1945, these histories were not at all concerned
our ideas about ourselves, our institutions, and our rela- with the aesthetic and social dimensions of the medium,
tionship to the natural world. That the camera has altered which they barely acknowledged.
the way we see has become accepted wisdom; that it has Soon after 1900, as the art movement in photography
confirmed that no single view of reality can be considered gained adherents, histories of the medium began to
imperishably true has also become evident. reflect the idea that camera images might be considered
Used in a multitude of ways and with varying inten- aesthetically pleasing artifacts as well as usefiil technolog-

tions, photographs have served to confLise and to clarify, to ical products. The concept that photographs serve the
lull and to energize. Interposed between people and their needs of both art and science and that, in fact, the medi-
direct experiences, they often seem to glorify appearance um owes its existence to developments in both these
over substance. They have endowed objects, ideologies, spheres of activity is basic to the best-known general his-

and personalities with seductive allure, or clothed them in tory that has appeared in the 20th century: The History of
opprobrium. They have made the extraordinary common- Photography, from 1839 to the Present, by Beaumont
place and the banal exotic. At the same time, photographs Newhall, first published as an exhibition catalog in 1937,
have enlarged parochial perspectives and have impelled rewritten in 1949, and revised in 1964 and 1982. Another
action to preserve unique natural phenomena and cher- redoubtable work The History of Photojjraphv, from the
ished cultural artifacts. On their evidence, people have Camera Obscura to the Bejfinnimi of the Modem Era, by
been convinced of the inequity of social conditions and Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, first published in 1955,
the need for reform. revised by both in 1969 and again by Helmut Gernsheim
Photography has affected the other visual arts to a as two volumes in the 1980s — also includes a discussion of
profound degree. Now accepted for itself as a visual state- the emergence of artistic photography and situates scien-
ment with its own aesthetic character, the photograph tific developments within a social framework. Besides
had an earlier role in replicating and popularizing artistic acknowledging the aesthetic nature of camera images,
expression in other media, and thus had an incalculable these works reflect the influence of the socially oriented
effect on the taste of vast numbers of people in urbanized temper of die mid-20th century in that they concede the
societies. Photography has made possible an internation- relationship of photography to social forces.

al style in architecture and interior design. It has inspired To an even more marked degree, a conception of
new ways of organizing and representing experience in photography as a socio-cultural phenomenon informs
the graphic arts and sculpture. How and why the medi- Photography and the American Scene: A Social History,

um has attained the position it occupies in contemporary 1839-1889, by Robert Taft (1938), and Photojjraphie etsociete

life are questions that this history explores. by Gisele Freund —the latter based on investigations
Throughout the 19th century, expantiing interest in begun in the 1930s but not published until 1974 in France

PREFACE
and not until 1980 in English translation. "The Work of phy, revealing an overall design without obscuring indi-
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," by Walter vidual threads.
Benjamin, which had its genesis in 1931 as a three-part To do justice to these objectives, the material in this

article entitled "Kleine Geschichte der Photographic," is book is structured in a somewhat imusual way. The chap-
a seminal early discussion of the social and aesthetic con- ters are organized chronologically around themes that
sequences of mass-produced camera images, which has have been of special significance in the history of the medi-
stimulated many later ruminations. A recent survey that um —portraiture, documentation, advertising and photo-
places photographic imagery within an aesthetic and journalism, and the camera as a medium of personal artis-

social context is Nouvelle Histoire de la photographic (1994), tic expression. This organization makes visible both the
edited by Michel Frizot. similarity of ideas and images that have recurred in widely

The obvious impress of camera images on the painting separated localities and the changes that have sometimes
styles of the 1960s, combined with the affirmation at about occurred in the work of individual photographers over the
the same time of the photographic print as an artistic com- course of time. This treatment means that the work of an
modity, may account for the appearance of histories con- individual may be discussed in more than one chapter.
cerned primarily with the effects of photography on Edward Steichen, for example, began his career around
graphic art. The Painter and the Photograph, from Delacroix 1900 as a Pictorialist, was then in charge of American aerial

to Warhol^ by Van Deren Coke (1964), and Art and documentation during World War I (and again in World
Photography^ by Aaron Scharf (1968), are two such books War II), later became a highly regarded magazine photog-
that examine the role played by the medium in develop- rapher, and finally was director of a museum department of
ments in the traditional visual arts. Within the past several photography; his contributions are examined both in the

decades, topical histories have appeared that survey the chapter on Pictorialism and in the one devoted to adver-
origins of documentation, photojournalism, and fashion tising and photojournalism. While this organization of the
photography. Monographs on historical figures and com- chapters emphasizes the subject matter and the context
pendiums that offer a selection of images fi"om the past within which photographers work, in select instances short
without being historical have enriched our knowledge of biographies, called "profiles," have been included at the
the medium. Our understanding of developments in all end of the appropriate chapter in order to underscore the
spheres —technological, aesthetic, and social —has been contribution of those whose work epitomizes a style or has

ampHfied through articles appearing in periodicals, proved a germinal force.

notably History of Photography . A scholarly journal initiated Photography is, of course, the result of scientific and
in 1977 by Professor Heinz Henisch of Pennsylvania State technical procedures as well as social and aesthetic ideas.

University and continued in England under the editorship Because large amounts of technical detail inserted into a

of Mike Weaver, History of Photography expands the hori- narrative tend to be confijsing rather than enlightening,
zons of historical research in photography. Ail these summaries outiining changes in equipment, materials, and
inquiries into specific aesthetic, scientific, and social facets processes during three separate eras have been isolated
of photography have made it possible to fill in a historical fi-om the descriptive history and placed at the end of each
outiine with concrete facts and subtie shadings. relevant period. Although not exhaustive, these short tech-
In view of this storehouse of material, my own book, nical histories are meant to complement the discussions
A World History of PPmto^raphy , is designed to distill and of social and aesthetic developments in the preceding
incorporate the exciting findings turned up by recent chapters.
scholarship in a field whose history is being discovered A great aid in the task of weaving everything
daily. It summarizes developments in photography together is the generous number of illustrations, which
throughout the world and not just in Europe and the will permit the reader to relate facts and ideas within a

Americas — areas that in the past received almost exclusive general historical structure not only to familiar images
attention. It presents the broad applications that photog- but also to lesser-known works. In addition to the pho-
raphy has had, and it articulates the relationship of the tographs interwoven throughout the text, the book
medium to urban and industrial developments, to com- includes albums of prints designed to highlight a few of
merce, to ideas of progress, and to transformations in the the many themes that photographers have found com-
visual arts. While dealing with historical context, it also pelling. They comprise outstanding examples in portrai-

examines the role of photography as a distinctive means ture, landscape, social and scientific documentation, and
of personal expression. In sum, this book is intended to photojournalism.
present a historical view that weaves together the various The study of photography is constantiy being trans-
components that have affected the course of photogra- formed by ft-esh information and insights, which recentiy

10 PREFACE
have accumulated with particular rapidity as a result of of the Center for Creative Photography; to Rachel
changes in technology and the appearance of the large Stuhlman and Becky Simmons in the Library and to
numbers of new scholarly publications and exhibitions. Therese Mulligan, Janice Mahdu, and David Wooters in

These developments have made it necessary to add new the Archive of the International Museum of Photography
information, interpretations, and images to A World atGeorge Eastman House; to Judith Keller and Weston
History of Photography . Changes have been made through- Naef and the entire staff of the Department of Photog-
out the text and captions, and the final two chapters have raphs, the J. Paul Getty Museum; to Tom Beck of the
been revised and expanded to encompass recent develop- Edward L. Bafford Photography Collection, University
ments in traditional and experimental photography. A dis- of Maryland, Baltimore County Library; to Verna Curtis
cussion of digital technology has been added to the final of the Library of Congress; to Mary Panzer of the
technical history. The bibliography has been expanded to National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; to
include books related to these topics as well as a selection Susan Kismaric of the Museum of Modern Art; to Sharon
of recent critical histories and monographs. The time line, Frost, Richard Hill, Anthony Troncale, and Julia Van
which was inserted in a previous edition to provide con- Haaft:en of the New York Public Library; to Miles Barth
textual relationships at a glance, has been updated, as has and Anna Winand of the International Center of
the glossary. Photography; to Gary Einhaus and Michael More of the
Keeping all of this material within the confines of a Eastman Kodak Company; to Ann Thomas of the
one-volume history has been especially challenging National Gallery of Canada; and to Sarah Greenough of
because of the current burgeoning of traditional photo- the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for
graphic activity and the emergence of electronic image- expediting my researches.
making capabilities throughout the world. In addition, I am Mark Albert, Jaroslav Andel,
indebted also to
new and valuable scholarship about the medium has been Felicity Ashbee, Ellen Beam, Margaret Betts, A. D.

exceptionally abundant. It is my hope that the additions Coleman, Franca Donda, Karen Eisenstadt, Mary Engel,
and changes in this revised edition will bring the reader Helen Gee, George Gilbert, Arthur T. Gill, Andy
up-to-date, fill insome lacunae, and inspire further inves- Grundberg, Jon Goodman, Scott Hyde, Rune Hassner,
tigation of the means by which photographs have come Edwynn Houk, Ann Kennedy, Hildegarde Kron,
to play such a central role in our lives. Alexander Lavrientiev, Barbara Michaels, Arthur Oilman,
Eugene Prakapas, Sandra Phillips, William Robinson,
Howard Read, Olga Suslova, David Travis, and Stephen
Acknowledgments
White for information and leads to photographs and col-

That this work is so well provided with visual images lections. In particular, I thank those who helped with the
is owed to my publisher, Robert E. Abrams, whose per- materialon China: Judith Luk and H. Kuan Lau in New
sonal interest in producing a generously illustrated histo- York, and Elsie Fairfax Cholmeley, Zang Suicheng, and
ry of photography is hereby gratefiilly acknowledged. In Lin Shaozhong of the Chinese Photographers Associ-
all respects, my association with Abbeville Press has been ation in China. My French connections, Madeleine Fidell-

pleasurable; I am indebted to my first editor, Walton Beaufort and Thomas Gunther, were especially efficient

Rawls, and to the editor of the third edition, Nancy with regard to photographs in French collections. My
Grubb, for their unfailing kindness and respect for my assistant, Georgeen Comerford, brought her orderly nature
ideas; to the book's designer, Philip Grushkin, for his sen- to the problem of providing a visual record of hundreds
sitivity and meticulousness in dealing with text and of images.
image; to Jain Kelly (ably succeeded on the third edition The support of Professor Milton W. Brown, formerly
by Paula Trotto), whose grace and dexterity in pursuing executive officer of the Art History Program at the
pictures for reproduction turned an involved chore into a Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and
pleasant undertaking. of Martica Sawin, formerly chair of the Liberal Studies
In writing this survey, I had the help of many individ- Department of Parsons School of Design, where I was
uals who collected information, corrected misapprehen- teaching during the genesis and writing of most of this
sions, pointed out omissions, and suggested sources for book, was invaluable.
pictures. I thank them all. In particular, I am gratefial to I could not have embarked on this project without the
Gail Buckland, Cornell Capa, Alan Fern, William I. support of my family. I am gratefijl for the enthusiasm of
Homer, Anne Hoy, William Johnson, Estelle Jussim, and my daughters, Nina and Lisa, and deeply appreciative for
Larry Schaaf for helpful suggestions regarding portions of the constant and loving understanding offered by my
the text. My thanks also to Terence Pitts and Amy Rule husband, Walter.

PREFACE II
About the Illustrations metal plate or paper to enhance the image. The col-
Few readers mistake the reproduction of a painting oration that became possible with the manipulative
for the original work, but with illustrations of pho- processes that flowered around the turn of the century
tographs the distinctions between the two sometimes will also, in general, have to be seen in the mind's eye.
become clouded and the viewer assumes that the original However, in order to provide the reader with some
print and its image in printer's ink are interchangeable. It indication of the variety and richness of coloration in
is important to realize that in the photographic medium photography, an album of images entitled "The Origins
(as in other forms of visual expression), size, coloration, of Color" has been included as one of a group of special
and surface appearance may be significant aspects of the sections. In it are reproduced the actual colors found in

photographic statement, and that these attributes are hand-tinted daguerreotypes, paper prints, carbon prints,
affected by being translated from their original form into and bichromate prints as well as in several of the earliest

a mechanical reproduction. color-process prints.

The question of size can be especially confiising. In addition to distinctive colors, photographic prints
Positive prints of varying sizes can be obtained by making sometimes display significant differences in surface appear-

enlargements from glass plates or negatives of a specific ance and texture, the result of using different processes and
dimension, and the size of the images may change again printing on different papers; these, too, do not translate

when the work is transferred to gravure or a lithographic easily in reproduction. In all cases, the reader should keep
reproduction. This is especially true in the era since the in mind that in addition to the variety of theme and the
invention of the 35mm camera, since negatives made with broad range of aesthetic treatment visible in the illustra-

this apparatus were meant to be enlarged rather than tions, photographs may exhibit a distinctiveness of color
printed in their original size. As a consequence, for mod- and texture that can be appreciated only in the original.

ern viewers the exact size of an original negative, even in Because photographs are fragile and for a long time
works produced before the advent of 35mm cameras, has were thought not to be important enough to merit spe-
assumed a less significant role. Photographic prints also cial handling, some images selected for illustration con-
are easily cropped —by either photographer or user—and tain extraneous marks caused by the deterioration of the
the print may represent only a portion of the original neg- emulsion on the negative. In other cases, scratches and
ative. Furthermore, the images in this book have been discoloration on the metal daguerreotype plates or cracks

found in hundreds of archives, libraries, museums, and and tears in the paper on which the print was made also

private collections, some of which were unable to provide are visible. No effort has been made to doctor such works
information about original size. In view of the reasons so that they look new or to add pieces of the image that
outlined above, and in the interest of consistency, the might be missing in the original photograph. Care has
dimensions of both negative and positive images have been taken, whenever possible, to reproduce the entire
been omitted in the captions. image even when the edges of a print are damaged.
A more significant problem in reproducing pho-
tographs concerns the coloration of the image. With the
About the Captions
exception of the color plates, in which the colored dyes
of the original print or transparency have been translated Caption information is structured as follows: name of
with reasonable accuracy into pigmented ink, all the the photographer, where known; tide of the work, with
images have been printed here as duotones, in the same foreign titles other than place names translated into
two colors of ink. It is obvious that the silver and gold English; medium in terms of the positive print from
tonalities of the metal daguerreotype plates have not which the reproduction was made; and the owner of the
been duplicated and must be imagined by the viewer; print. In the case of 19th-century paper prints, the term
this is true also for many of the monochromatic prints on calvtype has been used to denote all prints on salted paper,

paper included in the book. From the inception of pho- whether made from paper negatives produced by Talbot's
tography, paper prints were produced in a range of col- calotype process or a \'ariation thereof Salt print is used
ors that include the reddish-orange tones of salt prints, when the negative medium is not known. Dimensions of
the siennas and brown-blacks of carbon prints, the mul- the original negatives are not given, but carte-de-visite and
berry and yellow-brown hues of albumen prints, and the stereograph formats are indicated. When two credits are

warm silvery tones of platinum paper. In numerous given at the end of a caption, the first is the owner of the
instances, colored pigments were added by hand to work, the second is the source of the reproduction.

12 PREFACE
A WORLD HISTORY
OF PHOTOGRAPHY
 I.

THE EARLY YEARS

TECHNOLOGY,
VISION, USERS
1839-187S

What is the secret of the invention? What is the substance endowed with
such astonishin£f sensibility to the rays ofli0ht, that it not only

penetrates itself with them, but preserves their impression; performs at once

the function of the eye and the optic nerve — the material instrument of

sensation and sensation itself?

— ^^Photo£[enic Drawin£i," 1839^

14 THE EARLY YEARS

IN THE YEAR 1839, two remarkable processes thatwould means remained in use until well into the 19th century.

revolutionize our perceptions of reality were announced Realistic depiction in the visual arts was stimulated and
separately in London and Paris; both represented responses assisted also by the climate of scientific inquiry that had
to the challenge of permanently capturing the fleeting emerged in the i6th century and was supported by the
images reflected into the camera obscura. The two systems middle class during the Enlightenment and the Industrial
involved the application of long-recognized optical and Revolution of the late iSth century. Investigations into

chemical principles, but aside from this they were only plant and animal life on the part of anatomists, botanists,
superficially related.The outcome of one process was a and physiologists resulted in a body of knowledge con-
unique, unduplicatable, laterally reversed monochrome pic- cerning the internal structure as well as superficial appear-
ture on a metal plate that was called a daguerreotype after ance of living things, improving artists' capacity to portray
one of its inventors, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (pi. organisms credibly. As physical scientists explored aspects
no. i) (see Profile) The other system produced an image on
. of heat, light, and the solar spectrum, painters became
paper that was also monochromatic and tonally as well as increasingly aware of the visual effects of weather condi-
laterally reversed — a negative. When placed in contact with
another chemically treated surface and exposed to sunlight,
the negative image was transferred in reverse, resulting in a

picture with normal spatial and tonal values. The result of

this procedure was called photogenic drawing and evolved
into the calotype, or Talbotype, named after its inventor,
William Henry Fox Talbot (pi. no. 2) (see Profile). For
reasons to be examined later in the chapter, Talbot's nega-
tive-positive process initially was less popular than
Daguerre's unique picture on metal, but it was Talbot's
system that provided the basis for all substantive develop-
ments in photography.
By the time it was announced in 1839, Western industri-
alized society was ready for photography. The camera's
images appeared and remained viable because they filled

cultural and sociological needs that were not being met by

pictures created by hand. The photograph was the ultimate
response to a social and cultural appetite for a more ac-

curate and real-looking representation of reality, a need

that had its origins in the Renaissance. When the idealized
representations of the spiritual universe that inspired the
medieval mind no longer served the purposes of increas-
ingly secular societies, their places were taken by paintings
and graphic works that portrayed actuality with greater
verisimilitude. To render buildings, topography, and fig-

vires accurately and in correct proportion, and to suggest

objects and figures in spatial relationships as seen by the
eye rather than the mind, 15th-century painters devised a
1. Jean Baptiste Sabatier-blot. Portrait cf Louis Jacques
system of perspective drawyig as well as an optical device Mande Daguerre, 1844. Daguerreotype. Intemational
called the camera obscura that projected distant scenes onto Museum of Photography at George Eastman House,
a flat surface (see A Short Technical History, Part I) —both Rochester, N.Y.

THE EARLY YEARS 15

 artists rejected the old historical themes for new subjects
dealing with mundane events in contemporarv life. In
addition to renouncing traditional subject matter, they also
sought new ways to depict figures in natural and lifelike

poses, to capture ephemeral facial and gestural expression,

and to represent effects of actual conditions of illumina-
tion —information that the camera image was able to record
for them soonafter the middle of the century.

Another circumstance that prepared the way for pho-

tography's acceptance was the change in art patronage and
the emergence of a large new audience for pictorial images.
As the church and noble families diminished in power and
influence, their place as patrons of the arts was taken bv the
growing middle class. Less schooled in aesthetic matters
than the aristocrats, this group preferred immediatelv com-
prehensible images of a variety of di\'erting subjects. To
supply the popular demand for such works, engravings
and (after 1820) lithographs portraying anecdotal scenes,
landscapes, familiar structures, and exotic monuments were
published as illustrations in inexpensive periodicals and
made available in portfolios and individuallv without texts.
When the photograph arrixed on the scene, it slipped
comfortably into place, both literallv and figurativclv,

2. Antoine Claudet. Portrait of William Henry Fox Talbot,

among these graphic images designed to satisf\' middle-
c. 1844. Daguerreotype. Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock, England. class cravings for instructive and entertaining pictures.
Though the birth of photography was accompanied by
incertimde about scientific and technical matters and was
plagued by political and social rix'alries between the French
tions, sunlight and moonlight, atmosphere, and, even- and the British, the new pictorial tcchnolog)' appealed

tually, the nature of color itself. enormously to the public imagination from the first. As
This evolution toward naturalism in representation can photographs increasingly came to depict the same kinds of
be seen clearly in artists' treatment of landscape. Consid- imagery' as engravings and lithographs, thev superseded
ered a necessary but not very important element in the the handmade product because the\' were more accurate in

painting of religious and classical themes in the i6th and the transcription of detail and less expensive to produce
17th centuries, landscape had become valued for itself by and therefore to purchase. The eagerness with which pho-
the beginning of the 19th. This interest derived initially tography was accepted and the recognition of its impor-
from a romantic view of the wonders of the universe and tance in providing factual information insured unremitting
became more scientific as painters began to regard clouds, efforts during the remainder of the centurx' to improve its

trees, rocks, and topography as worthy of close study, as procedures and expand its functions.
exemplified in a pencil drawing of tree growth bv Daguerre
himself f/>/. no. 3) . When the English landscapist John Con-
The Da0uerreotype
stable observed that "Painting is a science and should be
pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature,"^ he voiced The in\ention of the daguerreot\'pe was rexealed in an
a respect for truth that brought into conjunction the aims announcement published in January', 1839, in the official

of art and science and helped prepare the wav for photog- bulletin of the French Academy of Sciences, after Daguerre
raphy. For if nature was to be studied dispassionately, if it had succeeded in interesting several scientist-politicians,

was to be presented truthfiilly, what better means than the among them Francois Arago, in the new process of making
accurate .md disinterested "eye" of the camera? pictures. Arago was an eminent astronomer, concerned
The aims of graphic art and the need for photography with the scientific aspects of light, who also was a member
converged in yet another respect in the 19th centur\'. In of the French Chamber of Deputies. As spokesman for an

accord with the charge of French Realist painter Gustave enlightened group convinced that researches in physics
Courbet that it was necessary "to be of one's time," manv and chemistry' were steppingstones to national economic

16 THE EARLY YEARS

supremacy, Arago engineered the purchase by France of obscura permanent. Daguerre's fascination with this prob-
the process that Daguerrc had perfected on his own after lem, and with the effects of light in general, is under-
the death of his original partner, Joseph Nicephore Niepce standable in view of his activities as a painter of stage sets
(pi. no. 4) (see A Shan Technical History, Part I) . Then on and illusionistic scenery for The Diorama, a popular visual
August 19, 1839, with the inventor at his side, Arago pre- entertainment in Paris. Evolved from the panorama, a

sented the invention to a joint meeting of the Academies of painted scene surrounding the viewers. The
circular

Sciences and of Fine Arts (pi. no. s) ; the process was later Diorama contrived to suggest three-dimensionality and
demonstrated to gatherings of artists, intellectuals, and atmospheric effects through the action of light on a series
politicians at weekly meetings at the Consen>atoire desArts of realistically painted flat scrims. The everyday world was
et Metiers. effectively transcended as the public, seated in a darkened
The marvel being unveiled was the result of years of room, focused on a painted scene that genuinely appeared
experimentation that had begun in the 1820s' when Niepce to be animated by storms and simsets.
had endeavored to produce an image by exposing to light In promoting The Diorama into one of Europe's most
a treated metal plate that he subsequently hoped to etch popular entertainments, Daguerre had shown himself to
and print on a press. He succeeded in making an image of be a shrewd entrepreneur, able to gauge public taste and
a dovecote (pi. no. 6) in an exposure that took more than balance technical, fmancial, and artistic considerations, and
eight hours, which accounts for the strange disposition of he continued this role with respect to the new invention.
shadows on this now barely discernible first extant photo- He understood, as his partner Niepce had not, that its
graph. When his researches into heliography, as he called progress and acceptance would be influenced as much by
it, reached a standstill, he formed a partnership with the promotional skill as by intrinsic merit. After the death of
painter Daguerre, who, independently, had become obses- Niepce in 183?, Daguerre continued working on the tech-
sed with the idea of making the image seen in the camera nical problems of creating images with light, finally achiev-

ing a practicable process that he offered to sell in 1838, first

for a lump sum and then by subscription. When these

attempts failed, he altered his course to a more politically

inspired one, a move that culminated in the acquisition of

the process by the French government* and led to the

painter's presence beside Arago at the gathering of notables

in the Palace of the Institute in August, 1839.

In an electric atmosphere, Arago outlined Daguerre's

methods of obtaining pictures (basically, by "exposing" a
silver-coated copper plate sensitized in iodine vapor and
"developing" its latent image by ftiming in mercury vapor),
enumerated potential uses, and prophetically emphasized
unforeseen developments to be expected. The making of
inexpensive portraits was one possibility keenly desired,
but in 1839 the length of time required to obtain a daguer-
reotype image ranged from five to 60 minutes, depending
on the coloring of the subject and the strength of the
light — a factor making it impossible to capture true human
appearance, expression, or movement. For instance, in one
of two views from window of the Boulevard du Tem-
his

ple (pi. no. 7) that in 1838, the only human

Daguerre made
visible is the immobile figure of a man with a foot rest-
ing on a pump, all other figures having departed the scene
too quickly to have left an imprint during the relatively

long exposure. Therefore, efforts to make the process prac-

ticable for portraiture were undertaken immediatelv (see

Chapter 2)

Shortly after the public announcement, Daguerre pub-

\. Louis Jacques Mand6 Daguerre. Woodland Scene,
n.d. Pencil on paper. International Museum of lished a manual on daguerreotyping, which proved to
Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y. many of his readers that the process was more easily

THE EARLY YEARS 17

written about than executed. Nevertheless, despite the teurs who were intrigued by daguerreotyping was Baron
additional difficulty of transporting unwieldly cameras and Jean Baptiste Louis Gros, who made the first daguerreo-
equipment to suitable locales —not to mention the expendi- type images of the Parthenon while on a diplomatic mission
ture of considerable time and money —the process immedi- to Greece in 1840. After returning to Paris, he was fasci-
ately attracted devotees among the well-to-do, who rushed nated by his realization that, unlike hand-drawn pictures,
to purchase newly invented cameras, plates, chemicals, and camera images on close inspection yielded minute details

especially the manual —about 9,000 of which were sold of which the observer may not have been aware when the
within the first three months. Interest was so keen that exposure was made; far remoxed from the Acropolis, he
within two years a variety of cameras, in addition to the found that he could identify sculptural elements from the
model designed by Daguerre and produced bv Alphonse Parthenon by examining his daguerreot\'pes with a magni-
Giroux in Paris, were manufactured in France, Germany, fying glass. The surpassing claritv of detail, which in fact
Austria, and the United States. Several knowledgeable still is the daguerreotype's most appealing feature, led Gros
opticians quickly designed achromatic (non-distorting) to concentrate on interior views and landscapes whose
lenses for the new cameras, including the Chevalier broth- special distinction lies in their exquisite attention to details

ers in Paris and Andrew Ross in London, all of whom had (pi. no. 9).

been providing optical glass for a wide range of other At the August meeting of the Academies, Arago had
needs, as well as the Austrian scientist Josef Max Petzval, announced that the new process would be donated to
a newcomer. Focusing on monuments and scenery, daguer- the world —the seemingly generous gift of the government

reotype enthusiasts were soon to be seen in such numbers of Louis Philippe, the Citizen King. However, it soon
in Paris, the countryside, and abroad that by December, became apparent that before British subjects could use the

1839, the French press already characterized the phenom- process they would have to purchase a franchise from
enon as a craze or ''df^uerreotypomanie'' (pi. no. 8) Daguerre's agent. Much has been written about the chau-
One of the more accomplished of the gendemen ama- vinism of Daguerre and the French in making this stipula-
tion, but it should be seen in the context of the unrelenting
competition between the French and British ruling-classes
for scientific and economic supremacy. The licensing pro-
vision reflected, also, an awareness among the French that
across the Channel the eminent scientist Talbot had come
up with another method of producing pictures by the

interaction of light and chemicals.

Regularly scheduled demonstrations of Daguerre's
process and an exhibition of his plates took place in Lon-
don in October, 1839, at the Adelaide Gallen' and the
Royal Institution, the two forums devoted to popularizing
new discoveries in science. Daguerre's manual, which had
appeared in translation in September (one of 40 versions
published within the first year), was in great demand, but
other than portraitists, whose activities will be discussed in

the next chapter, few individuals in England and Scodand

clamored to make daguerreotypes for amusement. Talbot,
aware since January of Daguerre's invention from reports
in the French and British press and from correspondence,
visited the exhibition at the Adelaide Galler)' and pur-
chased the equipment necessary for making daguerreo-
types; however, even though he praised it as a "splendid"

discover)', he does not appear to have tried out the process.

Reaction to the daguerreotype in German-speaking
was both official and affirmative, with decided interest
cities

expressed by the ruling monarchs of Austria and Prussia.'

Returning from a visit to Paris in April, 1839, Louis Sachse,
4. LfeoNARD-pRANgois Berger. Portrait ofJoseph
Nicephore Niepce, 1854. Oil on Canvas. Musee Nicephore owner of a lithographic firm, arranged for French cameras,
Niepce, Ville de Chalon-sur-Saonc, France. plates, and dagucrreotx'pe images to be sent to Berlin by

18 THE EARLY YEARS

5. Unknown. Joint Meeting of the Academies of Sciences and
Fine Arts in the Institute of France, Paris^ August 19, 1839.
Engraving. Gemsheim Collection, Humanities Research
Center, University of Texas, Austin.

6. Joseph Nic^phore Ni^pce. View from His Window

at Le Gras, c. 1827. Heliograph. Gemsheim Collection,
Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.

THE EARXY YEARS : : 19

7. Louis Jacques Mand£ Daguerre. Boulevard du Temple, Paris, c. 1838.

Daguerreotype. Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich.

mid-year; a few months later, views taken with locall\' ized. But by the 1830s this kind of scene already had begun
constructed apparatus also were being shown. However, to appeal to artists, and it is possible that the documentary
even though urban scenes in a number of cities were camera image, exemplified by this work, hastened the
recorded quite early, among them an 1851 view of Berlin by renunciation of romantic themes and bra\aira treatment of
Wilhelm Haltfter (pi. no. 10) , daguerreotvping for personal topographical scenes in the graphic arts.

enjoyment was less prevalent in Central Europe because One of the earliest Europeans to embrace and extend
the bourgeoisie were neither as affluent nor as industrially the possibilities of the daguerreotvpe was the Swiss en-
advanced as their French counterparts. As in all countries, graver Johann Baptist Isenring who, between 1840 and
German interest in the daguerreotype centered on expecta- 1843, exhibited plates of native scenery, colored bv hand, in

tions for a simple way to make portraits. Augsburg, Munich, Stuttgart, and Vienna. He also was
Avid interest in the new picture-making process, a among the first to publish aquatint views (pi. no. 12) based
description of which had appeared in scientific journals on daguerreotypes, signaling the form in which the unique
following the January announcement in Paris, motivated image would begin to reach a larger public. His subject
Anton Martin, librarian of the Vienna Polytechnic Insti- matter, too, anticipated the attraction that Continental
tute, to attempt daguerreotv'pc images in the summer of landscape was to ha\'e for a great many photographers
1839, even before Daguerre had fiilly disclosed his pro- working between 1850 and 1880, many of whom continued
cedures or had his plates exhibited in Vienna that fall. the tradition begun in the late i8th century of publishing
Winter Landscape (pi. no. 11) , a view made two years later by landscape views.
Martin, is mimdane in subject matter and ardessly organ- Curiosity about the new picture processes was pro-

20 THE EARLY YEARS

 8. Theodore
Maurisset. La
Daguerreotypomanie,
December, 1839-

Lithograph. Gemsheim
Collection, Humanities
"^'^'^^^^_ Research Center,
University of Texas,
Austin.

9. Jean Baptiste Louis

Gros. Bridtje and Boats
on the Thames^ 1851.

DaguerreoDi'pe.
Bibliotheque Nationalc,
Paris.

THE EARLY YEARS 21

 lO. WiLHELM HaLFFTER.
Statue of Frederick the Great,
Berlin, May 31, 185 1.

Daguerreotype.
Agfa-Gevaert Foto-Historama,
Cologne, Germany.

II. Anton Martin. Winter

Landscape, Vienna, c. 1841.
Daguerreotv'pe. Museum fur
Kun.st und Gewerbe, Hamburg.

22 : : THE EARLY YEARS

nounced among scientists, artists, and travelers in Ital)'. In American daguerreotypists. The sparkling North Ameri-
addition to translations of French manuals, which started can light, envied by fog-enshrouded Londoners, was said
to appear in 1840, visitors from the north brought along to have been partly responsible, but social and cultural fac-
their own equipment for both the daguerreotype and Tal- tors undoubtedly were more significant. Considered a mir-
bot's negative-positive process. Among the early Italian ror of reality, the crisp, realistic detail of the daguerreo-
daguerreotypists, Lorenzo Suscipj was commissioned to type accorded with the taste of a society that distrusted
make views of the Roman ruins for English philologist handmade art as hinting of luxuriousness and was enam-
Alexander John Ellis. Indeed, the presence of classical ruins ored of almost everything related to practical science. With
and the interesting mix of French, British, German, and its mixture of mechanical tinkering and chemical cookery,
American nationals living and traveling in Rome and the daguerreotype posed an appealing challenge to a popu-
Florence during mid-century gave Italian photography in lace that was upwardly and spatially mobile despite periods
all processes a unique character in that the rapid com- of economic depression. As a means of livelihood, it com-
mercialization of scenic views and genre subjeas became bined easily with other manual occupations such as case-
possible. For example, within ten years of the introduction or watchmaking, and those who wished to follow a west-
of photography, camera images had taken the place of the em star were to fmd it a practicable occupation while on
etchings, engravings, and lithographs of ruins that tourists the move.
traditionally had purchased. Some Americans had higher aspirations for the daguer-
As one moved farther east and north from Paris, da- reotype. As an image produced bv light, it appeared in

guerreotyping activity became less common. News of the their minds to conjoin the Emersonian concept of the
discovery, reprinted from the January notices in the French "divine hand of nature" with the practicality of scientific

press, reached Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, and Serbia in positivism. Some hoped that the new medium might help
February, 1839, and Denmark, Estonia, Finland, and Po- define the unique aspects of American history and experi-
land during the summer, with the result that a number of ence as expressed in the faces of the citizenry. Others
scientific papers on the process began to appear in these believed that because it was a picture made by machine it
localities. In Russia experimentation succeeded in produc- would avoid too great artifice and, at the same time, would

ing a less expensive method of obtaining images on copper not demonstrate the obvious provinciality of outlook and
and brass rather than silver, and by 1845 a Russian daguer- training that often characterized native graphic art at mid-
reotypist felt confident enough to exhibit landscape views century.

of the Caucasus Mountains in a Paris show. Nevertheless, The daguerreotype reached America after it had been
early photography in all these distant realms reflected the seen and praised by Samuel F. B. Morse (pi no. 13), a skill-
absence of a large and stable middle class. Only in the fial painter who also invented the electro-magnetic tele-

three primary industrial powers —England, France, and graph. His enthusiastic advocacy in letters to his brother in
the United States —was this group able to sustain the the spring of 1839 helped spur interest in the first manuals
investment of time and energy necessary to develop the and descriptions that arrived in New York late in September
medium technically and in terms of significant use. by packet ship from England. By early October, details

were Morse and others to

available in the press, enabling

attempt daguerreotyping, but although he worked with

The Da£fuerreotype in America
esteemed scientist John William Draper and taught others,
As had been the case with other technologies originat- including Mathcw Brady, few images produced by Morse
ing in Europe, Americans not only embraced the daguer- himself have survived.
reotype, but quickly proceeded to turn it to commercial Another faaor that contributed to the rapid improve-
advantage. The view that "the soft finish and delicate defini- ment of the daguerreotype in the United States was the
tion of a Daguerreotype has never yet been equalled by any arrival in November, 1839, of the French agent Francois

other style of picture produced by actinic agency,"* which Gouraud, with franchises for the sale of equipment. His
appeared in the photographic magazine Humphrey's Jour- demonstrations, along with exhibitions of Daguerre's
nal in 1859, was only one expression of an opinion held images, evoked interest in the many cities where they were
especially by the first generation of American photogra- held, even though Americans did not consider it necessary
phers. Daguerreotyping remained the process of choice for to purchase rights or use authorized equipment in order to
20 years —long beyond the time that Europeans had turned make daguerreot)'pes. As in Europe, technical progress
to the more flexible negative-positive technology. The rea- was associated with portraiture, but improvement also was
sons for this loyalty are not entirely clear, but a contribut- apparent in images of historical and contemporary monu-
ing factor must have been the excellent quality attained by ments and structures. Owing to the primitive nature of his

THE EARLY YEARS 23

 ttliir t)c la ?IilU i)c Xnrit-li

12. JoHANN Baptist Isenring. View of Zurich^ n.d. Aquatint. Burgerbibliotek Bern, Switzerland.

equipment and the experimental state of the technique, daguerreotypes by artificial light and to experiment with
engraver Joseph Saxton's very early view of the Arsenal images on albumen-coated glass. His special interest was
and Cupola of the Philadelphia Central High School (pi. astrophotographv; in March, 1851, alter three vcars of ex-
no. 14), made in October, 1839, is not nearly as crisply perimentation, he produced successful daguerreot\^pes of
defined as John Plumbe's Capitol Building (pi. no. is) of the moon (pi. no. 17). The Langenheims and Whipple
1845/46 and William and Frederick Langenheim's 1844 were among the small group of Americans who realized

view of the Girard Bank, occupied by the Philadelphia the drawbacks of the daguerreorv'pc; the populace, how-
Militia (pi. no. 16). ever, was too engrossed b\' the seeming fidelit)' of "the
Plumbe, a visionary businessman who built and then mirror with a memory"" to deplore its limitations.

lost a small daguerreotyping empire, was interested mainly

in portraits, but the Langenheim brothers, of German
The Calotype
extraction, hoped to improve American photographic tech-
nolog\' by introducing German daguerreotype cameras, For much of its existence, photography has been under-
the calotype, and photography on glass. John Adams stood by most to be a process resulting in a negative image
Whipple, of Boston, was similarly concerned with expand- that can be replicated almost endlessly to produce positives
ing tlic frontiers of the medium. In addition to a partner- in which tonal and spatial values are in normal relation-

ship in a fine portrait practice, Whipple attempted to make ship.^ Using the same matrix, the picture can be made

24 THE EARLY YEARS

13- Photographer Unknown.
Portrait of Samuel F. B. Morse, c. 1845.
Daguerreotype. Colleaion Mrs.
Joseph Carson, Philadelphia.

14. Joseph Saxton. Arsenal and

Cupola, Philadelphia CentralHigh
School, Oaober 16, 1839.

Daguerreotype. Historical Society of

Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

THE EARLY YEARS 25

 15. John Plumbe. Capitol
Building, Washinpfton, D.C.,
1845-46. Daguerreotype.
Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C.

16. William and

Frederick Langenheim.
Girard Bank, May, 1844.
Daguerreot\pe. Library
Company of Philadelphia.

26 THE EARXY YEARS

larger and, because of the light weight of the support sulphate) that the unexposed silver salts were completely
(paper, fabric, plastic), it can be inserted into books and removed and the image satisfaaorily stabilized. This char-
albums, attached to documents, and sent through the mails, acteristic of hypo had been discovered in 1819 by John
as well as framed and hung on the wall. The photograph's Herschel (later knighted), a prominent astronomer, physi-
physical and utilitarian advantages over the daguerreotype cal scientist, and friend of Talbot, who informed both
are so obvious that it may seem incredible that when first inventors of this fact. Herschel's contributions to the chem-
announced the negative-positive process took a most def- istry of photography reveal both scientific brilliance and
inite second place in the public mind. distinterested generosity. Returning in 1838 aft:er several

The reasons are complex, involving timing, technique years as an independent researcher in South Afi-ica where
of production, aesthetic standards, and social factors. Pho- he had himself made drawings with optical devices (pi. no.

togenic drawing, as Talbot first called the paper image, was 19) , Herschel learned of the experiments in England and
made public by the inventor in London in February, 1839, France to produce images by the action of light. He
only afi:er the news of Daguerre's discovery had been proceeded to conduct his own intensive researches to dis-
relayed from across the Channel. For most people, the cover the effectiveness of different silver halides and other
potential value of replication may have seemed too abstract chemicals, among them ferric salts from which cyanotypes,
an idea at the time, while the actual process of turning or blueprints, are made.
negative into positive was perceived as rather complicated. Herschel's suggestions with regard to terminology
Most important, however, was the fact that —even to Tal- were especially effective in that he convinced Talbot to
bot's most ardent supporters —the ftizziness of his earliest consider, instead of photogenic drawing, the broader term
results was demonstrably less pleasing than the fmely de- photography — light writing — a term believed to have been
tailed daguerreotype image.' Furthermore, the French first used by both the Brazilian Hercules Florence and the
invention, sponsored by scientist-politicians, had received German astronomer Johann H. von Maedler.'° Herschel
official government sanction while Talbot had to steer his also coined the terms negative and positive to refer to the
discovery himself through the quicksands of the British
scientific and patenting establishments, at the same time
pursuing improvements and attempting to realize a com-
mercial return.
A patrician background and university training had
enabled Talbot to become involved with the most advanced
thinking of his time. This resourceful scientist was drawn
more to astronomy, mathematics, and optics than to chem-
istry (which in any case was barely a discipline at the time),

and his interests also embraced linguistics and literature.

For a man of science he was a somewhat romantic and

antisocial figure who traveled incessandy; it was while
sketching on a honeymoon trip to Italy in 1833 (pi. no. 18)

that he conceived the notion of making permanent the

image visible on the translucent ground-glass surface of
the camera obscura. Taking up this idea on his return to

England, Talbot managed first to expose and thereby trans-

fer leaf forms direcdy onto chemically sensitized paper (pi.

no. 21) . Then, in the summer of 1835, with treated paper

inserted in small specially constructed cameras, he suc-
ceeded in producing a number of negatives of his ancestral
home, Lacock Abbey, including a tiny postage-stamp-size

image of a latticed window (pi. no. 20) with diamond panes

initially distinct enough to count.
In common with Daguerre, Talbot first used a solution
of ordinary table salt to stop the continuing action of light
on the silver deposits, but it was not until both inventors
had switched to hyposulphite of soda (hypo, as it is still 17. John Adams Whipple. Moon, 1851. Daguerreotype.
called even though its scientific name is now sodium thio- Science Museum, London.

THE EARLY YEARS 27

 i8. William Henry Fox Talbot. Villa
Melzi, October 5, 1833. Camera lucida
sketch on paper. Fox Talbot Collection,
Science Museum, London.
Ar>-^-<'y\

-i ^ >^ ^-->

^^^^^^ffill^??^^^^

Via.. K^i^-

19. John Herschel. Cape Town and Table

Bay from Just Above Platte Klip Gorge, Table
Mountain, Februan' 7, 1838. Camera lucida
sketch on paper. Special Collections, South
African Library, Capetown.
^ 6

t.<ifi

20. William Henry Fox Talbot.

Latticed Window at Lacock Abbey, 1835.
Photogenic drawing. Fox Talbot
7U./.tm-»\ Collection, Science Museum, London.

Acc^^^^c^ /V3S^

V ?»-^ '^'

X^ iH- Cn^

28 THE EARXY YEARS

inverse and reverted images that were basic to the system.
Had he wished, he probably could have arrived at a patent-
able process at the same time as Talbot, but his interests lay
elsewhere. His intellectual openness has been contrasted
with Talbot's more secretive attitudes, but the two were
mutual admirers, with Herschel refreshingly liberal about
sharing the experimental results of his genius.
The report in January, 1839, of Daguerre's discovery
forced Talbot to make public his process even though he
had done little work on it since 1837. His initial announce-
ments, made to the Royal Society, the Royal Institution,
and the French Academy of Sciences at the end of January
and in February were received with interest and evoked a
small flurry of excitement among a few individuals in the
scientific community and in Talbot's circle of family and
friends. However, in comparison with the verisimilitude of
the finely detailed daguerreotvpe, this image, incorporat-
ing the texture intrinsic to its paper support, was too broad
and indistinct to have wide appeal despite Talbot's descrip-
tion of the effect as "Rembrandtish."
Another disadvantage at first was the length of time
required to make an exposure. Talbot had not then dis-

covered the possibility of latent development, a procedure

Daguerre had stumbled on, whereby the image, invisible
on the exposed plate or paper, was made to appear by
treatment with a chemical solution (developer) . When he
did discover this in the fall of 1840, his exposure time was
decreased from about half an hour to as litde as 30 seconds
on a very bright day, making possible portraiture and a

much broader selection of subjects and atmospheric effects,

as seen in one of the inventor's early views of London (pi.
21. William Henry Fox Talbot. Botanical Specimen^
no. 22). 1839. Photogenic drawing. Royal Photographic Society,
In 1841 Talbot took out the first of his patents," using Bath, England.

the word calot}'pe to describe the resulting image, which

he also referred to as a Talbotype. This action initiated a
ten-year period during which English scientific and artistic lemma that occupied the British from mid-century on.
endeavor in photography became entangled in problems While some individuals maintained that patent fees were
of commercial exploitation. Both during his lifetime and too high and rules too lax for protection, others argued
long afterward, Talbot was accused of obstructing the that patents were indefensible because inventions "de-
development of photography because of his intransigence pended less on any individual than on progress in soci-

with regard to the four patents he held on the calot\'ping ety.'"' Talbot may have agreed, but he patented his pro-

process. Critics have suggested that he regarded them as cesses because, like coundess others in Britain, France, and
covering all advances in photographic technology occur- the United States at the time, he considered that those
ring between 1841 and 1851 and that he included as his own who had invested considerable effort should reap the ma-
the contributions of others, in particular Herschel's sugges- terial rewards of their genius and industry. That he did not
tion of hyposulphite of soda as a fixer. However, Talbot's benefit fmancially was because he was an indifferent busi-
biographer, H. J. P. Arnold, notes that a close reading of nessman with a more compelling interest in intellectual

the language indicates that the patents protected methods matters —an attitude bolstered by the fact that he could
of utilizing substances rather than the chemical agents count on income from his landed estate. Neither the surge
themselves.'^ of amateurs photographing in calotype for their own plea-
Talbot himself was caught up in a controversy over the sure nor the utilization of the process for commercial por-
moral and practical effects of patenting inventions, a di- traiture materialized. Among the well-to-do who did take

THE EARLY YEARS 29

 22.William Henry Fox Talbot.
The Nelson Column, Trafalgar Square,
London, under Construaion, c. 184?.
Salted paper print from a calotv'pe
negative. Fox Talbot Collection,
Science Museum, London.

23. WiLLL\M Henry Fox Talbot.

The Open Door, 1843. Salted paper
printfrom a calot\'pe negative. (Plate
VI, The Pencil of Nature, 1844-46.)
Fox Talbot Collection, Science
Museum, London.

?o THE EARLY YEARS

 24. HippoLYTE Bayard.
Excavation for rue Tholoze, 1842.
Paper negative. Societe
Fran^aise de Photographie,
Paris.

up calotyping were Talbot's wife Constance, his Welsh scopic execution that sets at nought the work of human
relatives Emma and John Dillwyn Llewelyn, and two hands."'-^
friends, the Reverends Calvert Richard Jones and George Talbot regarded photography as important primarily
W. Bridges, both of whom conceived the idea of making a for its role in supplying visual evidence of facts, but this

calotype record of their travels abroad (see Chapter 3). "soliloquy of the broom," as Talbot's mother called The
Paper photography occasioned a more significant re- Open Door, reveals a telling interest in the artistic treatment
sponse in Scodand where no licensing arrangements were of the mundane. Along with the theme, the carefial atten-

necessary. With the help of Sir David Brewster, an emi- tion to the way light and shadow imbue a humble scene
nent scientist who corresponded frequendy with Talbot, with picturesque dimension suggests the inventor's famili-

Robert Adamson, a young Scottish chemist, was able to arity with examples of Dutch genre painting of the 17th
perfect the calotype technique and open a studio in Edin- century —works that enjoyed considerable esteem in Vic-
burgh in 1841. Two years later, he and painter- lithographer torian England and, in fact, were specifically mentioned in
David Octavius Hill began to produce calotypes; these the Pencil of Nature. Several other calotype images in the
images, mainly portraits (see Chapter 2), still are considered same style bear wimess to Talbot's conviction that photog-
among the most expressive works in the medium. raphy might offer an outiet for artistic expression to those
Talbot, though disinclined to pursue the commercial without the talent to draw or paint.
exploitation of his discovery actively, was keenly con- Other publications by Talbot included Sun Piaures cf
cerned with the potential uses of the medium. In setting Scotland, for which he made 23 photographs in 1844, and
up a publishing establishment at Reading under the super- Annals cf Artists in Spain, the first book to utilize the
vision of Nicolaas Henneman, an assistant he personally photograph for reproducing works of art. However, he
had trained, Talbot promoted the use of the photographic disposed of the Reading firm in 1848 because of managerial
print itself in book and magazine illustration. The Pencil of and technical problems in running a large-scale photo-
Nature^ issued serially between 1844 and 1846 with text and graphic printing enterprise, not the least of which was the
pictorial material supplied by Talbot, was the first publica- fact that calotypes were subject to fading. This instability

tion to explain and illustrate the scientific and practical was to trouble photographers who worked with paper
applications of photography. One of the plates. The Open prints throughout the next 25 years.

Door (pi. no. 23) was singled out in the British press for its In France, where the daguerreotype held the general
exceptional tonal range and textural fidelity, its "micro- populace enthralled, artists were greatiy interested in the

THE EARXY YEARS 31

calotype. In their view, the paper process offered a greater Le Gray and other French photographers in an 1851 project
range of choices within which one might fashion an affec- to document historic monuments (see Chapters), enjoyed
tive image. In addition to view, pose, and lighting —the spirited acclaim by French critics before it was made obso-
sole aesthetic decisions for the daguerreotypist —the calo- lete by the new collodion technology discussed below.
t)'pist could exercise interpretive judgment in the produc- Early in 1839, two Munich scientists, Carl August von
tion of subsequent prints from the same negative. Aes- Steinheil and Franz von KobeU, had experimented with
thetic decisions concerning tonality and coloration could paper negatives as a result of a report on Talbot's discover-
bemade by adjustments in the toning and sensitizing baths ies given at the Bavarian Royal Academy of Sciences, but
and by the choice of paper itself, while retouching on the even though successfiol results were exhibited in July, on
negative (or print) could alter forms. In this respect, the hearing of the wonderful detail possible with the daguer-
paper process called to mind traditional procedures in etch- reotype Von Steinheil switched to metal plates. In the
ing and engraving, lending the calotype greater esteem United States as in England, the soft forms of the calotype
among those interested in photography as a creative appealed mainly to a small group of intellectual lights
pursuit. (many of whom lived in Boston), but on the whole reac-

tion to paper photography was cool. Following an unpro-

ductive business arrangement with Edward Anthony, a
Other Developments
prominent figure in the photographic supplv business in
in Paper Photo£jraphy
New York, Talbot sold the patent rights to the Langen-
Actually, a paper process had been discovered indepen- heims who, in turn, expected to sell licenses for the process

dendy in France. Early in 1839, Hippolyte Bayard, a civil throughout the United States. The calotypes made by the
servant in the Ministry of Finance, had made and exhibited Langenheims were admired in the press, but the firm soon
both photogenic drawings and direct positive paper images was forced into bankruptcy as the American public contin-
exposed in a camera (see A Short Technical History, Part I) ^
ued its allegiance to the daguerreotype.

among them a view of a rural enclave in Paris in the pro-

cess of being urbanized (pi. no. 24). These works were

Introduction of the Glass Plate
produced soon after the first reports of Talbot's process
reached France but before the official announcement in
and Collodion
August of Daguerre's process. However, political pressure, Lack of definition and fading were considered the two
especially from Arago, who had committed himself to the most pressing problems in paper photography, especially
promotion of the daguerreotype, kept the discovery from by portraitists and publishers with commercial interests.

the public. Bayard expressed his indignation at this shabby To improve sharpness, efforts to replace the grainy paper
treatment by the French estabhshment'^ by creating an negative with glass — a support that both Niepce and Her-
image of himself as a suicide victim (pi. no. zs) ; nevertheless, schel had already used — gained ground. The first practica-

he soon went on to become a prominent member of the ble process, using albumen, or egg white, as a binder for
photographic community in Paris. the silver salts, was published in France in 1847, while in
Aware of Bayard's discoveries and concerned that this the United States Whipple and the Langenheims also had
other paper process might achieve precedence on the Con- succeeded in making finely detailed glass negatives with
tinent, Talbot sought to promote the calotype in France. these substances, from which the\' made prints called cr\'-

Although he signed a contract for its promotion with stalotypes and hyalot\'pes, respectively. Glass also provided
Joseph Hugucs Maret (known as the Marquis de Bassano), a suitable material for experimentation undertaken by the
and traveled to Paris in 1843 to demonstrate the procedure, Langenheims to produce stereographic images (see below)
his associates in France turned out to be incompetent and and positive slides for projection. But while albumen on
the project a fiasco. Loath to purchase franchises directly glass resulted in negatives without grain, the procedures
from Talbot in England, French artists and photographers were complicated and the exposure time was longer than
preferred to wait until 1847 when Louis Desire Bianquart- that required for the daguerreot\'pe.

Evrard, a photographer in Lille who was become an

to An effective alternative materialized in 1850 when Fred-
influential figure in book publication, announced a modi- erick Scott Archer, an English engraver turned sculptor,

fied paper process based on Talbot's discoveries. One of published a method of sensitizing a newlv discovered color-
the most ai lent champions of paper photography in France less and grainless substance, collodion, to be used on a

was the painter Gustavc Le Gray, who in 1851 described a glass support (see A Short Technical History, Parti) . Because
method of waxing the negative before exposure to improve exposure time decreased dramatically when the plate was
definition and tonal sensitivity. The calotype, employed by used in a moist state, the process became known as the wet

32 THE EARXY YEARS

 25. HiPPOLYTE Bayard. Self-Portrait
as a Drowned Man, 1840. Direa paper
positive. Societe Fran^aise de
Photographie, Paris.

plate or wet collodion method. Today one can scarcely

Developments in the Paper Print
imagine the awkwardness of a procedure that required the
user to carry a portable darkroom about in order to sensi- Besides the soft defmition, the other problem that
tize each plate before using it and to develop it immedi- plagued calotypists involved the quality of the print. Un-
ately afterward. Still, the crisp definition and strong even and blotchy tonalities and, of greater concern, the
contrast afforded by sensitized collodion on glass proved tendency for rich-looking prints to fade and discolor were
to be just what many in the photographic profession had nightmares, especially for those in commercial enterprises.
hoped for in a duplicatable process. Its discovery initiated In addition, satisfactory salt prints — positives produced by
an era of expanded activity in professional portraiture, in exposing sensitized paper in contact with a negative until
the publication of views, in amateur photographic activity the image appeared —were thought to look lifeless by a
around the globe, and led to numerous collateral photo- public enticed by superior contrast and clarity. Because the
graphic enterprises. The introduction of collodion also problems were perceived as intrinsic to paper manufacture,
signaled the end of Talbot's exasperating efforts to litigate an emulsion consisting of albumen and light sensitive sil-

his patent rights against those who had taken up calotyping ver salts was proposed as a surface coating to keep the
for commerce without purchasing The gift of
a franchise. image from penetrating into the paper structure itself.

the collodion process to the public by Archer (who was to Coming into use at about the same time as the collo-

die impoverished in 1857) was in noticeable contrast to dion negative, the albumen print rapidly became part of a
Talbot's attempts to cover all his inventions. When he new photographic technology. Lasting some 30 years, it

claimed in 1854 that collodion, too, was protected by his promoted a style that featured sharp defmition, glossy
1843 calotype patent, the outrage expressed in the press surface, and strong contrasts. In response to this prefer-
made a favorable decision on his pending infringement ence, Blanquart-Evrard's Imprimerie Photqgraphique (Pho-
cases impossible.'* Talbot gave up his photography pat- tographic Printing Works) at Lille, the first successful
ents in 1855, but by then the calotype had faded from sight, photographic printing plant to employ a substantial labor
in many cases quite literally. force of men and women, began to process prints for the

THE EARLY YEARS 33

 —

dozen different publications issued during the ii years of Annan brothers in Scotland, Hanfstaengl in Germany, and
its existence. Similar firms soon appeared in Alsace, Ger- Braun in France, rendering these large-scale photographic
many, England, and Italy, as photographically illustrated publishing firms more productive than formerly. However,
books and portfolios became popular. despite a campaign to promote the carbon method by a
However, despite the optimistic scenario for the future leading American publication. The Philadelphia Photogra-
of the albumen print, problems with stability continued to pher, no great interest developed in the United States, per-
haunt photographers, making large-scale production a de- haps because efforts already were underway to find a
manding undertaking. At times the unappealing yellow- method of on mechanical presses
printing photographs
brown tonality of faded albumen prints was likened to that through the creation of a metal matrix. Another process
of stale cheese. Again, sizings were blamed, and it was that utilized similar chemical substances the Woodbury- —
determined that impurities in the water used in paper man- type, named after its English creator Walter Woodburv
ufacture also left a residue that caused the discoloration; began to supplant carbon production printing in the early

only two mills in northeastern France were thought capa- 1870s. It, too, produced a richly pigmented permanent
ble of producing paper free from such mineral contamina- image, but because it incorporated elements of mechanical
tion. Stock from these mills was shipped to nearby Dresden printing technology' it was more productive. Despite these
to be albumenized, establishing this German city as the improvements in positive printing materials, albumen
main produaion center for photographic paper through- paper continued in use for portraits and scenic views until

out the collodion era. the 1880s when significant new developments in both nega-
Other causes of fading, among them imperfect wash- tive and printing materials made it obsolete. The pigmented
ing, inadequate fixing with hypo baths, interaction with carbon process was used less frequently in commercial
mounting adhesives and air pollution, were confirmed by photographic printing after the 1880s; however, it then
individuals and by committees set up to study the situation became a means of individualized artistic expression for
by the two most prominent photographic organizations of pictorialist photographers.
the era —the Photographic Society of London and the
Societe Frangaise de Photographic. A two-part prize offered
The Stereograph and Stereoscope
in 1856 by an eminent French archeologist, Honore d' Al-

bert, Due de Luynes, testified to the fact that the solution One final element in this inaugural period of photog-
would be found in two spheres of activity related to pho- raphy helped assure the medium's incredible popularity.
tography. In offering a larger sum for photomechanical This was the invention of the stereograph and stereoscope
procedures and a smaller one for the discovery of a truly —an image and a device that fiised photographic technol-

permanent method of chemical printing, De Luynes and ogy with entertainment. Stereographs —two almost identi-

other French industrialists recognized the importance of cal images of the same scene mounted side by side on a stiff

mechanical over hand methods for reproducing photo- support and viewed through a binocular device to create
graphs. Alphonse Louis Poitevin, a noted French chemist an illusion of depth —held late-ipth-centur)' viewers in

who was recipient of both parts of the prize, worked out a thrall. Early examples, which had used daguerreotypes to
photolithographic process called the collotype (see A Short create this effea, were not entirely successflil because re-

Technical History, Part II) and a non-silver procedure for flections from the metal surfaces interfered with the illu-

printing collodion negatives. Based on researches under- sion; but after collodion /albumen preempted other tech-
taken in 1839 by the Scottish scientist Mungo Ponton that nologies, stereograph views became more convincing and
established the light-sensitivity of potassium bichromate, immensely salable. Produced in large editions by steam-
this process, called carbon printing, used a mixture of driven machinery and mounted on cards using assembly-
bichromated gelatin and powdered carbon instead of silver line methods, thev reached a substantial clientele, especially

salts to effect a positive image. in the United States, through mail-order and door-to-door
During the 1860s, the results obtained by printing with sales. Stereograph publishers offered an unparalleled selec-

carbon were greatly admired for their deep, rich tonalities tion of pictorial material; besides the landscapes, views of
as well as their resistance to fading. The technique was monuments, and scenes of contemporary events that often

actively promoted in Europe, especially after Joseph Wilson were a\'ailable in regular format photographs also, there

Swan, the holder of numerous British patents in the photo- were educational images of occupations and work situa-

chemical field (and the inventor of the incandescent light tions around the globe, reproductions of works of art,

bulb), simplified manipulation by manufacturing carbon especially sculpture, and illustrations of popular songs and
tissues in various grades and tonalities. Called Autotype in anecdotes — all of which provided middle-class viewers with
England, the Swan carbon process was franchised to the unprecedented materials for entertainment.

34 THE EARLY YEARS

 education mandated a need for greater amounts of compre-
hensible pictorial material encompassing a broader range
of subjects — a necessity to which only the camera image
was able to respond. Besides the figures mentioned in this

chapter, other all-but-forgotten individuals were attempt-

ing to produce images by the means of light. And as soon
as the glimmers of success were hinted at in London and
Paris, people in outiying areas of Europe and the Americas
began to embrace the new technology, hoping to expand
its possibilities and, in the process, to make or improve
their own fortunes.
Within 25 years of Niepce's first successflil image,
enough of the major technical difficulties had been worked
out to insure that both daguerreotype and photograph
could be exploited commercially. This activity, which cen-
tered on two —
areas portraiture and the publication of
scenic views —created a photographic profession with its

own organizations and publications. Amateurs employed

26. Holmes-Bates Stereoscope with stereograph. the medium for documentation and for personal expres-
Keystone-Mast Collection, California Museum of
sion, while graphic artists came to rely on photography as
Photography, University of California, Riverside.
an indispensable tool for providing a record of appear-
ances and, eventually, for suggesting different ways of
viewing actuality. As will become apparent in the chapters

Histories of the medium have acknowledged this pop- that follow, the traditional divisions separating amateur
ular appeal, but the stereograph should be seen as more from professional, art from commerce, document from
than a faddish toy. After Queen Victoria had expressed her personal expression were indistinct from the earliest days
approval at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, where of the medium, and any boundaries that did exist became
stereographs were on public display for the first time, the even more indefmite as camera images increased their
purchase, exchange, and viewing of stereographs became a authority and scope.
veritable mania. It was promoted in the United States as a

significant educational tool by Oliver Wendell Holmes in

Profile: Louis Jacques Mande Da^uerre
two long articles in the Atlantic Monthly, in 1859 and 1862.
Besides envisioning "a comprehensive and systematic li- Nothing in Daguerre's early career as a successflil sce-

brary . . . where all . . . can fmd the special forms they nic designer hinted that eventually he would become trans-
desire to see as artists ... as scholars, ... as mechanics or in fixed by the problems of producing permanent images by

any other capacity,"'^ Holmes suggested that in the fiiture using light. He was bom in 1787 into dipetit bourgeois family
the image would become more important than the object in Garmeilles-en-Parisis; when his natural artistic gifts be-

itself and would in fact make the object disposable. He also came apparent he was apprenticed to a local architect. Paris

designed an inexpensive basic viewer (pi. no. 26) to enable beckoned in 1804, the year of Napoleon's coronation, so
ordinary people of little means to enjoy these educational Daguerre served another apprenticeship in the studio of
benefits. In the latter part of the 19th century, stereography the stage designer Ignace Eugene Marie Degotti. His intui-

filled the same role as television does in the 20th, providing tive sensitivity to decorative effect enabled him to rise

entertainment, education, propaganda, spiritual uplift, and quickly, and in 1807 he became an assistant to Pierre
aesthetic sustenance. Like television, it was a spectator Prevost, who was renowned for his realistically painted

activity, nourishing passive familiarity rather than informed panoramas. During the nine years that Daguerre worked
understanding. Long viewed as a pleasant household pas- for Prevost, he occasionally submitted oils to the Paris
time, its effect on attitudes and oudook in the 19th century Salon and made sketches and topographical views for the
'^
only recendy has become the subject of serious study. 20-volume Voya£ies pittoresques et romantiques en Vanciennc

France (Picturesque and Romantic Travels in Old France) a ,

Looking back at the evolution of the medium during the work to which the painters Gericault, Ingres, and Vemet
first half of the 19th century, it is obvious that photogra- also contributed.

phy's time had come. Industrialization and the spread of In 1816, Daguerre's exceptional skill and imagination

THE EARLY YEARS 35

were recognized by his appointment as stage designer to To achieve the perspective effects on the large scrims,
one of the best-known small theaters in Paris; three years and on the easel paintings that he sometimes painted of the
later he also was designer for the Opera.The audience for same subjects, Daguerre used the conventional tool of his
these entertainments was drawn from the new urban mid- trade —the camera obscura. At what point he began to con-
dle class, whose taste ran to verisimilitude in execution and sider how to make the view on the translucent glass surface
romanticism in content. When, in 1821, Daguerre under- permanent is not known, but in 1824 he started to frequent
took to promote a new entertainment. The Diorama, he the shop of the Chevalier brothers, well-known Parisian
was convinced that the public would pay for illusionistic makers of optical instruments. The result was an associa-

deception on a grand scale. The Diorama, which opened in tion with Niepce, through the Chevaliers, that led first to
July, 1822, with his own deceptively real-looking repre- an agreement to perfect Niepce's process and finally to the

sentation of 'The Valley of the Samen" (and one of "The daguerreotype.

Interior of Trinit}' Chapel, Canterbury Cathedral," painted After the French government had acquired the process,
by his parmer Charles Marie Bouton) achieved its striking Daguerre occasionally demonstrated its methods and en-
effects by the manipulation of light that transformed the tered into arrangements to supply cameras and manuals of
scene from a serene day to one of tempestuous storminess, instruction, but he was considerably less active than others
underscoring the desolation of the painted landscape. De- in perfecting his discovery. He preferred creating scenic
spite a temporary setback during the political troubles of effectson his estate in Bn'-sur-Mame and in the local
1830, The Diorama continued to offer romantic subjects church where he painted a large trompe I'ocil perspective
until 1839, when it was entirely destroyed by fire. scene behind the altar. Although at Bry he made a small

27. Louis Jacqltes MANDfi Daguerre. Still Life, 1837. Daguerreotype.

Societe Frangaisc de Photographie, Paris.

36 THE EARLY YEARS

number of daguerreotypes of family and scenery, no fur- mal training by closely following the work of British and
ther discoveries issued from his workshop nor did he foreign scientists, including Brewster, Herschel, Arago,
develop artistically between 1839 and his death in 1851. Joseph von Fraunhofer, and Augustin Jean Fresnel, and
On the whole, Daguerre's output in the new medium during the 1830s and '40s he traveled abroad almost yearly
reveals the influence of his artistic training and experience on scholarly pursuits.
as the creator of picturesque yet convincing-looking scenes. In 1839, events forced Talbot's hand with reference to
His earliest surviving metal-plate image, an 1837 still life of the researches in photography that he had commenced in

plaster casts (pi. no. 27) , discloses a subject dear to Roman- 1834 — to make images appear on
efforts ma-light-sensitive

tic artists, one to which he returned on a number of terials —which he then had put to continue studies
aside in

occasions. These works, and views made in Paris and Bry, optics and spertrology. In order to establish the priority of
demonstrate sensitivity to tonal balance, feeling for tex- his discovery, Talbot exhibited at the Royal Societ\' the

tural contrast, and a knowledge of compositional devices photogenic drawings he had made in 1835 both by direct
such as diagonal framing elements to lead the eye into the contact and in the camera, although he apparently had not
picture, but from Daguerre's complete output —some three considered them especially significant prior to the French
dozen plates according to Helmut and Alison Gemsheim" announcement. His pictures' unflattering comparison with
— it is difficult to credit him with exceptional perception the daguerreotype's greater detail and shorter exposure
regarding the stylistic or thematic possibilities of the new time, coupled with the realization that his system pos-
pictorial medium. sessed greater potential, caused Talbot to resume experi-
mentation and resulted shordy in his perfection of the
negative /positive process that he called calotype (a name
Profile: William Henry Fox Talbot
derived from the Greek kalos: beautifijl), which he patented
As an heir of the Enlightenment, Talbot was concerned in 1841. Unlike Daguerre, Talbot continued to improve the
with practical application as well as with scientific theory, discovery, to envision its possibilities, and to devise prac-
with combining intellectual interests and commercial en- tical methods of reproducing photographic images by
deavor. A patrician background, close and supportive fam- photomechanical means, at the same time producing some
ily relationships, and the ownership of a lucrative estate, 600 photographs, among them genre subjects, landscapes,

Lacock Abbey, made it possible for him to pursue his multi- urban views, and portraits.

farious interests to successful conclusions. Besides invent- In the 1850S, following unsuccessful legal battles to
ing the first duplicatable image system generated by light, secure his patent rights, he turned again to studies in theo-
he envisaged the many uses to which photography has since retical mathematics and etymology, and to a new interest,

been put, prophesying that "an alliance of science with Assyriology, contributing substantially to the decipher-
art will prove conducive to the improvement of both. "^° ment of Assyrian cuneiform. After his death in 1877, the
Bom in 1800, shortly after the death of his father, Tal- achievements of this fine, if somewhat unfocused scholar
bot was educated at Harrow and Cambridge and became were obscured for a long period despite the fact that he
learned in several fields of science. Despite the paltriness had written seven books and more than 50 papers on a

of scientific instruction in English universities of the time, variety of scientific topics, held 12 significant patents, and
he received satisfactory grounding in mathematics and made at least eight comprehensive translations from As-
optics, two areas that remained fundamental to his inter- syrian literature, besides discovering the system of photo-
ests throughout his lifetime. Talbot augmented his for- graphic image-making that continues in use today.

THE EARXY YEARS 37

 2.

A PLENITUDE OF
PORTRAITS
1830-1800
From that moment onwards, our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus,

to contemplate its trivial ima^e on a metallic plate. A form of lunacy, an

extraordinary fanaticism took hold of these new sun-worshippers.
—Charles Baudelaire, i8s9^

It is required of and should be the aim of the artist photographer to

produce in the likeness the best possible character and finest expression of

which that face and figure could ever have been capable. But in the

result there is to be no departure from truth in the delineation and

representation of beauty, and expression, and character.
—Albert Sands Southworth, 1871^

?8 :: A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
VIRTUALLY FROM ITS INCEPTION, photography has been made of themselves and their families. By the mid-i9th
involved with portraiture, continuing in a new medium century, in addition to the large, officially sanctioned por-
the impulse to represent human form that goes back to the traits of royalty and public figures that still were being
dawn of art. The daguerreotype and negative-positive commissioned, the miniature, the silhouette, the physiono-
technologies provided the basis for flourishing commercial trace, the camera lucida drawing, and fmally the photo-
enterprises that satisfied the needs for public and private graph had arrived to accommodate the needs of new pat-
likenesses, while individuals who wished to express them- rons for likenesses. Of these, the miniature was most like
selves personally through portraiture were able to do so the traditional large-scale portrait. Although small, it was
using the calotype and collodion processes. Approaches to painted in fiill color, often on an ivory surface, and required
camera likenesses, whether made for amateur or commer- imaginative skill and a delicate touch to evoke the character
cial purposes, ranged fi-om documentary to artistic, fi^om of the sitter. Regarded as precious keepsakes, miniatures

"materialistic" to "atmospheric," but whatever their under- such as the American example shown a — portrait of Eben
lying aesthetic mode, photographic portraits reflected from Farley by Edward Greene Malbone (pi. no. 28) —usually
their origin the conviction that an individual's personality, were enclosed in elegant cases or inserted in lockets, the
intellect, and character can be revealed through the depic- manner in which the daguerreotype portrait would be pre-

tion of facial configuration and expression.

Indeed, from the Renaissance on, portraits have been
most esteemed when they portrayed not only the sitter's

physical appearance but inner character as well. Toward

the end of the i8th century, the concept that pose, gesture,
and expression should reveal the inner person became
codified in a number of treatises that exhorted the portrait-
ist to rise above merely mechanical graphic representation
of the human features. The most significant expression of
this idea was contained in the 1789 publication Essays on

Physiognomy by Johann Kaspar Lavater, a work that pro-

posed that painters develop the "talent of discovering the
interior of Man by his exterior —of perceiving by certain

natural signs, what does not immediately attract the

senses."' These ideas still were current when the early

promoters of photography were endeavoring to provide

quickly made and inexpensive likenesses, and they have
continued to inform serious portrait photography on into
the 20th century.
Before photography was invented, however, artists al-

ready had devised methods to respond to the demand for

portraits from a new clientele emerging as a result of the

rise of bourgeois societies in England, France, Holland,
and America from the 17th century on. Earlier, the painted

portrait had been largely the privilege of aristocrats and the

very wealthy, but simplifications in terms of what was
included in the painting, and transformations in size and
materials enabled merchants and farming gentry in the i8th 28. Edward Greene Malbone. Eben Farley, 1807.

and early 19th centuries to contemplate having portraits Miniature on ivory. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 39
 —

sented also. The silhouette, on the other hand, might be use of mirrors to reverse the plate's laterally inverted image
considered the poor man's miniature, though it was not back to normal, the shortening of exposure times by the
always small and often it appealed to those who could also addition of chemical accelerants in the sensitizing process,
afford a painted likeness. Traced from a cast shadow and and the toning of the plate. Experimentation along these
inked in, or cut freehand from black paper, which then was lines took place wherever daguerreotypes were made — in

mounted on a lighter ground, the silhouette showed only France, the German-speaking countries, and the United
the profile, which would seem to leave litde room for States —even in England where there was less commercial
disclosing expression. Nevertheless, the conviction that daguerreot^'ping activity owing to patent restrictions.
profiles were as strong a key to character as other views The earliest improvements were made to cameras and
impelled Lavater to include an illustration of a silhouetting lenses. Daguerre's cumbersome experimental camera was
device (pi. no. 29) in his work on physiognomy. redesigned, and lighter models, accommodating smaller
Both miniature and silhouette were unique objects plates, were manufactured in France by both amateurs and
one-of-a-kind images. For duplicates of the same Likeness, optical- instrument makers, among them Alphonse Giroux,
whether for personal use or in conjunction with a printed a relative of Daguerre's wife who became the first commer-
text, different systems were required —among them one cial producer of the daguerreotype camera. These changes
made possible by a device called the physionotrace. In- made it possible to carry the equipment to the countryside
vented in France in 1786 by Gilles Louis Chretien, it con- or abroad and even to make likenesses, provided the sitter

sisted of a pointer attached by a series of levers to a pencil, did not object to holding absolutely still for two minutes.
by means of which the operator could trace on paper a But commercial portraiture could not be contemplated
profile cast onto glass. A pantograph reduced and trans- until after chemical procedures were improved and a faster

ferred the image to a copper when engraved

plate, which, portrait lens, designed by Viennese scientist Josef Max
and inked, would permit the printing of an edition."^ From Petzval to admit more than 20 times as much light, was
Paris, the physionotrace was introduced to other cities in

Europe and taken to the United States by a French emigre,

Charles Fevret de Saint-Memin, who practiced the tech-
nique in the major New World centers between 1793 and
1844. Numerous figures in the arts, sciences, and public
life, among them Thomas Jefferson (pi. no. 30) sat for the ,

four minutes required to make a portrait tracing by

physionotrace.

Daguerreotype Portraits

That the photograph might provide a more efficient

method than either physionotrace or silhouette to produce

faithful likenesses seems obvious today, but when first

announced, neither Daguerre's nor Talbot's process was

capable of being used to make portraits. In 1839, sittings

would have required about 15 minutes of rigid stillness in

blazing sunshine owing to the primitive nature of the
lenses used and the insufficient sensitivity to light of the
chemically treated plates and paper. Because the highly
detailed daguerreotype was considered by many the more
attractive of the two processes and, in addition, was
unrestricted in many localities, individuals in Europe and
the United States scrambled to find the improvements that
would make commercial daguerreotype portraits possible.
They were aided in their purpose by the general efforts
in progress to improve the process for all kinds of
29.JoHANN Kaspar Lavater. SUhouctte Machine., c. 1780.
documentation. Engraving from Essays on Physiognomy. Gemsheim
Among the means used to accomplish this goal were Collection, Humanities Research Center, University of
the reduction of plate size, the improvement of lenses, the Texas, Austin.

40 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 IN*:

30. Charles Fevret de Saint-Memin.

Thomas Jefferson^ 1804. Pastel, charcoal
\-*f and chalk on paper. Worcester Art
Museum, Worcester, Mass.

introduced in 1840 by his compatriot Peter Friedrich With the stage set for the business of making portraits
Voigtlander. by camera, one might ask where the photographers would
The first efforts to make the silver surface more recep- be found. As is often true when older professions seem on
tive to light resulted fi-om experiments conducted late in the verge of being overtaken by new technologies, mem-
1840 by English science lecturer John Frederick Goddard. bers drift (or hurry) from allied fields into the new one.
By filming the plate in other chemicals in addition to mer- A large number of miniature and landscape painters, in

cury vapor, he decreased exposure time considerably; France especially, realized during the 1840s that their expe-
plates sensitized in this manner and used in conjunction riences as craftsmen might fit them for making camera
with the Petzval lens required exposures of only five to portraits (and other documents). French author Charles
eight seconds. Alongside these developments, a method of Baudelaire's contention that the photographic industry
gilding the exposed and developed plate in a solution had become "the refuge of failed painters with too little

of gold chloride—the invention of Hippolyte Fizeau in talent"^ may have been too harsh, but it is true that unem-
1840 —made the image more and visible to
less susceptible ployed and poorly paid miniaturists, engravers, and drafts-
destruction, and prepared the daguerreotype for its first men turned to portrait photography for the livelihood it

paying customers. seemed to promise. Watchmakers, opticians, tinkers, and

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 41
 — .

31. Antoine Francois

Claudet. The Geoffraphy
Lesson, c. 1850.

Daguerreotype. Gemsheim
Collection, Humanities
Research Center,
Universit^' of Texas,
Austin.

other artisans also were intrigued by the new technology portraits made in his studio are exceptional in their fine

and the chance it offered to improve their material well- craftsmanship and in the taste with which groups of fig-

being. ures were posed, arranged, and lighted (pi. no. 31)

In England and the United States, portraiture some- Richard Beard, partner in a coal firm who had bought
times attracted businessmen who hired artists and others a patent from Daguerrc's agent in 1841 to sell the rights in
to make exposures and process plates. Antoine Francois England, Wales, and the colonies, started his portrait stu-

Claudet, a French emigre residing in London, had been in dio with the idea that the new American Wolcott camera,
the sheet glass business before opening a daguerreotype in which he held an interest, would insure the financial
studio, i 'iiinendy successful as a f)ortraitist, Claudet also prospects of dagucrreofvpe portraiture. In addition to sell-

demonstra d a broad interest in photography in general ing licenses to others. Beard eventuallv owned three estab-

in technical problems, paper processes, and aesthetic mat- lishments in London, with daguerreot}'pists hired to oper-
ters. In spite of his belief that the process was so difficult ate the cameras, as seen in the image of Jabez Hogg (pi. no.

that "failure was the rule and success the exception,"* the 32) making an exposure in Beard's studio (Hogg, however,

42 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
is believed to have been an associate rather than a paid darkroom (or if working alone, prepare it), remove the
employee). focusing glass of the camera, and insert the plate into the
Since this image may be the earliest representation of fi"ame before beginning the exposure. Hogg is shown tim-
the interior of a portrait studio showing a photographer at ing the exposure with a pocket watch by experience while
work, it affords an opportunity to examine the equipment holding the cap he has removed from the lens, but in the
and facilities in use in the opening years of portraiture. A course of regular business this operation was ordinarily left:

tripod — actually a stand with a rotating plate —supports a to lowly helpers. In all, the posing process was nerve-
simple camera without bellows. It is positioned in front of wracking and lengthy, and if the sitter wished to have
a backdrop painted in rococo style, against which female more than one portrait made the operator had to repeat
figures probably were posed. The stiffly upright sitter — in the entire procedure, unless two cameras were in use simul-
this case a Mr. Johnson^— is clamped into a head- brace, taneously — a rare occurrence except in the most fashionable
which universally was used to insure steadiness. He clutches studios. No wonder so many of the sitters in daguerreo-
the arm of the chair with one hand and makes a fist with type portraits seem inordinately solemn and unbending.
the other so that his fingers will not flutter. Aft:er being Following the exposure, the plate, with no image yet
posed, the sitter remains in the same position for longer visible, would have been removed from the camera and
than just the time it takes to make an exposure, because the taken to the darkroom to develop by fioming in mercury
operator must first obtain the sensitized plate from the vapor. By 1842/4?, when this image was made, darkroom

?2. Unknown Photographer. Jabez Hogg Making a Portrait in Ruhard Beard's Studio, 1843.

Daguerreotype. Collection Bokelberg, Hamburg.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 43
 .

the knowledge of the accelerating aaion of a combination

of chemicals in sensitizing the plate, portrait daguerreo-

typing began to expand throughout Europe. Its popular-

ity in France was immediate. In 1847 some thousand por-
traits were exhibited in Paris alone, and daguerreotypists
were active in many provincial cities as well. A hand-tinted
daguerreotype of a family group, made in Paris in the
1850s, is typical of the general level and style of commercial
portraiture in that it conveys the manner in which the
figures were disposed in the space and the handling of
lighting directed to focus the eye both on the familial
relationship and on material facts (pi. no. 34)

In the German-speaking cities of Berlin, Hamburg,

Dresden, Vienna, and Bern, the volume of daguerreotype
portraiture was smaller than that produced in France but
33- Daguerreotype case, frame, and matte. International seems otherwise comparable in style and craftsmanship.
Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Although artists who took up daguerreotyping occasion-
Rochester, N.Y. ally were denounced as "paint-sputterers" who had turned
themselves into artistic geniuses with the help of sun-
light,' they produced skillfully realized and authoritative
operations already were performed under red safelight, an among them Alexander von Humboldt (pi. no. 3s) by
images,
invention Claudet devised to facilitate development. The Hermann Gunther Blow and Mother Alters (pi. no. 36} by
plate then would have been fixed in hypo and washed in Carl Ferdinand Stelzner, a miniature painter of repute who
chloride of gold. Because the daguerreotype's principal for a brief period was associated with Blow in a Hamburg
drawback was thought to be its "ghasdy appearance . . . daguerreotype studio. Another example, an 1845 portrait of
like a person seen by moonlight, or reflected in water,"* the threeyoung girls (pi. no. 37) by Berlin daguerreotypist
portrait would have been hand-colored by a method Beard Gustav Oehme, displays a feeling for grace and symmetry
patented in 1842, but such coloring was practiced almost in the grouping of the figures and an unusual sense of
universally in all the better studios. Although gold toning presence in the direct level gaze of the three youngsters.
had made the daguerreotype less susceptible to oxidation, The Dresden photographer Hermann Krone was acclaimed
its deUcate pigmented surface required protection and was not only for excellent portrait daguerreot)'pes but for his
sheathed in a metal mat, covered with glass, and enclosed topographical views, nude studies, and still lifes (see Chap-
in a case (pi. no. 33) , lending the final assemblage the appear- ters 3 and s) ; like a number of serious daguerreotypists of
ance of the more expensive painted miniatures. Daguerreo- this era, he was interested in the widest application of the
type portraits were made in a variety of sizes, all derived medium and in its potential for both art and documenta-
from the standard "whole plate," which measured 6'/2 x 8 V2 tion.

inches. The most common portrait sizes were "quarter The taking of likenesses by daguerreotype spread more
plate," ^V4 X 4 'A inches the — size of the Hogg image —and slowly through the rest of Europe during the 1840s and
"sixth plate," 2% x 3 'A inches. '50s. Investigations have turned up a greater amount of
Unfortunately, the interior shown in the Hogg por- activity than once was thought to exist, but, other than in
trait does not reveal the method of lighting the subject, for the larger cities, portrait work in Central Europe was done
illumination was a most important factor in the success mainly by itinerants. However, much of that was lost in

of the portrait. Early studios usually were situated on the nationalistic and revolutionary turmoils of the 19th
the roofs of buildings where sunlight was unobstructed. century. In a number of countries, the daguerreotype and,
On clear days, exposures might be made out-of-doors, al- later, photography on paper and glass came to be consid-
though not ordinarily in direct sunlight because of the ered apt tools for ethnic self-realization. One example enti-
strongly cast shadows, while interior rooms somewhat ded A Magyar Fold is Nepei {The Land ofHun^iary and Its
resembled greenhouses with banks of windows, adjustable People)^ published in 1846/47, was illustrated with lidio-
shades, and, occasionally, arrangements of blue glass to graphs based on dagucrreot\'pes thought to have been
soften the light and keep the sitter from squinting in the made by Janos Varsanyi, and included ethnographic por-
glare. traits as well as the expected images of landscape and
With the introduction of the Petzval portrait lens and monuments.

44 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 j4- D. F. Millet. Couple
and Child, 1854-59.
Daguerreotype.
Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris.

Farther east, the progress of both daguerreotype and the long Russian winters. In general, however, the profes-
calotype in France and England was monitored in Russia sion of portrait photography in all of these localities,

by the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and in 1840 Aleksei whether practiced for commercial or artistic purposes, was
Grevkov, who tried to work with the less costly metals of not able to expand until about 40 years after its debut, an
copper and brass for the sensitized plate, opened the first understandable state of affairs when one realizes that in the
daguerreotype studio in Moscow. Sergei Levitskii, who 1840S in Belgrade, for instance, a daguerreotype cost as
started a portrait studio in Petersburg in 1849 following a much as a month of daily dinners in the finest restaurant.'"

period of practice in Italy and study in Paris, experimented

with the electroplating of daguerreotypes and with calotype
Da£fuerreotype Portraiture in America
procedures before turning to collodion photography; he
sought also to combine electric and natural light in order Daguerreotype portraiture was made to order for the
to shorten the lengthy exposure times made necessary by United States, where it reached a pinnacle of success dur-

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 45
 ?5 Hermann Gitnther Biow.
Alexander mn Humboldt, Berlin,
1847. Daguerreotype. Museum
fur Kunst und Gewerbe,
Hamburg.

ing the 20 years that followed its introduction into the Attempts to make daguerreot}'pe portraits preoccupied
country. In the conjunction of uncanny detail, artless yet Americans from the start. Shordy after instruction manuals
intense expression, and naive pose, Americans recognized arrived from England in September, 1839, Samuel F. B.

a mirror of the national ethos that esteemed unvarnished Morse, his colleague John William Draper, Professor of
truth and distrusted elegance and ostentation. The power Chemistn,' at New York University, Henry Fitz in Boston,
of "heaven's broad and simple sunshine" to bring out "the and Robert Cornelius in Philadelphia managed to over-
secret character with no painter would ever
a truth that come the estimated 10-20 minute exposure time and pro-
venture upon," which Nathaniel Hawthorne praised in duce likenesses —some with eyes closed against the glaring
The House of the Seven Gables" helped propel the silver sunlight — bv reducing the of the size and whitening
plate

camera likeness into an instrument through which the na- the sitter's face. The exposure time for Drapers well-

tion might recognize its best instincts. Furthermore, the known 1840 portrait of his sister, Dorothy Catherine (pi.

cohesive bodies of work produced to distill this message no. 38) (sent by the chemist to John Herschel as a token of
were the products of commercial studios, a fact that ac- esteem for the English scientist's contributions to photo-
corded with the native respect for entrepreneurial initiative. graphy), was 65 seconds, still too long for commercial

46 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
portraiture, and an image produced around the same time plates continued to be imported, but, during the 1840s,
by Henry Fitz, Jr., a telescope maker, showed the face optical systems and cameras as well as plates and chemicals
with eyes closed on a plate the size of a large postage also were manufactured locally, resulting in less expensive
stamp. products and in the setting-up of photographic supply
Europeans had to wait until 1841 to sit before the stu- houses, the forerunners of the giant companies of today.
dio daguerreotype camera, but in America the first com- Techniques for harnessing the bufiing and polishing ma-
mercial enterprises were opened in New York City by chinery to steam power and for creating a rational assembly
Alexander S. Wolcott and John Johnson and in Philadel- line —the so-called German system — in manufacturing and
phia by 03melius in the spring of 1840. Working with studio processing procedures soon followed.
Fitz, Wolcott and Johnson patented a camera of their own The absolute frontality in Draper's portrait of Cather-
design (mentioned previously in connection with Beard) ine, the result of his scientific intent, is nevertheless em-
and installed an ingenious plate glass mirror arrangement blematic of the approach taken by a great many early
in their studio window that increased illumination on the daguerreotypists in America. The work of John Plumbe,
sitter, softening the glare with a baftle of glass bottles filled an enterprising businessman out to make a success of
with a blue liquid. Although their mirror camera was even- selling equipment, supplies, and lessons as well as inexpen-
tually discarded, improvements in daguerreotype technol- sive likenesses, who opened a studio in Boston in 1841 and
ogy in the United States were rapid. The finest lenses and by the mid-'40s was the owner of a chain of portrait estab-

36. Carl Ferdinand

Stelzner. Mother Albers,
The Family Vegetable
Woman, 1840s.
Daguerreotype. Museum
fur Kunst und Gewerbc,
Hamburg; Staatliche
Landesbildstelle,
Hamburg.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 47
 ?7. GusTAv Oehme. Three
Toung Girls, c. 1845.

Daguerreotype. Colleaion
Bokelberg, Hamburg.

lishmcnts in 14 cities, is typical of As

this st\'le. in the erated by the sense of powerfiil psychological projection,
Draper image, the portrait of Mrs. Francis Luqueer (pi. no. bv the suggestion of a distinctive presence.

3P), taken in one of the Plumbe studios, fills the space The successes of the portrait establishments in New
frontally and centrally, with no attempt at artistic pose, York and Washington started by Mathew Brady (see Pro-
dramatic lighting, or grandiloquent props such as the dra- file, Chapter 4) are now legendan' (pi. no. 42) . After taking
per)' swags and statuarv' found in European daguerreo- lessons in the daguerreots'pc process from Morse, this

t\'pc portraits. This style must have appealed to Americans former manufacturer of cases for jcwelr\' and daguerreo-
in part because of its similarity to the solemn portraits by types opened his first "Daguerrean Miniature Galler\'" on
native limners, exemplified in the likeness of Mrs. John lower Broadway in 1844. His stated aim, "to vindicate
Vincent Storm (pi. no. 40) by Ammi Phillips, made just a true art" by producing better portraits at higher prices than
few N'cars earlier. Nor was the sober approach limited to the numerous competitors who were to be found in the

ordinary folk; the same directness and lack of artifice is same part of the cit\', was realized in part as a result of the
seen in an 1847 daguerreotype, by an unknown maker, of patronage of Tammany Hall politicians and entertainment
the fijture abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass (pi. no. entrepreneur P. T. Bamum, and in part because Brady
41) In this work, the absence of artistic pretension is mod- seems to have recognized the value of public relations.'^ By

48 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
?8. John William Draper. Dorothy Catherine Draper, 7,9. John Plumbe. Mrs. Francis Luqueer, n.d.
Coiloupe from a daguerreon'pe.
1840. Original ruined. Daguerreotype. New- York Historical Society, New York.
Chandler Chemical Museum, Columbia Universit)', New York.

sending portraits of celebrities and views of the gallery

interior to the newlv launched picture journals, Frank
Leslie's and Harper's Weekly, for translation into wood-
engraved illustrations (pi. no. 43), he was able to focus
attention on his own enterprise and on the role the daguer-
reotype might play in urban communication despite the
fact that it was a one-of-a kind image.
This limitation had prompted the enterprising Plumbe
to circumvent the unduplicatable nature of the daguerreo-
type by issuing in 1846 a series of engravings entided The
National Plumbeotype Gallery, based on his camera portraits
of national figures. Brady foUowed with his Gallery ofIllus-

trious Americans. Issued in 1850, it comprised 12 lithographs

by Francois D'Avignon based on Brady studio daguerreo-
types of famous Americans, among them the artist John
James Audubon (pi. no. 44.). In both publications, the
implicit assumption that the character of an individual's
contribution to public life can be seen in physical features
and stance is testament to the continuing vigor of Lavater's
ideas about physiognomy.
An even stronger belief in the conjunction of appear-
ance and moral character is evident in the fine daguerreo- 40. Ammi Phillips. Mrs. John Vincent Storm, c. 1835-40. Oil
type portraiture that issued from the Boston studio of on canvas. Brooklyn Museum; gift of Mrs. Waldo Hutchins, Jr.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 49
 —

Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Hawes. In business usually fme. The varied positions of the head, the split dark
for almost 20 years — 1843 to 1862 —during the ascendancy and light backgrounds, and the arrangement of ovals to
of transcendentalist thought in that city, the partners ap- suggest a lunar cycle convey the sense that camera images
proached portraiture with a profound respect for both can ensnare time as well as depict physical substances.
spirit and fact. Convinced that "nature is not at all to be It would be a mistake to think that most American
represented as it is, but as it ought to be and might possi- daguerreotype portraiture attained the level of the work
bly have been," they sought to capture "the best possible produced by Southworth and Hawes or even Brady. Most
character and finest expression'"' of which their sitters likenesses were simply records, whether made in fashiona-

were capable without departing from the truth. South- ble studios or by small-town or itinerant daguerreotypists

worth and Hawes made more than 1,500 likenesses, a great who charged litde enough —from 25 cents to one dollar

many of which exhibit the exceptional authority apparent to enable a broad sector of the populace to afford a portrait.
in an 1856 image of Charles Sumner (pi. no. 4s) . A medallion On occasion, such images are appealing because of unusual
portrait of an unknown sitter (pi. no. 4^), made with a pose or piquant expression or because of boldness and
sliding plateholder patented by Southworth in 1855, is un- singular subjea matter, as in a portrait of the Sauk chief

41. Unknown
Photographer.
Frederick Douglass, 1847.
Daguerreotype.
Collection William
Rubel; National Portrait
Gallery, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington,
D.C.

50 : : A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 42. Francois D'Avignon. Portrait ofMathew Brady from The
Photographic Art Journal, Vol. I. 1851. Lithograph. Print
Collection, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden
Foundations.

Keokuk (pi. no. 47) made by Thomas Easterly, working in

Missouri in 1847. On the whole, however, daguerreotype

likenesses were remarkably similar to each other in their

unrelieved straightforwardness and the solemn, almost

frozen demeanor of the sitters. As a writer for Ballou's
Pictorial Drawirig-Room Companion of 1855 observed of a
daguerreotype display: "If you have seen one of these
cases you have seen them all. There is the militia officer

in full regimentals . . . there is the family group, frozen

into wax statuary attitudes and looking . . . as if . . .

assembled for a fijneral. . . . the fast young man, taken

with his hat on and a cigar in his mouth; the belle of the
locality with a vast quantity of plaited hair and plated jew-
elry . . . the best baby . . . the intellectual . . . and the
young poet. . . . There is something interesting in the

very worst of these daguerreotypes because there must be

something of nature in all of them." '+

43. A. Berghaus. M. B. Brady's New Photographic Gallery, Comer of Broadway and Tenth Street, New York
from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Jan. 5, 1861. Engraving. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 51
 ment. By the 1850s permanent studios had been established
in the major cities of Canada and South America, where de-
spite the provincial character of urban life in those regions,

both metal and paper portraits were seen as symbols of

economic well-being and national self-realization.

Among the itinerant photographers traveling to Can-

ada, mention is made of a female daguerreotypist who
spent a month making likenesses in Montreal in 1841. The
names of other women crop up in notices and reports on
photography's early years to suggest that in spite of the
medium's association with chemicals and smelly manipula-
tions, it was not in itself regarded as an unsuitable pastime
for women. Anna Atkins, Julia Margaret Cameron, Gene-
vieve Elizabeth Disderi, Lady Clementina Hawarden, Mrs.
John Dillwyn Llewelyn, and Constance Talbot in Europe
and Mary Ann Meade in the United States are only the
best known of the women drawn to photography either in
association with other members of the family or on their

own. Women also were active behind the scenes in daguer-

reotype and paper printing establishments where they
worked on assembly lines; later they were employed in

44- Francois D^Avignon. John James Audubon from

Gallery of Illustrious Americatts, 1850. Lithograph after a
photograph by Brady. Print Collection, New York Public
Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

Of course, the unrelieved seriousness of expression in

daguerreotype portraiture was in part the result of the
lengthy process of arranging the sitter, head in clamp and
hand firmly anchored, and then making the exposure, but
spontaneity' not only was technically difficult to achieve, it

also was considered inappropriate to the ceremonial nature

of an undertaking that for most sitters required proper
deportment and correct attire. Even more joyless were the
images of the dead (pi no. 48) made as keepsakes for

bereaved families for whom they possessed "the sublime

power to transmit the almost living image of . . . loved
ones."" Nevertheless, this "Phantom concourse . . . mute
as a grave,'"" evoked a singular response in the United
States. As Richard Rudisill has pointed out in a provocative
study, "the daguerreotypists employed their mirror images
for the defmition and recording of their time and their

society. They confronted Americans with themselves

. . .

and sought to help them recognize their own signifi-

cance."'^
In the rest of the Americas, both north and south,
portraiture followed a course similar to that in eastern
Europe, with the exception that the first portraits in Can- Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson
45.
ada and Latin America often were made by itinerants from Hawes. Charles Sumner, 1856. Daguerreotype. Bostonian
the United States and Europe seeking a lucrative employ- Society, Boston.

52 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
46. Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes. Unknown Lady, n.d. Medallion daguerreotype.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; gift of Edward Southworth Hawes in Memory of his Father, Josiah Johnson Hawes.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 53
 47- Thomas Easterxy. Keokuk,
Sauk Chief, 1847. Modem gelatin
silver print from a copy negative
of the original daguerreotype
in the collection of the Missouri
Historical Society. National
Anthropological Archives,
Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C.

firms that produced and processed photographic materials, requiring a ?o second exposure (pi. no. so) . Ganvinced that
among them those owned by George Eastman and the paper portraiture was as commercially feasible as the da-

Lumiere brothers. guerreotype, Talbot entered into an arrangement with a

painter of miniatures, Henry Collen, to make calotype
likenesses, but the resulting portraits, including one of
Portraits on Paper: The Calotype
Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal (pi. no. 49), often

Calotype portraiture never achieved the commercial were so indistinct that considerable retouching — at which
popularity of the daguerreotype. Talbot's first successes in Collen excelled —was necessary. Since neither Collen nor
portraying thehuman face occurred in Oaober, 1840, when Talbot's next partner in portraiture, Claudet, were able to
he made a number of close-ups of his wife Constance, convince the public that the duplicatable paper image with
among them a three-quarter view of exceptional vitality its broad chiaroscuro style was preferable to the fine detail

54 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
P^J^''^^!ilf^iPf^P

48. Unknown Photographer (American). 49. Henry Collen. Queen Victoria with Her Daughter,
Dead Child, c. 1850. Daguerreotype. Colleaion Richard Viaoria, Princess Royal, 1844-45. Calotype. Royal Library,
Rudisill, Santa Fe, N.M. Winckor Castle. Reproduced by Gracious Permission of
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

of the daguerreotype, commercial paper portraiture in En- minimum of furnishings arranged to simulate an interior,
gland languished until the era of the glass negative. or on location, were artists, intellectuals, the upper-class
The situation was different in Scodand, where, as noted gentry of Scodand, and working fisherfolk in the nearby
in Chapter i, Talbofs associate Sir David Brewster was town of Newhaven. Simplicity of pose and dramatic yet
instrumental in introducing the calotype to David Octavius untheatrical lighting emphasize the solid strength of the
Hill and Robert Adamson (see Profile) . In an endeavor to sitter James Linton (pi. no. si), a working fisherman. On
record the 400 or so likenesses to be included in a painting the other hand, the genteel character of well-bred Victorian
that Hill decided to make in 1843 commemorating the women is brought out in the poses, softer lighting, and
Church of Scodand from the Church of
separation of the gracefully intertwined arrangement of the three figures in

England, the two became so caught up in photography The Misses Binny and Miss Monro (pi. no. sz) . Such Hill and
that they also produced hundreds of commanding por- Adamson images recall the idealized depictions of women
traits of individuals who had no relationship to the reli- in paintings by Daniel McClise and Alfred Chalons, pop-
gious issues that were the subject of the painting. Aware ularized in the publication Book of Beauty, but as photo-
that the power of the calotype lay in the fact that it looked graphs they gain an added dimension because the camera
like the "imperfect work of man . . . and not the perfect reveals a degree of particularity entirely lacking in the
work of God,'"* Hill and Adamson used the rough texture paintings.
of the paper negative to create images with broad chiaro- In artistic and literary circles in Britain and France, these
scuro effects that were likened by contemporaries to the photographs were considered the paradigm of portrait
paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Rembrandt. photography in that they made use of traditional artistic

Among the sitters, who posed for one to two minutes concepts regarding arrangement and employed atmo-
either in an out-of-doors studio in Edinburgh, with a spheric effeas to reveal character. During the 1850s, a

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 55
 i

so. William Henry Fox

Talbot. "C's Portrait"
(Constance Talbot), Oa. lo,

1840. Calotv'pe. Royal

Photographic Society, Bath,
England.

group that included William Collie in the British Isles and cedures that the wet-plate process entailed were minimized
Louis Desire Blanquart-E\'rard, Charles Hugo, Gustave in a studio setting. Collodion opened up an era of com-
Le Gray, Charles Negre, and Victor Regnault on the Con- mercial expansion, attracting to the profession many pho-
tinent followed a similar path, using themselves, members tographers who resorted to all manner of inducements to
of their families, and friends to make calotype portraits entice sitters —among them elegantl}' appointed studios;
that emphasize light and tonal masses and suppress ftissy likenesses to be printed on porcelain, fabric, and other
detail. unusual substances, as well ason paper; or set into jewelry;
photosculpture; and the most popular caprice of them

Portraits on Paper: Collodion/Albumen

all—the carte-de-visite.

But before public acceptance of paper portraiture was

For commercial portraitists, Frederick Scott Archer's established, photographers were occupied for a number of
invention of the collodion negative seemed at first to solve years with a half-way process, in which the collodion glass

all problems. The glass plate made possible both sharp negative was used to create a one-of-a-kind image that was
definition and easy duplication of numbers of prints on less cosdy than the daguerreotype. While both Talbot and
paper from one negative, while the awkward chemical pro- Archer had been aware that a bleached or underexposed

56 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
51. David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. Redding the Line (Portrait ofJames Linton),

c. 1846. Calorype. Scottish National Portrait Gallen,', Edinburgh.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 57
52. David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. The Misses Binny and Miss Monro, c. 1845.
Calotype. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, i9?9.

58 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 ture of sawdust and shellac, these early thermoplastic
holders were exported globally, eventually becoming avail-

able in a choice of about 800 tiifferent molded designs.

The tintype, even less expensive than the ambrotype
(to which it was technically similar), was patented in 1856

by an American professor at Kenyon College in Ohio.'^

Like the daguerreotype, it was a one-of-a-kind image on a

varnished metal plate (iron instead of silvered copper) that

had been coated with black lacquer and sensitized collodi-
on. Dull gray in tone without the sheen of the mirrorlike
daguerreotype, the tintype was both lightweight and
cheap, making it an ideal form for travelers and Civil War
soldiers, many of whom were pictured in their encamp-
ments by roving photographers with wagon darkrooms.
The combination of a negative on glass coated with
sensitized collodion on paper coated with sen-
and a print
sitized albumen —
the collodion/albumen process
made commercial portraiture possible on a previously
undreamed-of scale, despite the fact that the prints them-
selves were subject to fading and discoloration. From the
1850s until the 1880s, studios in the major capitals of the
world invested in ever-more elegant and unusual fiirnish-

ings in order to attract a well-paying clientele. As the dis-

play of status through attire and props grew more promi-

nent, the goal of revealing character became secondary,
53. Unknown Photographer (American). Untitled Portrait^ and portraits often seemed merely to be topographies of
c. 1858. Ambrotype with backing partially removed to face and body, "dull, dead, unfeeling, inauspicious,"^° as
show positive and negative effect. Gemsheim Collection,
expressed in the words of the time.
Humanities Research Center, University' of Texas, Austin.
The skillful handling of pose, lighting, props, and
glass negative could be converted to a positive by back- decor visible in the works of the highly regarded European
ing the glass with opaque material (paper or fabric) or portraitists Franz HanfstaengI, Antoine Samuel Adam-
varnish (pi. no. xjj, the patent for this anomaly was taken Salomon, and Camille Silvy became models for emulation.
out by an American, James Ambrose Cutting, in 1854. HanfstaengI, already renowned as a lithographer, opened a
Called ambrotypes in the United States and collodion pos- photographic art studio in Munich in 1853. He soon won
itives in Great Britain, these glass images were made in the acclaim internationally for the tasteful poses, modulated
same size as daguerreotypes and were similarly treated lighting, and exceptional richness of his prints on toned
hand-colored, framed behind glass, and housed in a slim albumen paper, as exemplified by Man with Hat (pi. no.

case. In an unusual cultural lag, Japanese photographers S4). Hanfstaengl's earlier work — exhibited at the 1855

adopted and used this technique until the turn of the Exposition Universetle in Paris, where it was criticized for

century, long after it had been discarded in Europe and extensive retouching on the negative is believed to have —
the United States. Framed in traditional kiri-wood boxes, inspired Adam-Salomon to change his profession from
the portraits were commissioned by Japanese sitters rather sculptor to photographer. The poses (modeled on
than intended for sale to foreign visitors. antique sculpture) preferred by Adam-Salomon and his
By the mid- 1850s, when this process was supplanting penchant for luxurious fabrics and props appealed to the
the metal image in Europe (though not yet in the United materialistic French bourgeoisie of the Second Empire.
States), the case-making industry was expanding. The The photographer's heavy hand with the retouching
earliest daguerreotypes had been enclosed in cases of —the only thing considered disagreeable about
brush his

papier mdche or wood covered with embossed paper or work— apparent

is the inbehind the lighter tonality figure

leather and usually were lined with silk, in Europe and in this image of his daughter (pi. no. ss)-

velvet in the United States, when they were not encased in Besides attesting to the sitter's status, props and poses
lockets, brooches, and watchcases. In 1854, the "union" could offer clues to personality, enriching the image psy-
case was introduced. Made in the United States of a mix- chologically and visually. The oval picture frame used

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 59
 — .

coyly as a lorgnette and the revealing drapery in the por-

trait of the Countess Castiglione (pi. no. .0) by Louis
Pierson,-' a partner in the Paris studio of Mayer Brothers
and Pierson, suggest the seductive personality of
Napoleon Ill's mistress (who was rumored to be an
Italian spy). Oscar Gustav Rejlander's portrait of Lewis
Carroll (the Reverend Charles L. Dodgson pi. no. sz)-,

which ciepicts the author oi' Alice in Wonderland holding

a lens and polishing cloth, suggests through his expres-

sion and demeanor the sense of propriety that Carroll

believed he was bringing to his photography. This work
is one of Rejlander's nimierous portraits, which include
images of friends as well as amusing views of himself, his

female companion, and the children who figured in the

genre scenes for which he is better known (pi. no. 266)

As studio photography preempted the role of the

portrait painter, the aesthetic standards of handmade like-

nesses were embraced by the photographic portraitists.

Manuals appeared early in the daguerreotype era and con-

tinued through the collodion period (and into the 20th
century), giving directions for appropriate dress and the
correct colors to be worn to take advantage of the limit-
ed sensitivity of daguerreot)'pe and glass plates. Included
also were instructions for the proper attitudes diat sitters

54- Franz Hanfstaengl. Man with Hat, 1857. Salt should assume when posing. Because the public still

print. Agfa-Gevaert Foto-Historama, Cologne, Germany. believed that hand-painted portraits were more presti-

gious than photographs, likenesses often were painted

over in watercolors, oils, or pastels, without entirely oblit-
erating the underlying trace of the camera image, as in a
typical example (pi. no. 332) fi"om the studio of T. Z. Vogel
and C. Reichardt, in Venice.

Meanwhile, the professional portrait painter, aware of

the public appedte for exactitude, found tlie photograph a

convenient crutch, not just for copying the features but

actually for painting upon. Projection from glass positives

to canvas was possible as early as 1853; shortly afterward,

several versions of solar projection enlargers —including

one patented in 1857 by David Woodward, a professor of
fine arts in Baltimore — simplified enlargement onto sen-
sitized paper and canvas. When partially developed, the
image could be completely covered with paint — as X-rays

have disclosed was the case in the life-size painted portrait

of Lincoln (pi. no. sS) by Alexander Fran(;ois. This practice,

common in the last half of the 19th century, was not con-
sidereci reprehensible because in the \'iew of many
painters the role of photography \\as to be the artist's

helpmate in creati\e handwork. Although such photo-

graphic "underpainting" was rarely acknowledged, the
desire for \ erisimilitude on the part of painter and public
and the hope for artistic status on the part of the photog-

55. Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon. Portrait of a Girl, rapher resulted in a hybrid form of portraiture —part
c. 1862. Albumen print. Daniel Wolf, Inc., New York. photochemical and part handwork.

60 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
56. Louis Pierson. Countess Castiplwne, c. i860. Albumen print (previously attributed to Adolphe Braun)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1947.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 61
 —

Carte-de-visite and Celebrity Portraits

With the possibility of endless replication from the col-

lodion negative, it was only a matter of time before a pocket-
size paper portrait was devised. Suggestions along this
line, made by several photographers in Europe and the
United States, included the substitution of a likeness for
thename and address on a calling card the traditional —
manner of introducing oneself among middle- and upper-
class gentry —and the affixing of small portraits to licenses,
passports, entry tickets, and other documents of a social
nature. However, Andre Adolphe Disderi, a photographer
of both portraits and genre scenes who also was active in
improving processes and formulating aesthetic standards,
patented the carte-de-visite portrait in 1854. This small
image ^Vi x iVi inches, mounted on a slighdy larger
card —was produced by taking eight exposures during one

58. Alexander Francois. Abraham Lincoln, n.d.

Oil on canvas. Collection George R. Rinhart.

sitting, using an ingenious sliding plate holder in a camera

equipped with four lenses and a vertical and horizontal
septum (pi. no. 226) . A hill-length view of the figure in

more natural and relaxed positions became possible, and it

was not necessarv for each pose to be exacdy the same, as

can be seen in an uncut sheet of carte-de-visite portraits
taken by Disderi (pi. no. S9)

The reasons why the carte portraits became so enor-

mouslv popular after 1859 are not entirelv clear, but for
a considerable part of the next decade this inexpensive

format captured the public imagination in much the same

wav the stereograph \'iew had. Portrait studios ever\'-
where — in major cities and provincial villages —turned out
millions of hill- and bust-length images of working and
trades people as well as of members of the bourgeoisie and
aristocrac\'. These could be sold inexpensi\'ely because un-

skilled labor cut the images apart after processing and

pasted them on mounts on which trademarks or logos
of the maker appeared either on the front of the card,
discreedy placed below the image, or on the reverse. Fre-
quentlv, elaborate displavs of r\'pc and graphic art sug-
gested the connections beuveen photography and painting.
57. Osc.\!!. GusTAV Rejlander. Lenns Carroll (Ra\
Backgrounds stiU included painted gardens, balustrades,
Charles L. Dodpison), March 28, i86^ Albumen print.
Gernsheim Collection, Humanities Research Center, drapery swags, and furniture, but sitters also were posed
University of Texas, Austin. against undecorated walls, and vignetting — in which the

62 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
background was removed —was not uncommon. Adults dispersal of celebrity images had consequences beyond
displayed the tools of their trade, the marks of their pro- that of a pleasant pastime can be seen in the fact that
fession, and the emblems of their rank; children were already in the i86os such images influenced the course of a
shown with toys; and attention was paid to women's attire public career. Both the moderately gifted Jenny Lind and
and hair arrangements. Nevertheless, apart from the infor- the unexceptional Lola Montez became cult figures in the

mality of pose that imbues some of these images with a United States largely owing to their promotion through
degree of freshness, carte portraits offered little compass carte portraits. Lincoln is said to have ascribed his election

for an imaginative approach to pose and lighting as a to the Presidency at least in part to Brady's carte of him
means of evoking character. when he still was an unknown, and both the French and
As their popularity continued, famous works of art, British Royal families permitted the sales oi carte portraits
well-known monuments, portraits of celebrities and of of themselves; on the death of Prince Albert, for example,
fashionably attired women (at times pirated and repro- 70,000 likenesses of Queen Victoria's consort were sold.
duced from other cartes rather than from the original collo- Cartes also took over the function formerly performed by
dion negative) appeared on the market. That the wide lithographs and engravings in popularizing types of female

59. Andr£ Adolphe EuGfeNE Disd£ri. Portrait of an Unukntified Wmnan, c. 1860-65.

Uncut albumen print from a carte-de-mite negative.Gemsheim Collection, Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 6?
beauty and fashionable attire. Sil\y, a French photographer of portraits of European royalty and distinguished person-
of artistic taste who in 1859 opened a studio in his lavishly ages. Indeed, the British roval famih' was so taken with
decorated London residence, specialized in posing his photography that thev not only commissioned numberless
upper-class sitters in front of mirrors so that the sofUy portraits but purchased genre images, sent photographs as

modulated lighting not only called attention to attire and state gifts, underwrote photographic ventures, and were
hairstyle —fore and aft, so to speak —but surrounded them patrons of The Photographic Societx'; in addition they
also with an aura of luxuriousness. installed a darkroom for their own use in Windsor Casde.
Cartes were avidly collected and exchanged, with ornate British and French monarchs staunchly supported photog-
albums and special holders manufactured to satisfy the raphy in general because it represented progress in the
demand for gimmickr\' connected with the fad. This ac- chemical sciences, which was emblematic of the prosperit\'
tivity received a boost from the enthusiasm of Queen brought to their respective nations, and also because the
Victoria, who accumulated more than one hundred albums easily comprehended imagen' accorded with the taste for

60. Spencer y Cia.

Chilean Ladies, n.d.
Albumen print. Neikrug
Photographica, Ltd., New
York.

Santiago
Valparaiso.

64 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 6i. Unknown Photographer
(American). Seventy Celebrated
Americans Includincf All the
Presidents^ c. 1865. AJbumen print.

Library' Company of Philadelphia.

verisimilitude evinced by the middle class and their royal in Valparaiso and Santiago, Chile (pi. no. 60), the format
leaders. was taken over as a means of producing thematic compos-
During the 1860s, portrait studios began to assemble a ites of political (pi. no. 61) or theatrical figures that might
selection of individual likenesses on a single print. Pro- be sold or given away as souvenirs.

duced by pasting together and rephotographing heads and One form of commercial exploitation of portrait pho-
portions of the torso from indi\'idual carte portraits, these tography in Europe that did not fare as well as cartes was
composites paid scant attention to congruences of size and called photosculpture. Invented by Francois Willeme in

lighting, or to the representation of real-looking space. France in i860, this three-dimensional image was pro-
Designed as advertising publicit)' to acquaint the public duced by a compan\' whose English branch briefl\' in-

with the range and qualit\' of a particular studio's work, as cluded the usuallv prudent Claudet as artistic director. The
in this example from the studio of a portrait photographer procedure necessitated a large circular studio in which 24

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 65
 ^

j3. Ci^/^ y^a^fTcui't if. ^h\ C'^"-^ ^roO„{-„^ ^

62. Adolphe Jean Fran(,:ois /VIarin Dallemagne. Gnllay of ('ontniipomiy Artists, c. iS66. Albumen prints
assembled into Gnlcrie des mtistes contcnipcmnics. Bibliotheque N'ation.ile, Paris.

66 : : A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 1

J
63. Reutlinger Studio. Mile. Elven, 1883. Albumen or 64. Paul Nadar. Lillie Langtry^ n.d. Gelatin silver print.
gelatin silver print. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

cameras were positioned to take simultaneous exposures of (who encountered refusals from politicians who found
a centrally placed sitter. These were processed into lantern their likenesses too realistic); and the Galerie des contempor-
slides, projected, and traced in clay (or wood in one adapta- aines {Gallery of Contemporaries) — initiated in 1859 in Paris

tion) with a pantograph, theoretically insuring a head start by Pierre Petit. This project was a precursor of the highly
on exactitude for the sculptor. Despite royal patronage, regarded French series, Galerie contemporaine, litteraire,
photosculpturc had a short life, although ever)' once in a artistique {Contemporary Gallery of Writers and Artists),
while this gimmick crops up again as an idea whose time published intermittendy by Goupil and Company between
has come. 1876 and 1884, to which all the major portraitists of the
Editions of prints on paper in sizes and formats other period contributed. Less concerned than most studio por-
than cartes also were popular from the 1860s on. Because traiture with fashionable decor and dress, this collection

the problems with albumen prints mentioned in Chapter i was "physiognomic" in intent —to evoke the character of
never were completely solved, carbon printing —often re- the giants of French literary and artistic life through pose
ferred to as "permanent" —and Woodburyt\'pe reproduc- and expression, as in the commanding presence projected
tion were favored for the production of celcbrit\' likenesses in Etienne Carjat's portrait of Victor Hugo (pi. tw. 94)

that appeared in the "galleries" and albums issued by Other such publications catered to the taste for elaborate

photographers and publishers in western Europe and the decor, as in Adolphe Jean Francois Marin Dallemagne's
United States. Weil-known examples are Hanfstaengl's Galerie des artistes contemporaines (Gallery of Contemporary
Album der Zeit^nossen (Album of Contemporary Fujures), Artists) of 1866 (pi. no. 62), a group of 50 portraits of artists
portraits of German and artists; the
scientists, writers, shown posing in trompe I' oeil frames that are suggestive of
British Gallery of Photopfraphic Portraits, undertaken by the the conceits of baroque portrait painting.
studio of Joseph John Elliott and Clarence Edmund Fr)' The best-known photographer of French intellectual,

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 67
65. Nadar (Gaspard F^lix Tournachon). Sarah Bernhardt, 1865. Albumen print. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

68 : : A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 left:

66. Napoleon Sarony.

Sarah Bernhardt, c. 1880.
Albumen print. Library of
Congress, Washington,
D.C.

right:
67. Napoleon Sarony.
Eu0ene Sandon' with a
Leopard Skin (Posing as the
Famese Hercules), c. 1895.

Albumen print. Harvard

Theatre Collection,
Cambridge, Mass.

literary, and artistic figures during the coUodion era is in fashion photography in the same years, was oriented
Gaspard Felix Tournachon, known as Nadar (see Profile) toward evoking glamour by seductive pose, bland expres-
His aim in portraiture was to seek, as he wrote, "that sion, and attention to elegant attire.

instant of understanding that puts you in touch with the By the time collodion/albumen photographs had begun
model —helps you sum him up, guides you to his habits, to displace daguerreotypes and ambrotypes in the United
his ideas, and character and enables you to produce ... a States, the Civil War had erupted, relegating portraiture to
really convincing and sympathetic likeness, an intimate a secondary place in the minds of manv photographers.
portrait. "^^ One example — a portrait of the young Sarah Brady, whose Washington studio had been opened in 1858
Bernhardt in 1865 (pi. no. 6s) — t)'pifies Nadar's ability to to take advantage of the concentration of political figures
organize the baroque forms of drapery, a truncated classi- in the Capital, turned his attention to war reportage (to be
cal column, and the dramatic contrasts of hair and skin and discussed in Chapter 4), but continued to make portraits.
still suggest character — in this case both the theatricalit\' In addition, Lincoln, his family, the Cabinet members and
and vulnerability of a young actress who had just achieved the Army generals all sat for other well-known portraitists,
her first stage success. As French art critic Philippe Burt)' among them Alexander Gardner, a former manager of
wrote of Nadar's entries exhibited at the Societe Frangaise de Brady's Washington gallery who took what may be the
Photographic exhibition in 1859, "his portraits are works of last likeness of the President in April, 1865, shortly before

art in every accepted sense of the word," adding that "if his assassination (pi. no. 68) .^

photography is by no means a complete art, the photog- In the period after the Civil War, besides cartes and
rapher always has the right to be an artist.'"" Nadar's later cabinet-size images (approximately 4 x 5'/2 inches, mounted
output included many unexceptional portraits of enter- on a slighdy bigger card), larger formats called Promenade,
tainers and modishly dressed women, a direction necessi- Boudoir, and Imperial Panel were introduced to appeal to
tated by the demands of the middle class for glamorous the newly rich bourgeoisie that had emerged. Fashionable
images that became even more marked when his son Paul portrait studios in large cities, among them Fredericks,
took control of the studio in the late 1880s. The style of Gurney, Falk and Kurtz in New York, Gutekunst in Phila-

Paul Nadar's portrait of the royal mistress Lillie Langtr\' delphia, and Bachrach in Baltimore, served as pacesetters

(pi. no. 64)., like that of contemporaries such as Charles and in terms of pose, decor, lighting, and the manner of pre-
Emile Reutlinger (pi. no. 63) whose firm began to specialize senting the finished image. As in Europe, there was a

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 69
68. Alexander Gardner. Abraham Lincoln^ April, 1865. Albumen print. Librar)- of Congress, Washington, D.C.

70 : : A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 ^^g^^^B u /

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.X . : i^i^^ lihH^'a^M^B
Li^i^
69. Heinrich Tonnies. Four Yuiinji Blacksmttljs, c. 1881. Modern gelatin silver print from original negative.
Formerly collection Alexander Alland, North Salem, N.Y.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 71
70. AwTT SzuBERT. Amelia Szubert, c. 1875. 71. Will Soule. Brave in War Dress, c. 1868. Albumen
Albumen print. Collection Konrad Pollesch, Cracow; print. Western History Collection, Natural Histor\'
International Center of Photography, New York. Museum of Lxjs Angeles Count)', Los Angeles.

demand for images of theatrical and entertainment person- Heinrich Tonnies, working in Aalborg from the 1860s into
alities that was satisfied in the main bv the New York the 1900S, which includes some 750 portraits of working
studios of Napoleon Sarony and his competitor Jose Mora. people attired in the garments and displa\'ing the tools of
A prominent lithographer before the War, Sarony made their occupations. Despite the formality of the poses in

over 40,000 negatives of celebrities, some of whom were studio settings (pi. tw. 69), these images are not merely
paid extravagantly for the sitting. The eclectic decor visible descripti\'e but suggest prevailing attitudes toward work
in his images of Sarah Bernhardt (pi. rw. 66) and strongman on the part of both photographer and sitters. In some
Eugene Sandow (pi. no. 67) necessitated a large collection localities, patriots saw the camera as a means of emphasiz-
of fiisty props and led to a reference to his studio as a ing ethnic or national origin. A fme line may separate the
"dumping ground ... for unsaleable idols, tattered tapestn' portrait taken by PoHsh photographer Awit Szubert of his
and indigent crocodiles."^'' wife in native dress (pi. no. 70) from man\' similar images of
During the last 40 years of the 19th ccntur\', portraiture locally costumed figures that were made and sold in carte

expanded more rapidly in the less-industrialized portions and cabinet size for the tourist trade, but even in some of
of Europe, and in Australia, India, China, Japan, Mexico, these images a sense of national pride is discernible.

and South America. Owing to the fact that owners of Besides playing a role in the development of cultural
commercial studios in provincial towns frcquentlv sened a nationalism in Europe, portraits also reflected the rising
clientele ^rawn from all classes, they sometimes produced interest in anthropolog)'. In the western hemisphere, early
extensive (.documentations not only of physiognomies but manifestations of the interest in nati\e t\'pes included por-
of social and psychological attitudes. One such example is traits of individual members of the Indian tribes indige-

the large output of portraits by Danish photographer nous to the West, made in the course of the land surveys

72 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
and explorations (see Chapter
3) that followed the end of when they were employed during the 1850s as copyists
the Civil War. In the wake of these expeditions, several and colorists in the Hong Kong studios run by foreigners,
frontier studios opened their doors to Native American but while some 20 native studios with Chinese names are
sitters, among them that of Will Soule, in Fort Sill, Okla- known, littie else has been discovered about these portrait-
homa, which specialized in commercial portrayals of indivi- ists. The studio of Afong Lai appears to have been the
duals posed formally in front of painted backdrops, as in most stable of the native-owned commercial enterprises,
an 1868 photograph tided simply 5rai'f in War Dress (pi. no. lasting fi-om 1859 on into the 20th century and with the
71) . In South America, Marc Ferrez, the best-known Bra- artistry of its work acclaimed by Thomson.
zilian photographer of the 19th century, photographed On the Indian subcontinent, however, photography in
Indians of the Amazon region while on expeditions to the all its varieties, including portraiture, was promoted by the
interior in the mid-iSyos; in the same years strong interest British occupying forces and eagerly taken up by Indian
in images of indigenous peoples prompted studios in Aus- businessmen and members of the ruling families. Com-
tralia to photograph the Aborigines of the region. mercial firms owned by Indian photographers, individuals
appointed by the courts, and those working in bazaars
began to appear in large cities after the i86os in order to
Camera Portraits in Asia
supply the British and Indian ruling class with images of
The introduction of portrait photography in the Far themselves. The most renowned enterprise was that started
East coincided with changes from insular traditionalism to
the acceptance of modem ideas in science, symbolized by
the 1854 American diplomatic ultimatum that Japan be
opened to the West; indeed, the ideographs used to denote
photograph in Japanese (shashin) mean "copy
literally

truth." The first portrait daguerreotypes made in that

country appear to be those by Eliphalet Brown, Jr., Ameri-
can artist and photographer attached to Commodore
Matthew Perry's expedition to Japan, but experimentation
with the daguerreotype process had been going on since
1848 when a Nagasaki merchant imported the first

camera.^* However, successfiil daguerreotypes by Japanese

photographers were not made until 1857, only a year before
the first collodion portraits by a Japanese photographer.
As shown in a woodblock print of 1861, French Couple with
a Camera (pi. no. 72), photographers working in Japan
during the early period were foreigners who not only
provided views and portraits but taught the process to the
Japanese. Apparendy by the mid- to late-'yos they were so
successfiil that professional studios were opened in all the
major cities of Japan, with more than 100 in the Tokyo
area alone; even the unapproachable royal family permitted
members to sit for camera likenesses.
Although China remained from Western ideas
isolated
of progress longer than Japan, photographers from the
West began to make portraits there, too, during the 1860s.
Among the succession of foreigners, Milton Miller, a Cali-
fomian who ran a studio in Hong Kong in the early 1860s,
made formally posed yet sensitive portraits of Cantonese
merchants, Mandarins, and their families, while the Scot-
tish photographer John Thomson photographed workers
and peasants as well, including their portraits in his ambi-
tious four- volume work Illustrations ofChina and Its People, 72. YosHiKAZu IssAN. French Couple with a Camera, 1861.
published in England in 1873/74. It is thought that native Color woodblock print. Agfa-Gevaert Foto-Historama,
Chinese photographers were introduced to photography Cologne, Germany.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 73
 73.Lewis Carroll
:'i^ (Rev. Charles L.
DODGSON).
Edith, Lorina, and Alice
Liddell, c. 1859. Albumen
print. Photography
Collection, Humanities
Research Center, University
of Texas, Austin.

by Laia Deen Dayal, owner of studios in Indore, Bombay, in elaborately casual poses, in actual domestic interiors and
and Hyderabad from the 1880s on, who became court real gardens. When Carroll photographed his artistic and
photographer to the nizam of Hyderabad. Many portraits intellectual friends and their children, he favored the dis-

made in India during this period were painted over in the creet and harmonious arrangements seen in his grouping of
traciitional decorative style of Indian miniatures, just as in the Liddell sisters — Edith, Lorina, and Alice [pi. no. 73)- At
the West painted camera portraits were treated naturalis- the same time, his stress on the virginal beaut}' of these
tically. This attitude toward the photographic portrait in young sitters (also evident in his nude photos,/?/, no. 334)
India has led to the suggestion that the camera itself was reflects an ambivalence that embraced ideals of feminine
used in a different fashion than in the West, that Indian innocence and his own deep-seated sexual needs.
photographers were somehow able to avoid the represen- Cameron, the most widely known Victorian portraitist

tation of space and dimensionality even before the paint (usually considered an amateur even though she sold and
was added.^7 However, allowing for obvious differences in exhibited her work), also used the camera to idealize her
pose, dress, and studio decor, Indian photographic por- subjects. Seeking out men and women whose individuality

traits that were not painted over do not seem remarkably or impressive artistic and literary contributions appeared to
different from the general run of commercial portraiture her to redeem the materialism of the time, she importuned
elsewhere. them to pose so tiiat she might record, in her words,
"faidifriUy, the greatness of the imier as well as the features

of the outer man."^^ Avoiding sharp focus, she concen-

The Portrait as Personal Expression
trated on the evocative handling of light, seen at its most
Alongside the likenesses produced by commercial stu- effective in portraits of Sir John Herschel — a family friend

dios, a more intimate st\'le of portraiture developed in the of majiy years (pi. no. 74) —and of her niece Julia Jackson,
work of amateurs —men and women in mostly comfort- who had just wed Herbert Duckworth and was to be the
able circumstances who regarded photography as an mother of novelist Virginia Woolf (pi. no. 7S)-

agreeable pastime but did not make their living from it. Cameron's work, like that of Carroll, can be related to
During the 1860s and '70s this group —which included the Pre-Raphaelite search for ideal t^'pes, but her portrait
Olympe C'ount Aguado and Paul Gaillard on die Continent style especially seems to have been inspired by die paint-
and Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Cosmo Innes, ings of her artistic mentor, George Frederic Watts, which
and Clementina, Lady Hawarden, in Britain — used the in turn reflected the taste among the British intelligentsia
collodion process to portray family and associates, at times for Rembrandt-like chiaroscuro effects in the treatment of

74 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
74-Julia Margaret Cameron. Sir John Herschel, April, 1867. Albumen print.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Gift of Mrs. J. D. Cameron Bradley.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 75
75. ]vLlA^AAKGARKT Cameron. My Niece Julia Jackson, 1867. Albumen print. National Portrait Gallery, London.

76 : : A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
form. Critical reaction from Cameron's contemporaries
was divided; while art critics for the general press and a
number of photographers in England and abroad ap-
proved of her approach, the medium's most vocal propo-
nents of art photography criticized the "slovenly manipula-
tion" and regarded her work as "altogether repulsive."^'

Newly emerging scientific ideas provided still other

uses for the photographic portrait during the collodion
era. Aside from the documentation of strictly medical
problems (skin lesions, hydrocephalism, etc.), the camera
was called upon to document psychological reactions and
mental aberrations. Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond, who be-
came interested in the calotypc shordy after the announce-
ment of Talbot's discovery, was one of the first to advocate
such scientific documentation. After he was introduced to
collodion by Archer — a former patient —he used the new
technology to photograph female inmates in the Surrey
County Asylum (pi. nos. 76-77) , where he was superinten-
dent. In a paper read to the Royal Society in 1856, Dr.

Diamond outlined the relationship of photography to psy-

chiatry, suggesting that portraits were useful in diagnosis,

as treatment, and for administrative identification of the

patients. In The Physiognomy of Insanity, illustrated with
engravings based on Dr. Diamond's likenesses, physio-
gnomic theories that had related photography to the de-
piction of normal character were extended to embrace the
mentally abnormal.
Fleeting facial expressions were photographed in 1853
by Adrien Toumachon (brother of Felix) for a work on
human physiognomy by the noted Dr. Guillaume Benjamin
Duchenne de Boulogne, the founder of electrotherapy,
and in 1872 Charles Darwin chose to use photographs to
illustrate The Expression cf the Emotions in Man and Animals,
for which he approached Rej lander. In addition to images
supplied by Duchenne, and by two lesser-known figures,
the book included a series showing emotional states, and
for five of them Rej lander himself posed as model (pi. nos.

78-79) Despite the theatricality of a number of the expres-

sions depicted in these portraits, the use of the camera image

in this capacity relegated to a minor role the traditional
graphic conventions for portraying the human passions.

In the 30 years foUowing the discovery of photography,

the camera portrait occupied center stage. Images on metal,
glass, and paper provided likenesses for large numbers of
people —the newly affluent as well as many who formerly
could not have imagined commissioning a painted por-
trait. Many of these images can be regarded today as no
more than "archeological relics," but in their time they
served to make generations of sitters more aware of their 76-77. Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond. Inmates of Surrey
position in society and of themselves as individuals, even County Asylum, 1852. Albumen prints. Royal Photographic
when they glossed over physiological and psychological Society, Bath, England.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 77
78, 79. Oscar Gustav Rejlander, Guillaume Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne. Illustiations for The Expression of the
Emotions Alan mid Atnninls, by Charles Darwin,
in 1872. HelioU'pes. Photography Collection, The New York Public Library,
Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

frailties. In addition, photographs taken at various stages devoted his life to improving the arts in Scodand. An
of life —youth, middle age, and elderly —made people more unexceptional though competent painter of the Scottish
conscious of mortality and their relationship to ephemeral countryside (pi. no. 80) , Hill played an important role in the
time. The cult of individualism also was promoted by the cultural life of Edinburgh. He was born into a famih' of
practice of publishing and selling likenesses of famous booksellers and publishers in Perth and learned lithogra-
persons. With the image as a surrogate, more people were phy early in his career, publishing, in 1821, the first litho-

made to feel closer to political and cultural figures, even graphic views of Scodand in Sketches ofScenery in Perthshire.
while the likenesses themselves emphasized distinctiveness. In association with other artists who were dissatisfied with
On the whole, the general run of commercial camera por- the leadership of the Royal Institution, HiLl established the
traiture is quickly exhausted in terms of insight or aesthetic Scottish Academy in 1829, and remained connected with it

interest, yet in the hands of creative individuals (both in unpaid and, later, official capacit}' until his death. By the
amateur and professional), among them South worth and 1830S, Hill's interest turned to narrative illustration; among
Hawes, Hill and Adamson, Cameron, Carroll, and Nadar, his works were lithographs for The Glasjjow and Gamkirk
portraits seemed to distill an artistic ideal while still probing Raihvay Prospectus, The Waverlv Novels, and The Works of
individual personality. The importance of studio portrai- Robert Burns.
ture was diminished by the invention of new cameras and Involvement in the Scottish Disruption Mo\'ement,
technologies that permitted people to make likenesses of which led to the establishment of the Free Church of
family and friends at home, but the portrait itself —as a Scotland and independence from the Church of England,
mirror of personality, as an artistic artifact, and as an item inspired in Hill a wish to commemorate this event in a
of cultural communication — has remained an intriguing painting of the clerg\'mcn v\'ho took part in the dispute.
challenge to photographers. Introduced by Sir David Brewster to Robert Adamson (pi.

no. 81) , through whom he became aware of Talbot's pro-

cess. Hill planned to use photography as an aid in painting
Profile: David Octavius Hill
the likenesses of the 400 members of the Disruption Move-
and Robert Adamson
ment. In 1843 he entered into a partnership with Adamson,
At his death in 1870, David Octavius Hill was mourned about whom relatively litde is known, to produce calot\pcs
for being a deeply religious but blithe spirit who had in a studio at Rock House, Calton Hill, Edinburgh, and

78 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
8o. David Octavius Hill. On the Quay at Leith, 1826.
Oil on wood. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

sometimes on location. In tlieir joint work, each man pro-

vided an element missing in the other. Before 1843,
Adamson's work was wanting in composition and light-

ing, while, on the evidence of work done with another

collaborator some 14 years after Adamson's premature 81.David Octavius Hill. Robert Adamson, c. 1843.
death, HilJ lacked sensitivity and skill in handling the Calotype. Gemsheim Collection, Humanities Research

camera. During the partnership, HLU energetically organ- Center, University of Texas, Austin.

ized the sittings for his two

proposed painting, but as the

partners became more deeply involved with the medium,

they calotyped subjects, persons, and landscape views that
had no relation to the Disruption painting, producing
between 1843 and 1848 about 2,500 separate calotypes.
Unfortunately, Hill discovered that many of the negatives
tended to fade, a circumstance that along with Adamson's
death seemed to make further involvement in photography
unattractive.

After 1848, Hill continued to use photographs as studies

for his paintings and to sell individual calotypes from his

brother's print shop, while devoting time to the affairs of

the Scottish Academy and other local art associations. Fol-

lowing a second marriage in 1862 and the unsuccessftil

attempt to photograph in collodion with another parmer.
Hill returned to the Disruption painting, completing it in

1866. Compared with the vitality and expressiveness of the

calotype studies, the painted figures are unconvincing and
seem to exist without air or space; the picture, however,
was greeted with kindness, and Hill's last photographic
project involved an endeavor to make photographic fac-
At M^-M^^y^ ^t^t.
similes of this work. Had he not become involved with
photography, it is unlikelv that Hill would have merited
more than a footnote in the history of the arts of the 19th 82. JuLL\ Margaret Cameron. The Rising of the Nen'
century. Tear, 1872. Albumen print. Private Collection.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
Profile: Julia Margaret Cameron and Watts, but the photographer also was interested in

portraying the unrenowned as long as she found them

One of seven daughters of a prosperous British family beautiful or full of character. Besides hundreds of idealized
stationed in India, Julia Margaret Pattle was regarded by portraits, she created allegorical and religious subjects, par-

friends as generous, impulsive, enthusiastic, and imperi- ticularly of angels (pi. no. 82) and the Madonna, which
ous
— "a unique figure, baffling beyond description. "3° emphasized motherhood. Because of her disappointment
Educated in England and France after the death of her with the poor quality of the woodcut transcriptions of
parents, she returned to India and in 1838 married Charles Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Cameron raised money to
Hay Cameron, an eminent jurist and classical scholar, issue two editions that were photographically illustrated.

who invested his fortune in coffee plantations in Ceylon. Cameron's attitude toward photography was that of a
In the ten years prior to their return to England, Mrs. typical upper-class "amateur" of the time. She refused to
Cameron assumed the social leadership of the Anglo-Indian consider herself a professional, although the high cost of
colony, raised money for victims of the Irish Famine, and practicing the medium led her to accept payment for

translated the well-known German ballad Lenore, but her portraits on occasion and to market photographic prints
boundless energy craved even greater challenges. through P. and D. Colnaghi, London printsellers. They
After settiing in Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, often bore the legend: "From Life. Copyright Registered
Cameron, using a camera given her by her daughter in Photograph. Julia Margaret Cameron," to which she
1863, embarked on a career in photography, concentrating sometimes added that they were unretouched and not
on portraits and allegorical subjects. Models, at times paid enlarged. Her work was shown at annual exhibitions of
but mainly importuned, were drawn from among her the Photographic Society of London and in Edinburgh,
family; the household staff at the Cameron residence, Dublin, London, Paris, and Berlin; at the latter it was
Dimbola; and the households and visitors to the homes acclaimed by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel and awarded a

of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Sara Prinsep, Cameron's gold medal in 1866. In 1875, the Camerons returned to
sister. These were many of the most famous figures in Ceylon, where for the three years before her death she
British artistic and literary circles, including Thomas continued to photograph, using native workers on the
Carlyle, Darwin, Herschel, Marie Spartali, Ellen Terry, plantations and foreign visitors as models.

83. Nadar (Gaspard

F^Lix Tournachon).
Pantheon Nadar^ 1854.
Lithograph. Bibliothcquc
Nadonale, Paris.

80 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
84. Nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon). Self-Portrait, c. 1855- Salt print. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 81
85. Adrifn Tournachon. Emile Blapier, c. 185?. AJbumen print. Bibliotheque Nadonale, Paris.

82 A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS
 graphic depiction of some 300 members of the French
intelligentsia. Only mildly successfiil financially, it made
Nadar an immediate celebrity; more important, it intro-
duced him to photography, from which he had drawn
some of the portraits.
In 1853, Nadar set up his brother Adrien as a photog-
rapher and took lessons himself, apparendy with the inten-
tion of joining him in the enterprise. However, despite the
evident sensitivity of Adrien's portrait of the sculptor Emile
Blavier (pi. no. 8s), his lack of discipline is believed to have
caused Nadar to open a studio on his own, moving eventu-
ally to the Boulevard des Capucines (pi. no. 86), the center

of the entertainment district. He continued his bohemian

life, filling the studio with curiosities and objets d'art and
entertaining personalities in the arts and literature, but
despite this flamboyant personal style he remained a serious
artist, intent on creating images that were both life-enhanc-
ing and discerning.
Ever open to new ideas and discoveries, Nadar was the
first in France to make photographs underground with
artificial light and the first to photograph Paris from the
basket of an ascendant balloon. Even though a proponent
of heavier-than-air traveling devices, he financed the
construction ofLe Geant, a balloon that met with an un-
86. Unknown Photographer (French). Facade of fortunate accident on its second trip. Nonetheless, he was
Nadar's Studio at is Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, after instrumental in setting up the balloon postal service that
1880. Albumen print. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
made it possible for the French government to communi-
cate with those in Paris during the German blockade in the

Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Profile: Nadar
Ruined financially by this brief but devastating conflict,
In many ways Nadar (Gaspard Felix Toumachon) (pi. Nadar continued to write and photograph, running an
no. 84) typifies the best qualities of the bohemian circle of establishment with his son Paul that turned out slick com-
writers and artists that settled in Paris during the Second mercial work. Always a rebel, at one point he lent the
Empire. Born into a family of printer tradespeople of radi- recently vacated photo studio to a group of painters who
cal leanings, young Nadar became interested in many of wished to bvpass the Salon in order to exhibit their work,
the era's most daring ideas in politics, literature, and thus making possible the first group exhibition of the Im-
science. After an ordinary middle-class education and a pressionists in April, 1874. Although he was to operate
brief stab at medical school, he turned to journalism, first still another studio in Marseilles during the 1880s and '90s,

writing theater reviews and then literary pieces. Although Nadar's last photographic idea of significance was a series

a career in literature seemed assured, he gave up writing in of exposures made by his son in 1886 as he interviewed
1848 to enlist in a movement to free Poland from foreign chemist Eugene Chevreul on his looth birthday, thus fore-
oppressors, an adventure that ended suddenly when he shadowing the direction that picture journalism was to
was captured and returned to Paris. There followed a take. During his last years he continued to think of himself
period of involvement with graphic journalism, during as "a darcde\'il, always on the lookout for currents to swim
which he created cartoons and caricatures of well-known against."'" At his death, just before the age of ninety, he
political and cultural figures for the satirical press. This had outlived all those he had satirized in the famous Pan-
culminated in the Pantheon Nadar (pi. no. 83), a litho- theon, which had started him in photography.

A PLENITUDE OF PORTRAITS 83
The Galerie
Contemporaine
Appearance
and Character
in 19th-century

Portraiture

The Galerie Contemporaine, a series of 241 portraits of celebrated artistic,

literary, and political figures in France during the Second Empire and Third
French Republic, was issued in Paris between the years 1876 and 1894.

A different portrait, accompanied by biographical text, appeared each week

from 1876 to 1880; after that the album became an annual devoted
almost exclusively to those in the mainstream pictorial arts. The images were
the work of some 28 photographers who operated studios in Paris during
this period; they were published in different sizes, depending on the
dimensions of the original negative or plate, and usually were presented within
a decorative border. Because in some cases they were taken long before they
were used in the Galerie, the individual portraits are difficult to date. Whether
these photographs were produced by carbon process or Woodburxiype has
not been defmitively established, but the fact that the publisher, Goupil
et Cie., had purchased a franchise for the Woodburytype process in France
some years earlier suggests that the images were made by this method.
In this selection, portraits by noted photographers Etienne Carjat and
Nadar exemplify the pictorial excellence possible through adroit manipulation
of pose, demeanor, and lighting, while the image by Tourtin indicates that
the work of little-known portraitists included in this ambitious publication
also achieved a high level of excellence.

84 : 19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE
87. Etienne Carjat. Alexandre Dumas, from Galerie Contemporaine, 1878. Woodburytype.
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE 85
88. Nadar (Gaspard Ffelix Tournachon). George Sand, from Gcderie Contemporaine, 187-.

WoodbuntA'pe. International Museum of Photograph\' at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

86 : : 19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE
89. Etienne Carjat. Gioacchino Antonio Rossini, from Galerie Contemporaine, 1877.

Woodburytype. International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N. Y.

19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE : : 87
90.Nadar (Gaspard F^lix Tournachon). Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, from Galerie Contemporaine, 1878.

Woodburytypc. International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N. Y.

88 19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE
91- Etienne Carjat. Emile Zola, from Galene Contempomine, 1877.
Woodburytype. Private Collection.

19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE 89
92. TouRTiN. Sarah Bernhardt, from Galerie Contemporaine, 1877. W(X)dbur\'n'pc.
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

90 19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE
93- Charles Baudelaire, from Galerie Cmtemporaine, 1878. Woodburytype.
Etienne Carjat.
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE : : 91
94- Etienne Carjat. Viaor Hugo, from Galerie Contemporaine, 1876. Woodbur\Type. Private Colleaion.

92 : 19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE
95- Etienne Carjat. Entile Louis Gustave deManere, from Galerie Contemporaine, 1878. Woodbun'npc. Pri\ate Collection.

19TH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE 93
 3.

DOCUMENTATION
LANDSCAPE AND
ARCHITECTURE
1839-1890

To represent . . . the beautiful and the sublime in nature . . . demands

qualities alike of head and of heart, in rapt accordance with the Infinite

Creative Spirit.

—Marcus Aurelius Root, 1864'

There is only one Coliseum or PantheoTi; but how many millions ofpotential

negatives have they shed, — representatives of billions ofpictures, — since

they were erected! Matter in large masses must always be fixed and dear;
form is cheap and transportable. . . . Every conceivable object ofNature and

Art will soon scale off its surface for us.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859^

94 :: LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

EASY OF ACCESS, generally immobile, and of acknowledged
aitisdc appeal, landscape, nature, and architecture provided
congenial subjects for the first photographers. The desire
for accurate graphic transcription of scenery of all kinds
natural and constructed —had led to the perfection of the
camera obscura in the first place, and it was precisely because

exactness was so difficult even with the aid of this device

that Talbot and others felt the need to experiment with the
chemical fixation of reflected images. Beginning with the
daguerreotvpe and the calorv'pe, i9th-centurv scenic views
evolved along several directions. They provided souvenirs
for the new middle-class traveler, and brought the world
into thehomes of those unable to make such voyages.
Photographs of natural phenomena provided botanists,
96. Frederick Catherwood. The Ruins of Palenque,
explorers, geologists, and naturalists with the opportunity
Casa No. /, 1841. Lithograph from Incidents of Travel in
to study previously undocumented specimens and loca- Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, vol. II, 1841, by
tions. And as scientific knowledge increased, as changing John Lloyd Stephens. Collection George R. Rinhart.
conditions of life in urban centers promoted new concepts
of how to understand and represent the material world,
the camera image itself became part of the shifting relation-
ship between traditional and modem perceptions of nature based on drawings made with the camera obscura or camera
and the built environment. lucida, see A Short Technical History, Part I) had become
From the Renaissance up until the middle of the i8th increasingly popular. The landscape or \'iew photograph
century, painted landscape, with few exceptions, had been was welcomed not only because it was a logical extension

considered important mainly as a background for histori- of this genre, but also for its supposedly more faithfijl

cal and religious events; landscape as such occupied a low representation of topography, historic monuments, and
position in the hierarchy of artistic subjects. With the As an example of the overlap that came
exotic terrain.
relaxation of academic art strictures and the introduction about in the wake of changing technologies, drawings
during the Romantic era of a more sensuous depiction of made bv the American explorers Frederick Catherwood
nature, artists turned to a wider range of motifs from the and John L. Stephens of their findings on expeditions to
material world. These extended from pastoral landscapes, the Yucatan peninsula (pi. no. 96) in 1839 and 1841 were based
seen from afar, to depictions of singular formations —wa- on unaided observation, on the use of a camera lucida^ and
ter, skies, trees, rocks, and fruits of the field. As heirs to on daguerreotypes the two had made. Since many views,
these evolving attitudes toward nature, photographers, including these, were made with publication in mind, the
armed with a device thev believed would faithfully record camera image promoted a more accurate translation from
actuality, approached the landscape with the conviction drawing to mechanically reproduced print, supplving the
that the camera might perform a dual fiinction — that pho- engraver or lithographer with detailed information at a

tographs might reveal form and structure accurately and at time when inexpensive methods of transferring the photo-
the same time present the information in an artistically graph direcdy to the plate had not yet been developed.
appealing fashion.
The public appetite for scenic views had a significant
Landscape Daguerreotypes
effect on early landscape photographs also. Through most
of the i8th centurv', oil paintings, watercolors, engravings, Truthftil representation of the real world without senti-
and (after 1820) lithographs of topographical views (often mentalit}' presented itself as an important objective to many

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 95

i9th-ccntur\' scientists and intellectuals, including French
novelist Gustave Flaubert, who held that the artist should
be "omnipotent and invisible."' This position reflected one
aspect of the positivist ideas of social philosopher Auguste
Comte and others who were convinced that a scientific

understanding of material reality was the key to economic

and social progress. The camera image was regarded as a

fitting visual means for just such an impersonal represen-

tation of nature. Nevertheless, it is difficult to determine

the fiill extent of daguerreotyping activities with reference
to views of nature, architecture, and monuments. Manv
plates have been lost or destroyed; others, hidden away
in archives or in historical and private collections, have

been surfacing in recent years, but no overall catalogs of

such images exist. From the works most often seen, it seems 97. Samuel Bemis. New Hampshire Landscape., 1840.

apparent that the finely detailed daguerreotype was su- Daguerreotype. Collection Ken Heyman, New York.

premely suited to recording architectural features while

somewhat less uscftil for pure nature. The influential British
art critic John Ruskin, who in 1845 began to make his
own daguerreotypes as well as to use those of others in pre-

paring the drawings for his books on architecture, praised

the verisimilitude of the daguerreot)'pe image as "verv near-
"''^
ly the same thing as carrying off" the palace itself

Daguerreotype scenic xiews made on both sides of the

Adantic re\'eal attitudes about nature and art of which
neither the photographer nor the viewer may have been
aware at the time. The stark mountains and graceless
buildings in an 1840 image bv Samuel Bemis of a farm
scene in New Hampshire (pi. no. 97) seem to suggest the
solitary' and obdurate quality of the New England country-
side. Admittedlv, this Boston dentist, who acquired his
photographic equipment from Daguerre's agent Gouraud,
was working at the very dawn of photography, when
98. Alexandre Clausel. Landscape, Probably Near
materials and processes were in a state of flux. In contrast, Troyes, France., c. 1855. Daguerreot\'pe. International
the harmonious landscape (pi. fio. 98) bv Alexandre Clausel, Museum of Photography at George Eastman House,
probably made near Troyes, France, in 1855, attests to not Rochester, N.Y.

only a firmer grasp of technique but also to a greater

sensitivity to the manner in which the traditional canons
of landscape composition were handled. larger numbers than is gencralh' appreciated todav.
Landscape photography evolved as a commercial enter- The urban scene also was considered appropriate for

prise with the taking of views of well-known or extraordi- the daguerreotv'pist. Brif^e and Boats on the Thames (pi. no.

nary natural formations for the benefit of travelers. A 9) of 1851 by Baron Jean Baptiste Louis Gros typifies the

favorite site in the United States, Niagara Fails was daguer- incredible amount of detail made visible by this process,

reotyped by Southworth and Hawes in 1845, ambrotv'ped and indicates the v\'a\' bodies of water might be used to
as well as daguerreot\'ped by George Piatt Babbitt in 1848, unif\' sk\' and foreground, a solution that \imiall\' became
and photographed on stereographic glass plates by the a formula for many landscape photographers. The drama
Langenlieim brothers in Albumen prints from collo-
1855. of dark silhouette against a lighter sky, seen in Wilhelm
dion negatives of the Falls were made b\' English commer- Halftter's image of Berlin (pi. no. 10) demonstrates another
cial photographers John Werge and William England in method of treating the problem of visualh' unrelated rec-
1853 and 1859 respectively, and from dr\' plates bv George tangles of light and dark areas that the actual land- or

Barker. In the Midwest, daguerreot\'pes of similar scenic cirv'scape frequenth' presented; this, too, became a com-
wonders were made by Alexander Hesler and others in monplace of view photograph\'.

96 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 Most landscape imagery was designed for a broad mar- popular entertainments of the early 1800s in Europe and
ket —the buyers of engraxed and lithographed scenes—so the United States.- Soon after the announcement of the
the problem of the nonduplicatable metal plate was solved daguerreot)'pe, photographers attempted to capitalize on
by employing artists to translate the daguerreotype into the appetite for this kind of encompassing yet accurate
engravings, aciuatints, and lithographs. One of the first visual experience. At first, series of individual daguerreo-
publishers of an extensive work based on daguerreotypes, types arranged in contiguous order to depict a wider
Noel Marie Paymal Lerebours (an optical-instrument prospect were popular, especially in the United States.
maker who haci been associated with Daguerre's endeavors), There the urge to document urban development occu-
made use of daguerreotyped scenes fi-om Europe, the Near pied photographers in virtually all major cities, as exem-
East, and the United States; these were either commis- plified by Fainnount Waterworks (pi. no. 100), a series by
sioned or purchased outright as material for engravings, William Southgate Porter consisting of eight plates made
with figures and fillips often added by artists. Among the in Philadelphia in 1848. Photographers throughout the
daguerreotypists whose work appeared in Lerebours's nation made panoramic views of the cities in an attempt
Excursions dajjuerriennes: Vues et monuments les plus to encompass the urban growth taking place before their

remarquables dii^lobc (Dnjjuerrian Excursions: The World's eyes; a 360-degree panorama of Chicago made by
Most Remarkable Scenes and Monuments), issued between Alexander Hesler in 1858 was possibly the first such effort.

1840 and 1843, were Frederic Goupil-Fesquet, Hector Wilderness landscape was treated similarly by the San
Horeau (pi. no. 99), Joly de Lote-biniere, and Horace Vernet, Francisco daguerreotypist Robert Vance and by John
all of whom supplied views of Egypt. Daguerreotyping, it Wesley Jones, early American daguerreotypists of western
seems, had become indispensable both for travelers who scenery. Jones took 1,500 views in the Rockies and the
could not draw and artists who did not have the time to Sierra Nevada (none of which has survived) on which to
make drawings. base a painted panorama entitied The Great Pantoscope.''
Interest in unusual scenery and structures was so strong Panoramic views also were made on single plates of
that even though daguerreotyping in the field was not extended width, achieved either by using a wide-angle
easy, a number of other similar projects were initiated in lens, or by racking the camera to turn slowly in an arc
the early 1840s, generally by affluent individuals who
hired guides and followed sate routes. Dr. Alexander John
Ellis, a noted English philologist, was inspired by Excursions
da^fuerriennes to conceive of Italy Da£[uerreotyped, com-
prising views of architecture engraved fi-om ftill-plate

daguerreorvpcs that he had supervised or made himself in

1840-41; the project was abandoned, although the plates
still exist. The British phvsician Dr. George Skene Keidi and
a well-to-do French amateur, Joseph Philibert Girault de

Prangey, took daguerreotypes, hoping to publish works on

Near Eastern architecture that might show cietails and
structure in close-ups and suggest connections bet\veen
architecture and biblical history. In Switzerland, Johann
Baptist Isenring, a painter and engraver turned dagucrreo-
typist, and Franziska MoUinger, one of the early women
daguerreot\'pists, each traveled by caravan throughout
the country taking views of scenery to be engraved and
published.

Panoramic Views
Before giving way to the more practicable negative-
positive process, the daguerreot)'pe achieved a measure of
additional popularitx' with respect to panoramic views
images that are much wider than they are high. It will be
recalled that panoramas (and in Paris, The Diorama) with 99. Hector Horeau. Abu Simbel, 1840.

minutely rendered landscape detail were among the most Aquatint. Collection Gerard-LeNy, Paris.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 97

 .

loo. William Southgate Porter. Fairmount Waterworks, 1848. Daguerreotype panorama in eight plates.
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N. Y.

while the plate moved laterally in the opposite direction. In

Landscape Calotypes
1845, Fredrich von Martens, a German printmaker living in

Paris, was the first to work out the optical and mechanical Despite unparalleled clarit\' of detail in landscape da-

adjustments necessary to make single panoramic daguer- guerreotypes, the difficulties in making and processing ex-
reotypes of his adopted city, then he turned to a similar posures in the field and the problems of viewing an image
format in collodion for Alpine landscapes. Indeed with the subject to reflections and of replicating the image for pub-
advent of the wet plate, the panorama came into its own, licationmade it an inefficient technology with respect to
even though panoramas on paper had been made by the views. From the start, the duplicatable calot\'pe was ac-
calotype process. While exposure time for the glass nega- cepted by many as a more congenial means of capturing
tive often remained long, the resulting sharply detailed scenery, and it achieved greater sensitixity and flcxibilit}'

segments of a scene, printed and glued together to form an for this purpose after improvements had been made by
encompassing view, were taken as embracing reality even Ix)uis Desire Blanquart-Evrard and Gustave Le Gray. Be-
though the human eye could not possibly have seen the tween 1841 and about 1855, when collodion on glass sup-

landscape in that fashion. However, these panoramas were planted paper negatives entirely, calotvpists documented
more realistic than the lithographed bird's-eye views that cityscape, historic and exotic monuments, rural scenery,

were so popular. By using panoramic cameras that rotated and the wilder, less-accessible terrains that were beginning
in an arc of approximately 120 degrees, photographers to appeal to Europeans who had wearied of the more
might avoid the exacting calculations needed to assure that familiar settings. Because of their broad delineation, calo-

the panels of the panorama would join properly without rvpe views more ncarh' resembled graphic works such as

overlaps or missing segments, but these devices could not aquatints, and this tended to increase their appeal to both
encompass as wide an angle as the segmented panoramas artists and elitists in the intellectual community who pre-

and consequendy seemed less dramatic. Panoramas were ferred aesthetic objects to informational documents. Never-
produced by photographers everywhere, by the Bisson theless, the calot)'pe still had enough detail to recommend
brothers, Adolphe Braun, Samuel Bourne, and many now- it as a basis for copving, as the British publication The Art
unknown figures in Europe, Asia, and India, and by Union pointed out in 1846 when it noted that painters, not
American photographers of both urban development and being as enterprising as photographers, could depend on
western wilderness. George Robinson Fardon, William "sun-pictures" (calotx'pcs) of places such as "the ruins of
Henr)' Jackson, Carleton E. Watkins, and especiallv Ead- Babylon or the wilds of Australia"' for accurate views from
weard Muybridge, who devoted himself to making pan- which they could make topographical paintings.
oramic Vi ws of San Francisco on three ditfercnt occa- Somewhat easier to deal with than daguerrcotyping in

sions, were iimong the more successftil panoramists in the the field, the chemistn,' of the early calot)'pe stiU was com-
United States during the collodion/albumen era (pi. no. i6s) plicated enough to make its use in travel a problem. Ne\'cr-

98 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

theless, a number of British amateurs (often aided by ser- public may have been in part because they afforded a con-
vants and local help) transported paper, chemicals, and trast between the progress visible at home and the unde-
cameras to the Continent and the Near East soon after veloped landscape of the region and in part because they
Talbot's announcement. Three members of his circle recalled to viewers their biblical and classical heritage.

Calvert Jones, George W. Bridges, and Christopher Rice In spite of these efforts and even though Talbot placed
Mansel Talbot —were the first hardy souls to journey no restrictions on the noncommercial use of calotypes,
from Great Britain to Italy, Greece, and North Africa view-making did not exacdy flourish in England during the
with calotype equipment. Through its high vantage point first ten years of the process's existence. Instead, images of
and pattern of light and shade, a view of the Porta della landscape and architecture achieved a pinnacle of excel-
Ripetta in Rome (pi. no. loi) suggests that Jones (who pho- lence in France during the 1850s, as a result of interest by a
tographed in Italy and Malta) was interested in atmos- small group of painter-photographers in an improved
pheric and artistic qualities as much as in description. paper process that had evolved from experiments by
Bridges, who traveled in the region for seven years, made Blanquart-Evrard and Le Gray. By waxing the paper nega-
some 1,700 pictures, which he found were subject to seri- tive before exposure, Le Gray achieved a transparency akin
ous fading; a small group was published in 1858 and 1859 to glass, making the paper more receptive to fine detail.
in an album entitled Palestine as It Is: In a Series of Photo- The spread of this improved technique in France during
graphic Views . . . Illustrating^ the Bible. Another group of the early 1850s gave the calotype a new life and resulted in

calotypes of the area by Dr. Claudius Galen Wheelhouse images of extraordinary quality. This flowering coincided
was gathered together in an album entitled Photojjraphic with the concern among Barbizon landscape painters for
Sketches from the Shores of the Mediterranean. Ernest De capturing the quality of light and revealing the value of
Caranza Maxime Du Camp in Egypt (pi. no. in),
in Anatolia, unspoiled nature in human experience.
and Pierre Tremaux in the Sudan were others among the The improved calotype also made conceivable the
early figures who attempted, with varying degrees of suc- photographic campaign — government or privately spon-

cess, to use the calotype process to photograph in North sored commissions to produce specific images. One of
Afiica and the Near East. These works were forerunners of the earliest was financed in 1850 by the Belgian treasury,
the numerous views on paper whose appeal to the Victorian but the most renowned, the Missions helio^raphiques, was

loi. Rev. Calvert Jones.

Porta della Ripetta, Rome,
1846. Calotype. Science
Museum, London.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 99

 exhilarating organization of masses of sculptural detail. Le
Gray (see Profile), in whose studio many calotypists first
learned the process, was a demanding technician who also
was involved in making collodion negatives; his images will
be discussed shortly in the context of developments in that
material. Litde is known of Mestral, a former daguerreo-
typist and an associate of Le Gray, other than that he pho-
tographed in Brittany and Normandy on his own and
from the Dordogne southward in company with Le Gray.
The image of the bridge Pont Valentre (pi. no. 103) in

Cahors, included because of impending plans to restore

what was then considered the finest example of medieval
military architecture in France, suggests a distinctive feel-
ing for volume and silhouette.
Unhappily, the Missions project never reached fiall

fi-uition. Negatives —some 300—and prints were filed away

without being reproduced or published, either because the
project's sole aim was to establish an archive or because the

photographers depicted these ancient structures in too

favorable a light for the images to serve as propaganda
for restoration efforts.* Individually, they were used by
architects and masons working under Viollet-le-Duc's
guidance in matching and fabricating decorative elements
that had been destroyed. (More than a century later,
these early photographs still proved to be usefiil guides in
the restoration of ancient monuments.) Nevertheless, the
government of France under Napoleon III continued to

Henri Le Secq.
regard photography —whether calotype or collodion/
102.

Calotype. International
Strasbourg Cathedral,
Museum
1851.

of Photography at
albumen — as a tool integral to its expansive domestic and

George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y. foreign programs, commissioning documentation of the
countryside, the railroad lines, and of natural disasters as
evidence of its concern for national programs and prob-
lems. Baldus produced about 30 large-format negatives of
organized in 1851 by the Commission des Monuments his- the flooding of the Rhone River in 1856 (pi. no. 104). It is

toriques {Covavaiss\on on Historical Monuments) to pro- apparent ft^om the amplitude of his vision and the sense of
vide a pictorial census of France's architectural patrimony. structure in the example seen here that no dichotomy
Undertaken initially during the Second Republic, in existed in the photographer's mind between landscape art
accord with continuing efforts by Napoleon III to preserve and documentation.
and modernize France, it involved the documentation of Not all French landscape calotypists were trained artists,

aged and crumbling churches, fortresses, bridges, and nor was their work invariably commissioned. Indeed, one
casdes that were slated for restoration under the guidance of the intriguing aspects of die epoch is that scientists as
of the architect Eugene Emmanuel VioUet-le-Duc. well as painters found the paper negative a congenial
The five photographers engaged in this innovative doc- process for representing nature. Victor Regnault, director
umentation were Edouard Denis Baldus, Hippolyte of the Sevres porcelain factory (after 1852) and president of
Bayard, Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, and O. Mestral. Photo- both the French Academy of Sciences and the Societe

graphers received itineraries and instructions, quite exact at Frangaise de Photojjraphie, had first become curious about
times, detailing the localities to be photographed. Among paper photography when Talbot disclosed the process, but
the most accomplished of the group were Le Gray and Le only pursued this interest in 1851 after improvements had
Secq, both of whom had been trained as painters in the been made by Blanquart-Evrard. Using the waxed-paper
studio of Paul Delaroche (along with the British photog- process, he experimented with exposure and produced a

rapher Roger Fenton). Le Secq's Strasbourjf Cathedral (pi. number of idyllic, mist-shrouded views of the countryside
no. 102), one of a series of architectural monuments, is an around the factory, among them TTje Banks of the Seine at

100 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

10?. O. Mestral. Cahors: Pont Valentre, c. 1851.

Calotype. Caisse Nationalc des Monuments

Historiques et des Sites, Paris. ® Arch. Phot.
Paris/SPADEM.

104. Edouarx) Denis Baldus. The Flooding of

the Rhone at Avignon^ 1856. Calot^^pe. Caisse
Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des
Sites, Paris. ® Arch. Phot. Paris/sPADEM.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE lOI

 I05. Victor Regnault. The Banks of the Seine at
Sh'res, 1851-52. Calotype. Collection Andre Jammes,
Paris. Ai-t Institute of Chicago.

106. Louis Robert. Versailles, Neptune Basin,

c. 1853. Calotx'pe. Collection Andre Jammes, Paris.
Art Institute of Chicago.

102 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

Sevres (pi. no. los), in which he included die everyday objeas
of rural existence such as casks and barrow. Louis Robert,
chief of the painters and gilders at the porcelain factory,

worked both at Sevres and Versailles, using the calotype

process before turning to albumen on glass; a number of
his calotypes were included in Blanquart-Evrard's 1853 pub-
lication Souvenirs de Versailles (pi. no. 106). These images
display a sensibility that is similar to that of Barbizon
painters in their lyrical approach to the homely and simple
aspects and objects of nature and rural life.

British amateur photographers welcomed the im-

proved calotype for its greater sensitivity and definition.
As heirs to picturesque and topographical traditions in

landscape imagery, they sought to maintain a delicate bal-

ance between affective expression and the descriptive clar-

ity that the improved process made possible. At times,

107. Robert Henry Cheney. Gufs Cliffe, Warwickshire,
English camera images of buildings and their surround-
1850S. Albumen print. Collection Centre Canadien
ings seem to reflect the notion put forth by contemporary d' Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
writers that architectural structures have expressive physi-
ognomies much like those of humans. For example, Guy^s
Cliffe, Warwickshire (pi. no. 107) by the English amateur
Robert Henry Cheney brings to mind a melancholy spirit,

a phrase used by Ruskin to describe the character of certain

kinds of buildings. The most celebrated English photog-
rapher of this period, Roger Fenton (to be discussed
shordy), was extravagandy praised in the British press for
the marked "character" of his architectural images.
Benjamin Brecknell Turner, an English businessman
who made pure landscape calotypes (pi. no. 108) as well as

p)ortraits and architectural views, found the paper negative

so sympathetic to his vision of untrammeled nature that he
continued to work with the material until 1862, long after

most photographers had switched to glass plates. On the

other hand, Thomas Keith, a Scottish physician, practiced
the calotype for only a very few years, and then only on
occasions when the quality of light enabled him to make
negatives of great tonal range. Keith's interest in the expres-
108. Benjamin Brecknell Turner. Old Willows, c.
sive nature of light, inspired perhaps by his acquaintance
1856. Waxed paper negative. Collection Andre Jammes,
with Hill and Adamson, is apparent in images made in 1856
Paris. Art Institute of Chicago.
on the island of lona, among them Doorway, St. Oran's
Chapel (pi. no. 109) , where the factual record of ancient
church architecture is given unusual force by strongly
accentuated illumination.
Calotyping also appealed to Englishmen who made graphie. Along with Thomas Sutton, the first in Britain to
their homes outside the British Isles, among them Maxwell use Blanquart-Evrard's process in a publishing venture,
Lyte and John Stewart, who lived in Pau in the Pyrenees in they kept open the channels of communication between
the 1 850s. Stewart's views of the rugged terrain of this the French and British regarding the latest in photochemi-
region (pi. no. no)., published by Blanquart-Evrard and cal technology.
exhibited in England, were praised by his father-in-law Sir French and British imperial interest in the countries of
John Herschel for the artistic effects of their "superb com- the Near East, Egypt in particular, continued to lure pho-
bination of rock, mountain, forest and water.'"' Both Lyte tographers using paper (and later glass) negatives into
and Stewart were members of the Societe Frangaise de Photo- these regions. In 1849, the wealthy French journalist

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 103

 I09. Thomas Keith.
Doorway, St. Oran 's Chapel,
lona, 1856. CaloU'pe.
Thomas Keith Gallection,
Edinburgh Cit}' Libraries.
® lona Cathedral Trust.

Maxime Du Camp, accompanied by the young Flaubert, Auguste Salzmann briefly used the calotype with similar
was sent on an official photographic mission to Egypt. authority to make documents of architectural ruins in
Trained by Le Gray and equipped with calotyping appa- Jerusalem in order to "render a service to science"'^ and to
rattis "for the purpose of securing, along the way, and with help solve a controversy about the antiquity of the monu-
the aid of this marvelous means of reproduction, views ments. Working with an assistant, Salzmann was able to
of monuments and copies of inscriptions," Du Camp produce about 150 paper negatives under difficult circum-
also was expected to make facsimile casts of hieroglyphic stances; these, too, were printed at the Blanquart-Evrard
inscriptions. '° The calotypes, printed in 1852 by Blanquart- establishment at Lille. In addition to an a\'o\\'ed scientific
Evrard for his first publication, Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et aim, images such us Jerusalem, Islamic Fountain (pi. no. 112)

Syrie," display a concern for establishing accurate scale, as indicate the photographer's mastery of composition and
seen in the human yardstick provided by a native assistant sensitivity to the effects of light. The work of both Du
in The Colossus of Abu Simbel (pi. no. iii), but thcv also Camp and Salzmann indicates that in the hands of imagi-
demonstrate die definition and clarit\' that die improved nati\'e indiviciuals the camera image might de\'clop a
calotype made possible. unique aesthetic, an ability to handle volume and light in
Five years later, the amateur French archaeologist an evocative manner while also documenting actuality.

104 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

Landscapes in Collodion/Albumen
—
on the same print one for the sky and one for the
—
ground or employing hand-manipulations to remove un-
The new collodion tcchnolog}', discovered and publi- attractive mottled and gray areas. Valley of the Huisne (pi.

cized by Archer in 1850 and 1851, forced landscape pho- no. lis) by Camille Silvy, praised as a "gem" when exhibited
tographers and documentarians operating in the field to in 1858, exemplifies the possibilities of this technique for
transport an entire darkroom — tent, trays, scales, chemicals, creating scenes that a contemporary critic characterized as
and even distilled water —besides cameras and glass plates "rich in exquisite and varied detail, with broad shadows
(pi. nos. 113 and 114) It may seem astonishing today that, stealing over the whole."'* Le Gray, whose role in paper

under such circumstances, this technique should have been photography has been noted, used double printing in a

considered an improvement over the calotype, which also number of collodion seascapes made at Sete (Cette) (pi. no.

was somewhat more sensitive to natural tonalities and had 116) around 1856 —works similar in theme and style to sea-

greater range. But paper negatives required time-consum- scapes painted by French artists Eugene Delacroix and
ing skills for complete realization. With the promise of Gustave Courbet at about the same time. Less traditionally
sharper and more predictable results in less time, the glass picturesque than Silvy's scene, Le Gray transformed clouds,
negative with its coating of collodion and silver-iodide sea, and rocks into an evocative arrangement of volume
preempted all other processes for the next 30 years. To- and light, into an "abstraction called art," in toda/s
gether with the albumen print, which retained the sharp- language.'' That composite landscapes of this period
ness of the image because the printing paper was also coated could be and oft:en were unconvincingly pieced together is

with an emulsion, collodion made the mechanization of the apparent from contemporary criticism that complained of
landscape view possible, turning the scenic landscape into pictures with clouds that were not reflected in the water or
an item of consumption, and landscape photography into of foregrounds taken in early morning joined to skies taken
photo-business. at noon.
Limitations in the sensitivity of the collodion material In Europe, where landscape views were considered
itself were responsible for evoking contradictory aesthetic souvenirs for travelers and restoratives for businessmen
attitudes about images made from glass plates. Because of
the Umited responsiveness of silver- iodide to the colors of
spectral light other than blue (and ultraviolet radiation),

landscape images that displayed blank white skies and

dark, relatively undifferentiated foregrounds were not un-
common. While commercial publishers seem not to have
been unduly disturbed, this characteristic was decried by
Lady Elizabeth Easdake, one of the first serious English
critics of photography. Writing in the Quarterly Review in

1857, she observed, "If the sky be given, therefore, the land-
scape remains black and underdone; if the landscape be
rendered, the impatient action of light has burnt out all

cloud form in one blaze of white."" She added that the

collodion landscape photograph was unable to represent
the tonal gradations that the eye accepts as denoting spatial
recession, and that by combined lack of atmosphere and
its

too great precision, the image showed both too little and
too much. Among others who objected to the lack ot
realism in the extreme contrast between dark and light

areas in landscape photographs was Hermann Wilhelm

Vogel, an influential German photographer, critic, and

photo-chemical researcher, whose opinions appeared fre-

quendy in American periodicals during the 1860s and '70s,

and who was successfiil in his efforts to improve the sensi-

tivity of the silver halides to the various colors of light.

Photographers concerned with artistic landscapes
avoided these problems with what was called "artifice." no. John Stewart. Passage in the Pyrenees, n.d.
This involved using masks and combining two negatives Calotype. Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 10^

III. Maxime Du Camp. The Colossus ofAbu Stmbel, c. 1850. Calotype. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

106 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 tied to the city, hundreds of thousands of scenes on albu-
men paper were turned out to be sold and pasted into
albums or used in stereograph viewers. To satisfy this

market, freelance photographers were dispatched around

the globe by enterprising publishers, or they set up their
own view-making businesses. Others, John Henry Parke
among them, photographed to create accurate archaeo-
logical records. As a consequence, artistic effects were not
usually considered of primary import in images intended
to present information palatably. For example, Francis Frith
and George Washington Wilson, to name two prominent
publishers of landscape views for a mass audience, embraced
artistic considerations insofar as they contributed to pro-
ducing agreeable compositions. They aimed for the best
vantage point and most harmonious tonalities but avoided
expressive or dramatic effects of light and shadow such as

had gready delighted Keith, Salzmann, Baldus, and Le

Gray. As Wilson noted, he had to "study the popular taste

. . . and not only to get a pleasing picture of a place, but

one also that can be recognized by the public. "'< Besides
promoting a style that might be called "straight," this

mass consumption of images had a profound if not always

determinable effect on the viewing public, in that photo-
graphic evidence was considered synonymous with truth
and the image as a substitute for firsthand experience. '^

The government of Napoleon III, which had promoted

the calotype as a means of documenting both scientific

112. AuGUSTE Salzmann. Jerusalem, Islamic Fountain, progress and royal patronage, continued to regard col-
1854. Calotype. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. lodion images in the same light. What at first glance may

->V5^,

n3-n4. Unknov^t>j. European-style Pmable Darkroom Tent, 1877. Wood engravings fi-om yl //wtfTrv and Handbook of Photography,
edited by J. Thompson, 1877. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; gift of Spencer Bickerton, 1938.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 107

 115. Camille Silvy. Valley of the Huisne, France, 1858. AJbumen print. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

seem to be landscape pure and simple, such as views taken photographer in Adolphe Braun. With studios in both
in the Alps by the Bisson brothers, was motivated by the Paris and Alsace, he was not only a prolific view-maker,

Imperial desire to celebrate territorial acquisition — in this but a large-scale publisher who supplied prints in a variety'

case the ceding to France of Nice and Savoy bv the King- of formats —stereoscope to panoramic—to subscribers in

dom of Sardinia. During the collodion era, the Bissons England, France, Germany, and the United States. Re-
had rapidly extended their range of subjects to embrace art sponding to the imperial desire to make Alsatians aware of
reproductions, architecture, and landscapes, often in very their French heritage, Braun first photographed the land-
large format. Passage des Echelles (pi. no. 117), one of the six scape and monuments of this province and then went on
views made by Augustc- Rosalie as a participant in the to make more than 4,000 images of Alpine, Black Forest,
second scaling of Mont Blanc in 1862, integrates the de- and Vosges mountain scener\', eventually printing in car-

scription of distinctive geological formations with a classi- bon instead of albumen in order to insure print stability.

cal approach to composition, achieving in its balance of Braun's views, of which Lake Steamers at Winter Moorin/j,
forms and tonalities awork of unusuallv expressive power. Snntzerland (pi. no. iiq) is an outstanding example, displav a
A similar evocation of solitar\' nature unaltered by human skillfiil blend of information and artistry' but also present
effort can be seen in Gorfje of the Tamine (pi. no. 118) by the landscape as accessible by the inclusion of human fig-

Charles Soulier, a professional view-maker who is better ures or structures.

known for his urbane Paris scenes than for Alpine land- England, too, had landscapists with an authentic re-

scapes. In view of steadily encroaching urbanization, these spect for what the coUodion process could accomplish, but
images suggest a public nostalgia for \'irgin nature that will government patronage was limited to ro\'al acclaim and, at
be encountered again, more forcetuUy, in camera images of times, purchase of indi\idual images b\' members of the
the American wilderness during the 1860s and '70s. royal family, with documentations of the countryside and
Scenic views found an avid entrepreneur as well as historical monuments initiated by photographers them-

108 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

selves or by private publishers rather than by the state. published as stereographs in The Stereoscopic Mcujazine (see

Fenton, the commanding figure in English photography below), as photoengravings in Photographic Art Treasures,
before his retirement in 1862, had made calotypes of archi- and as albumen prints in albums and books devoted to na-
tectural monuments in Russia in 1852. He changed to collo- tive landscape —these being the forms in which scenic
dion in 1853, and after his return from the Crimean War (see images found an audience in the 1850s and '60s.

Chapter 4), he had another traveling darkroom constructed Albumen prints became popular as book illustration
to facilitate making views of rugged rocks, mountain between 1855 and 1885 when, it is believed, more than a
gorges, waterfalls, and ruins —romantic themes to which thousand albums and books, sponsored by private organi-
the British turned as industrialization advanced. Gantem- zations and public personalities, were published, mainly in

porary critics on both sides of the Channel considered his England, Scodand, France, India, and the United States."
landscapes to have reached the heights to which camera Original photographs provided artistic, biographical, his-
images could aspire, especially with respect to capturing torical, and scientific illustration as well as topographical
atmosphere and a sense of aerial perspective. However, images to supplement and enhance texts on a wide variety
because Fenton refused to combine negatives or do hand- of subjects. Even the small, relatively undetailed stereo-

work, images with strong geometric pattern, such as The graph view was considered appropriate to illustrate scien-

Terrace and Park, Harei^vood House (pi. no. 120) , were criti- tific and travel books; one of the first to use the double
cized as offensive.'* A number of Fcnton's landscapes were image in this manner was C. Piazzi Smyth's Teneriffe,

116. GusTAVE Le Gray. Bn^ Upon the Water, 1856. Albumen. Albumen pruit. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 109

 i"".';iil|fc:!fSip: ^iT"'^'*

'%^¥

i^:rS^^«g/! :

V- W •-s-

117. AuGUSTE-RosALiE BissoN. Passage lies Echelles (Ascent ofMt. Blanc), 1862.
Albumen print. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

which appeared in 1858 with 18 stereograph views of the noted that "considerable watching and waiting is necessary
barren island landscape where Sm\th and his party con- before the effect turns up which is both capable and wor-
ducted astronomical experiments. It was soon followed by thy of being taken.'"'" Using a tent darkroom in the field to

The Stereoscopic Magazine^ a monthl\' publication that lasted prepare the exposures, this meticulous former portrait
five years and included still lifcs and land- and cit}'scape painter employed over 10 assistants in his Aberdeen print-

stereographs. The success of illustration with photographic ing establishment to carefully wash and gold-tone the
prints of any kind may be ascribed to their fidelit)' and prints in order to remove all chemical residue. As a con-
cheapness and to the relative rapiditv with which paper sequence, Wilson albumen prints are of greater richness
prints could be glued into the publication, while the decline and stabilit}' than was usual for the era. Other British

of this practice was the result of even more efficient photo- landscapists of the collodion era included Frith (see below) ^

mechanical methods that made possible the printing of William England, and James Valentine whose successfiil

text and image at the same time. enterprise in Dundee, Scotland, turned out views similar

Wales and Scodand provided other English photog- to those by Wilson. While competendy composed and
raphers besides Fenton with localities for wilderness well-produced, the absence of atmosphere and feeling in
images, among them Francis Bedford who made Glas Pwil commercial views were contributing factors in the endeav-
Cascade (pi. no. 122) in 1865. In common with manv land- ors that began in the 1870s to fashion a new aesthetic for

scapists of the period, Bedford issued stereographs as well landscape photography.

as larger-format views because they were inexpensive and Similar ideas about landscape motivated German view-
in popular demand. However, it was the Scottish photog- makers of the 1 850s and '60s. Outstanding calotype views
rapher Wilson, probably the most successful of the \'iew had been made in the early 1850s b\' Franz Hanfstaengl and
publishers, who is believed to haxe had the world's larg- Hermann Krone, before these individuals changed to col-
est stock of scenic images in the 1880s (pi. no. 121) . Inter- lodion. Krone, the more versatile of the two, who adver-

ested also in instantaneous pictures (see Chapter 6) , Wilson tised his Photo£iraphisches Institut in Dresden as a source for

no LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

ii8. Charles Soulier. Gorjie of the Tamine, c. 1865. Albumen print. Collection Gerard-Levy, Paris.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE III

119- Adolphe Braun. Lake Steamers at Winter Moorin0, Switzerland, c. 1865.
Carbon print. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

scenic views and stereographs as well as portraits, was countries in the 1860s and 70s in response to the tourism
commissioned by the crown to produce views of the coun- that brought affluent British and German travelers to the

tryside and cit)'scapc throughout Saxony, which resulted rockv coasts of this region in search of untamed nature.
in the appearance in 1872 of his Koenigs-Album der Stadte Photographers Marcus Selmer of Denmark, Axel Lindahl
Sachsens (King's Album
of Saxon Cities) to celebrate the and Per Adolf Thoren of Sweden, and the Norwegians
golden wedding anniversary of the rulers of Saxony. Hans Abel, Knud Knudsen, and Martin Skoien, all
Though less idealized than some, these views of Dresden supplied good souvenir images to vovagers who, there as
and its natural environs, exemplified by Waterfall in Saxon elsewhere, wished to indi\'idualize their recollections with
Switzerland (pi. no. 123) , still reflect the romantic attitude of picturesque travel images. The most dramatic of these
the view painters of the carlv 19th centur\'. Romanticism views — the mist-shrouded mountains and tormented ice

also suflFiises Bn^e Near Kind's Monument (pi. no. 124) , an and rock formations (pi. no. 126) captured b)' Knudsen
1866 image by Vogel, but the focus of this work is light and during his 35 or so years as an outstanding scenic photogra-
not localit)'. In a still different vein, studies of forest foliage pher — reflect the prominent influence of the German Ro-
and trees (pi. no. 12s) made in the mid- to late- 1860s and mantic stN'lc of landscape painting in that they not only
typified by the work of Gerd Volkcrling suggest the influ- serve as remembrances of places visiteti but encapsulate a
ence of the Barbtzon style of naturalism. sense of the sublime.
Landscape photography developed in the Scandinavian Landscape photographs of Italv were made almost

112 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 I20. Roger Fenton. The
Terrace and Park, Harewood
House, 1861. Albumen print.
Royal Photographic Society,
Bath, England.

121. George Washington

Wilson. The Silver Strand,
Loch Katrine, c. 1875-80.
Albumen George
print.
Washington Wilson
Collection, Aberdeen
University Library.

LANDSCAPE ANV> ARCHITECTURE "3

exclusively as tourist souvenirs. A continuing stream of MacPherson, a Scottish physician who set himself up as an
travelers from northern Europe and the United States art dealer in Rome, captured the strong shadows that sug-
ensured an income for a group of excellent foreign and gest unfathomable and ancient mysteries while fashioning
Italian photographers. Here, especially, the romantic taste an almost abstract pattern of tonalities and textures. Inter-
for ruins was easily indulged, with most images including est in romantic effects is apparent also in Night View of the
at least a piece of ancient sculpture, building, or garden. As Roman Forum (pi. no. 128) by Gioacchino Altobelli, a native
photography historian Robert Sobieszek has pointed out, Roman who at times collaborated with his countryman
because Italy was seen as the home of civilization, early Pompeo Molins on scenic views. Altobelli, later employed
photographers were able to infuse their views with a sense by the Italian Railroad Company, was considered by con-
of the romantic past at almost every tum.^' In Grotto of temporaries to be especially adept at combining negatives
Neptune, Tivoli (pi. no. 127)., taken in the early 1860s, Robert to recreate the sense of moonlight on the ruins — a popular

122. Francis Bedford.

Glas Pml Cascade (Lifnant
Valley), 1865. Albumen
print. National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa.

114 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 r,3}r-.^'^ir^

w^
"•-^^
1
\
f
\tt^
i
-4 ^^^v' -

3it
t
fi
USmd

ti
r.
1
ii
J|ip:
lOT -

-^jimwtm^'

--

K f.
:^;'

^^'\:
v^ms
123- Hermann Krone. Waterfall in Saxon Switzerland, 1857. 124. Hermann Vogel. Bridge near Kind's Monument, 1866.
Albumen print. Deutsches Museum, Munich. Albumen print. Agfa-Gevaert Foto-Historama,
Cologne, Germany.

image because of the touristic tradition of visiting Roman ruins, were not documented with nearly the same enter-
ruins by night. prise as Italy, probably because they were outside the
The best known by far of the Italian view-makers were itineraries of many 19th-century travelers. The best-known
the Brogi family and the Alinari brothers; the latter estab- photographs of Spain were made by Charles Clifford, an
lished a studio in Florence that is still in existence. Like expatriate Englishman living in Madrid, who was court
Braun in France, the Alinari ran a mass-production photo- photographer to Queen Isabella II. Working also in other
graphic publishing business specializing in art reproduc- cities than the capital, Clifford photographed art treasures

tions, but their stock also included images of fruit and as well as landscapes and architectural subjects; his view
flowers and views of famous monuments and structures in The Court oftheAlhambra in Granada (pi. no. 130) suggests

Rome and Florence. In the south, Giorgio Sommer, of a sense of sunlit quietude while still capturing the extraordi-
German origin, began a similar but smaller operation in nary richness of the interior carving. As one might anti-
Naples in 1857, providing genre scenes as well as land- cipate, views of Greece, particularly the Acropolis, were
scapes. In Venice, tourist views were supplied by Carlo somewhat more common than of Spain and also more
Ponti, an optical-instrument maker of fine artistic sensitiv- commonplace. Photographed by native and foreign pho-
ity that is apparent in San Gwrjjio Magpfiore Seen from the tographers, the most evocative are by James Robertson,
Ducal Palace (pi. no. 129}, made in the early 1870s. Given the Jean Walthcr, and William Stillman, an American associ-
long tradition in Italy oivedute — small-scale topographical ated with the British Pre-Raphaelites who had turned to
scenes — it is not surprising that camera views of such sub- photography as a result of disappointment with his paint-
ject matter should so easily have become accomplished and ing. Stillman's images, published in 1870 as The Acropolis of
accepted. Athens Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally (pi. no.

Other European nations on the Mediterranean such as 131), were printed by the carbon process, which in England
Spain and Greece, while renowned for scenic beauty and was called Autotype.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE IIS

 125. Gerd Volkerling.
Oak Trees in Dessau, 1867.

Albumen print. Agfa-

Gevaert Foto-Historama,
Cologne, Germany.

ract (pi. no. lii). In addition to photographing, he wrote

Landscape Photo£fraphy in the
voluminously on the difliculties of the project, especiall\'
Near East and the Orient owing to the climate, commenting on the "smothering
Tourists were the main consumers of the \'iews of Italy, litde tent" and the collodion fizzing — boiling up o\'er the

but armchair travelers bought scenes from other parts of the glass — as well as on the sights in which he delighted
world in the hope of obtaining a true record, "far beyond temples, sphinxes, pyramids, tombs, and rock car\ings.
anything that is in the power of the most accomplished Frith's discussion of the compositional problems of
artist to transfer to his canvas. "^^ These words express the view photography throws light on an aspect of 19th-century
ambitii us goal that Frith set for himself when he departed landscape practice often ignored. This was "the difficult)'

on his first trip to the Nile Valley in 1856. Before i860, he of getting a view satisfactorilv in the camera: foregrounds
made two further journeys, extending his picture-taking to are especially perverse; distance too near or too far; the
Palestine and Syria and up the Nile beyond the fifth cata- falling away of the ground; the intervention of some brick

116 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 ^^^*^-^
K. KNUBSCH. 8EKfttN.

126. Knud Knudsen. Torghatten, Nordland, c. 1885. Albumen print. Picture Collection, Bergen University Library, Bergen, Norway.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 117

127. Robert MacPherson. Grom of Neptune, Tivoli, 1861. Albumen print. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

RIGHT ABOVE:
128. GlOACCHiNO Altobelli. Ni0ht View of the Roman Forum, 1865-75. Albumen print.
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

RIGHT BE' OW:

129. Carlo Ponti. San Giorgio Ma^iore Seen from the Ducal Palace, 1870s. Albumen print.
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass.

118 ; LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE II9
wall or other common object. . . . Oh what pictures we
would make if wc could command our points of \'icw."^'
While Frith undoubtedly had traditional painting concepts
in mind when he wrote this, images such as Approach to
Philae (pi. no. 133) show that he was capable of finding
refreshing photographic solutions to these problems. The
Egyptian and Near Eastern views were published b\' Frith
himself and by others in a variet}' of sizes, formats, and in a

number of different \'olumes, some in large editions. The

most ambitious, Efiypt and Palestine Photographed and De-
scribed,^ had a significant effect on British perceptions of
Egypt, as Frith had hoped it would, because the photog-
rapher, in addition to sensing the mone\'-making possibil-
ities of the locality, had voiced the belief that British

policy-makers should wake up to the pronounced French

influence in North Africa.

Some 40 photographers, male and female, from Euro-

pean countries and the United States, are known to haxe
been attracted to the Near East before 1880, among them
Bedford, who accompanied the Prince of Wales in 1862,
the Vicomte of BanviUe, Antonio Bcato, Felice Beato,
Felix and Marie Bonfils, Wilhclm Von Herford, and James
Robertson. Studios owned by local photographers also
sprang up. Due to the superficial similarities of subject and
identical surnames, for many years the two Beatos, Antonio 130. Charles Clifford. The Court of the Alhambra in Granada,
and Felice, were thought to be the same individual, com- c. 1856. Albumen print. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

I?]. William
Stillman. Intenor of
the Parthenon from the
Western Gate, 1869.
Carbon print.
Photograph Collection,
New York Public
Libran', Astor, Lenox,
and Tilden
Foundations.

120 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 132. Francis Frith (?). Traveller's

Boat at Ibritn, c. 1859- Albumen

print. Francis Frith Collection,

Andover, England.

133. Francis Frith. Approach to

Philae, c. 1858. Albumen print. Stuart

Collection, New York Public

Librar\', Astor, Lenox, and Tilden
Foundations.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 121

 134- Felix Bonfils, or family.
Dead Sea, A View of the Expanse,
1860-90. Albumen print.
Semitic Museum, Harvard
University, Cambridge, Mass.

muting heroically between the Near and Far East, but now countn' the exotic and mysterious landscape, customs, and
it is known that Antonio was the proprietor of an Eg)'ptian people of a subject land; as such it was supported by the
firm based in Luxor that produced thousands of tourist British miUtan' and ruling cstablislimcnt. Dr. John McCosh
images after 1862, among them this view of the interior of and Captain Linnaeus Tripe were the first to calor\'pc
the Temple of Horus at Edfu (pi. no. 13s) , while his brother, monuments and scenen', die latter producing prize-win-
after a brief visit to Eg\'pt with Robertson, was responsible ning \'iews that were considered "\'er\' Indian in their char-
for photographic acti\'itics in India and the Orient.^' acter and picturesquelv selected.'"^'' As a consequence of
The Bonfils family enterprise, operating from Beirut imperialistic interest, a spate of photographicall\' illustrated

where diev had mo\'ed from France in 1867, is t\'pical of books and albums issued from bodi coinmercial and mili-

the second generation of Near East photographers, hi a tar\' photographers during die i86os and Vos, widi illustra-

letter to the Societe Frangaise de Pbotqgraphie in iS^i, Bonfils tions b\' Felice Bcato, P. A. Johnston, and W. H. Pigou.
reported that he had a stock of 591 negatives, 15,000 prints, Samuel Bourne, the most prominent landscapist working
and 9,000 stereographic \'iews, all intended for an aug- in collodion in India, was a partner with Charles Shepherd
mented tourist trade. Because the business was handed in the commercial firm of Bourne and Shepherd, and
down from generation to generation, and stocks of photo- tra\'eled at times with 650 glass plates, t\\'o cameras, a ten-
graphs were acquired from one firm bv anodier, there is foot-high tent, and two crates of chemicals. He required
no way of deciding exacdy from whose hand images such the assistance of +2 porters, without whom, it was noted in

as Dead A
View of the Expanse (pi. no. 134) actualh'
Sea, the British press, photograph\' in India would not have
comes. Furthermore, bv the i88os, scenic views of the been possible for Europeans.'" As part of an endea\'or to
region and its monuments had lost the freshness and \'ital- produce A Pennanent Record of Indin, Bourne explored
it}' that had informed earlier images, resulting in the tri\'ial- remote areas in die high Hiniala\'a mountains and in
ization of the genre even though a great number of photog- Kashmir during his seven-year sta\'. A perfectionist who
raphers continued to work in the area. had left a career in banking to photograph, he claimed that
Photographers working widi paper and collodion he waited sexeral da\'s for the fa\orable circumstances that
began to penetrate into India and the Far East toward the might allow him to achic\c the tonal qualities seen in, for

end ot the 1850s, but pro\'iding images for tourists was not example, Bouldeis on the Road to Miiddan Mahal (pi. no.

their only goal. In India, photograph\' was considered a 136) .-^ Colin Murra\', who took o\'er Bourne's large-format
documentarv tool with which to describe to die mother camera when the latter returned to England, apparendy

122 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 135. Antonio Beato.
Interior of Temple cfHorus,

Edfu^ after 1862. Albumen

print. National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa.

also inherited his approach to landscape composition; both Indian photographers to publish landscape views. Deen
believed that abody of water almost inevitably improved Dayal of Indore began to photograph around 1870, becom-
the image. The lyrical Water Palace at Udaipur (pi. no. 137) is ing official photographer to the viceroy and soon after-
one of a group of landscapes that Murray made for a ward to the nizam (ruler) of Hyderabad; his studios in

publication entided Photographs cfArchiteaure and Scenery Hyderabad and Bombay, known as Raja Deen Dayal and
in Gujerat and Rajputana, which appeared in 1874. Sons, turned out portraits, architectural views, and special
Lala Deen Dayal, the most accomplished Indian pho- documentary projects commissioned by his patron (see

tographer of the 19th century, and Darogha Ubbas Alii, an Chapter 8). Architectural images by Ubbas Alii of his

engineer by profession, appear to have been the only native city Lucknow, issued in 1874, are similar in style to

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 123

those produced by the Europeans who were responsible eral of these photographers purchased the negatives of
for the majorit\' of Indian scenic views. forerunners, amassing a large inventory of views that were
As on the Indian subcontinent, scenic views in China turned out under the new firm name. Among the outsiders
and Japan were made first by visiting Europeans who who were active in China during this period were M.
brought with them, in the wake of the rebellions and wars Rossier, sent by the Lx^ndon firm of Negretti and Zambra
that opened China to Western imperialism, equipment, (large-scale commercial publishers of stereographic views),
fortitude, and traditional Western concepts of pictorial and Felice Beato, who in addition to recording episodes in
organization. The earliest daguerreotypists of the Orient the conquests by the Anglo-French North China Expedi-
included Eliphalet Brown, who arrived with Commo-
Jr., tionary Force in i860 (see Chapter 4) photographed land-
dore Perry's expedition, and Hugh McKay, who operated scapes and daily aaivities. Between 1861 and 1864, the
a daguerreot^'pe studio in Hong Kong in the late 1840s; American photographer Milton Miller, apparendy taught
they were followed by other Westerners who arrived in by Beato and recipient of many of his negatives, worked in

China hoping to use wet-plate technology to record sce- Hong Kong, specializing in portraiture and street scenes.

nery and events in commercially successful ventures. Sev- The most energetic outsider to photograph in China

136. Samuel Bourne. Boulders on the Road to Muddan Mahal, c. 1867. Albumen print.

Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England.

124 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

137- Colin Murray. The Water Palace at Udaipur, c. 187?. Albumen print. Colleaion Paul F. Walter, New York.

was John Thomson, originally from Scotland. Using Hong chants expressing much interest in this form of expression
Kong as home base and tra\'eling some 5,000 miles before the turn of the centur)'. One exception was Thomas
throughout the interior and along the coast —usually Child, a British engineer working in Peking in the i87os,
accompanied b\' eight to ten nati\e bearers —Thomson who produced (and also sold) nearh' 200 \iews he had
worked in China berween 1868 and 1872 before returning to tal<.en of that citA' and its en\'irons, including an image of a
England to publish a four-xolume work on Chinese life. ceremonial gate (pi. no. 140). After 1900, Ernest Henry
His images displa\' a genuine interest in Chinese customs Wilson, a British botanist made ethnographic \ iews, while
and seem influenced b\' traditional Chinese painting, as Donald Mennie, also British and the director of a w ell-
exemplified b\' his treatment of the landscape in Wu-Shan established firm of merchants, approached Chinese land-
Gor£ie, Szeclman {pi. no. 138). scape with the \'ision and techniques of the Pictorialist,
Commercial view-making b\' native photographers be- issuing the soft-focus romantic-looking portfolio The Pag-
gan \'er\' slowly, but in 1859 a studio was opened in Hong eant ofPekmji in graxoire prints in 1920.
Kong b\' Afong Lai, who was to remain preeminent in this Social and political transformations in Japan during the
area throughout the remainder of the centur\-. Highly —the decade w hen the Meiji Restoration signaled the
1860S
regarded b\' Thomson as "a man of cultixated taste" whose change from feudalism to capitalism—created an atmo-
work was "extremeh' weU executed,"^' Afong Lai's images, sphere in which both foreign and nati\'e photographers
such as a view of Hong Kong Island (pi. no. i,w), also found it possible to ftmction, but besides Beato, who
rc\eal an approach similar to that seen in traclitional Chi- appears to ha\e come to Japan in 1864, few photographers
nese landscape painting. Although Afong Lai was virtually were interested at first in pure landscape \iews. In general,
alone when he began his commercial enterprise, bv 1884 a truly nati\'e landscape tradition did not cN'olve in India or
it was estimated that se\^eral thousand natixe photogra- the Far East during the collodion era, and, in the period
phers were in business in China, although not all made that followed, the gelatin dr\' plate and the small-format
scenic xiews. snapshot camera combined with the influence of imported
Amateur photograph\' also appears to ha\e begun slow- Western ideas to make tlie establishment of an identifiable
ly, with neither foreign residents nor nati\'e Chinese mer- national landscape style difficult.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 125

 138. John Thomson. Wu-Shan Gorge,
Szechuan^ 1868. Albumen print.
Philadelphia Museum of Art.

IJ9- Afong Lai. Hong Kong Island, late

1860S. Albumen print. Collection
H. Kwan Lau, New York.

126 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 —

I40. Thomas Child. Damaged Portal ofYuen-Minpi- 141- D£sir£ Charnay. Chichen-Itza, Yucatan, c. 1858.

Yuan, Summer Palace, Pekinff, after the Fire of i860, set by Albumen print. Collection Centre Canadien
English and French Allied Forces^ 1872. Albumen print. d' Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture,
Collection H. Kwan Lau, New York. Montreal.

interest in the cultures that had created these edifices.

Landscape in the Americas
Though Charnc\' later workeei on expeditions to Madagas-
On the opposite side of the Pacific, Mexico was seen by car, Java, and Australia, this first group of images appears
some sectors of the French government as a possible area to be themost completeh^ realized.
of colonialist expansion and therefore came under the scru- —
Urban topographical views harbors, public buildings,
tiny of the camera lens. Desire Charnav, a former teacher —
and town sc^uares comprise a large portion of the photo-
\\'ith an itch for ad\cnture and a belief in France's dcstin\' graphic landscape documentation made in South America
in the Americas, explored and photographed in the ancient after mid-ccntur\'. Supported in some cases bv the ax'id

ruined cities of Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, and Palenque be- interest of the rtiling famih', as in Brazil imder Emperor
tween 1858 and 1861 (and was again in Mexico from 1880 to Dom Pedro II —himself an amateur camera enthusiast
1882). The first in this part of the world to successfliUy use and in other countries b\' the scientificalh' minded Europe-
the camera as a research tool in archeological exploration, an-oriented middle class, professional \'iew-makers turned
Charney published the views in an expensive two-volume out images that sought to present topographv and urban
edition of photographs with text b\' himself and French de\'elopment in a faxorable if not cspeciallv exalted light.

architect Viollct-le-Duc, and he made images available for The most renowned South American photographer of the
translation into wood engraxing to accompan\' articles in time. Marc Ferrez, a Brazilian who opened his own studio
the popular press. ""^ Despite the fantasy of ideas put forth in Rio de Janeiro after spending part of his \'outh in Paris,

by the audiors concerning the origins of the ancient cities advertised the firm as specializing in Brazilian views. Intro-
of the new world, the photographs themselves, in particular ducing figures to establish scale in his 1870 Rocks at
those of the ornateh' canned facades of the structures at Itapnco (pi. no. 142), Ferrez's image balances geological
Chichen-Itza (pi no. 141), re\'cal a m\'stcrious power that descripti\eness with scnsiti\it\' to light to create a serene
most certainh' sened to promote popular and scientific yet \ isuall)' arresting image.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 127

 North American attitudes about scenery reflected the among them James Wallace Black, the Bicrstadt and Kil-
unique situation of a nation without classical history' or bum brothers, John Soule, and Seneca Ray Stoddard, were
fabled ruins that shared a near religious exaltation of virgin concerned largely, though not exclusively, with a com-
nature. Many Americans were convinced that the extensive merce in stereograph views, a format in which it was diffi-

rivers and forests were signs of the munificent hand of cult to express feelings of sublimity. On occasion, a sense
God in favoring the new nation with plenty; others recog- of the transcendent found its wav into images such as
nized the economic value of westward expansion and found Black's mountain scene (pi. no. 143) ; Stodd^LrdCs Hudson River

photography to be the ideal tool to enshrine ideas of Landscape (pi. no. 144), in which the horizontal format,
"manifest destiny." Painters of the Hudson River School luminous river, and small figure suggest the insignificance
and photographers of the American West recorded land- of man in relation to nature, is another such example.
scape as though it were a fresh and unique creation, but Although American view photographers were urged to
while the optimism of many East Coast artists had vanished avoid "mere mechanism" by familiarizing themselves with
in the aftermath of the Civil War, photographers (and works by painters such as Claude, Turner, and Ruisdael, as
painters) facing untrammeled western scenery continued well as by contemporary American landscape painters,

to express buoyant reverence for nature's promise. artistic landscapes in the European style were of concern
In a literal sense, a photographic "Hudson River School" onlv to a small group working out of Philadelphia in the

did not exist. Eastern landscapists working in the Hudson early i86os. These photographers responded to a plea by a
Valley and the Adirondack and White mountains regions, newly established journal, Philadelphia Photographer, to

mmi^'imm <i^/ 1^,\

"^
,r
*^Z"'<-f/i

142. Marc Ferrez. Koch at Itapuco, 1870. Albumen print. Colleaion H. L. Hoftenberg, New York.

128 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

143- James Wallace Black. In the White
Mountain Notch, 1854. Albumen print. Art
Museum, Princeton Universit)', Princeton, N.I.
Robert O. Dougan (x)llcction.

144- Seneca Ray Stoddard. Hudson River

Landscape, n.d.Albumen print. Chapman
Historical Museum of the Glens Falls-Queensbury
Association, Glens Falls, N.Y.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 129

 145- John Moran. Scenery in the Region of the
Delaware Water Gap, c. 1864. Albumen
stereograph. Library Company of Philadelphia.

146. Victor Provost. Reed and Sturjjes

Warehouse, c. 1855. CaloU'pe. New- York Historical

Societ\', New York.

130 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 —

create a native landscape school to do "really first class phers were hired to record examples of topography, collect
work," that is, to imbue landscape with a distinctive aura. specimens of botanical and geological interest, and make
Scenery in the Rejjion of the Delaware Water Gap (pi. no. 14s) portraits of Native Ajnericans as aids in determining areas
by John Moran, who had been trained as a painter along for fiiture mineral exploitation and civilian settlements. In
with his more famous brother Thomas, is representative addition to being paid for their time, and/or supplied with
of the work by the Philadelphia naturalists, whose photo- equipment, individual photographers made their own
graphic activities were strongly colored by a conscious arrangements with expedition leaders regarding the sale of
regard for artistic values. Farther west, the Chicago- images. Views were issued in several sizes and formats,
based, Canadian-born Alexander Hesler had switched to from the stereograph to the mammoth print —about 20
making collodion negatives of the natural wonders of the by 24 inches —which necessitated a specially constructed
upper Mississippi Valley with similar objectives in mind. camera. For the first time, landscape documentation
Nevertheless, despite the promotion of native landscape emerged as a viable livelihood for a small group of American
expression in art and photography periodicals, this genre photographers.
flowered only after photographers became involved in Whether working in the river valleys of New York, New
the western explorations. England, and Pennsylvania, or the mountains of the West,
At the same time, it is apparent from early camera American wet-plate photographers transported all their

documentation of buildings and the cityscape that most materials and processing equipment without the large

photographers made little effort to do more than produce numbers of porters who attended those working in Europe
a prosaic record of architectural structures. Images of and the Orient, although assistance was available from the
buildings by George Robinson Pardon in San Francisco; packers included on survey teams. Besides the cameras (at
James McClees, Frederick Debourg Richards, and even times three in number), photographers carried glass plates
John Moran, working in Philadelphia; and the anony- in various sizes, assorted lenses, and chemicals in special

mous recorders of architecture in Boston and New York, vans and by pack animals. Tents and developing boxes,
are largely unnuanced depictions of cornices, lintels, and among them a model patented by the photographer John
brick and stone work. With the exception of the photo- Carbutt in 1865 (pi. no. 147), enabled individuals to venture
graphs by Victor Prevost — a calotypist from France whose where vehicles could not be taken. Constant unpacking

views of Central Park and New York buildings, made and repacking, the lack of pure water, tiie tendency of dust
around 1855, are informed by a fine sense of composition to adhere to the sticky collodion —problems about which
and lighting and, in the Reed and Stur^es Warehouse (pi. no. all survey photographers complained —make the serene
146), by a respect for the solid power of the masonry clarity of many of these images especially striking.

camera pictures of cities often appear to be a record of Following efforts by Solomon Nunes Carvalho to
urban expansion, a kind of adjunct to boosterism. make topographical daguerreot\'pes on Colonel John C.
Fremont's explorations west of the Mississippi, the

Western Views
Photographs of western scenery were conceived as

documentation also, but they project a surpassing spirit, a

sense of buoyant wonder at the grandeur of the wilderness.

These images embody the romanticism of mid-century
painting and literature —the belief that nature in general and
mountains in particular are tangible evidence of the role
that the Supreme Deity played in the Creation. Though
necessarily different in scale and subject from paintings
that depict the discovery and exploration of the North
American continent, these photographs reflect the same
confidence in the promise of territorial expansion that had
moved painters of the 1840s and '50s.

Photography became a significant tool during the

1860s, when railroad companies and government bodies
recognized that it could be usefijl as part of the efforts by 147- Carbutfs Portable Developing Box. Wood engraving
survey teams to document unknown terrain in the Far from The Philadelphia Photographer, January, 1865.

West. Scientists, mapmakers, illustrators, and photogra- Private Collection.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 131

American painter Albert Bierstadt, accompanying an i48) — \\2lA become internationally recognized in photo-

expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1859, was among graphic circles for establishing the mountain landscape as a
the first to attempt to publicize the grandeur of western symbol of transcendent idealism. Impelled perhaps by the
scenery. His wet-plate stereographs are visually weak, but controversies then current among naturalists, including

they (and articles written on the subject for The Crayon, a expedition leader Clarence King, regarding the relation-
periodical devoted to the support of a native landscape art) ship of religion to geology and evolution, Watkins's images
exemplitV the interest in the West by scientists and writers of rocks seem to emphasize their animate qualities.

as well as artists. California, especially, became the focus of Eadweard Muybridge, Watkins's closest competitor,

early documentation, including that by Charles L. Weed produced views of Yosemite in 1868 and 1872 that likewise

and Carleton E. Watkins, who began to photograph the enshrine the wilderness landscape as emblematic of the
scenery around Yosemite Valley in the early 1860s. Both American dream of unsullied nature. Muybridge sought
had worked in the San Jose gallery of daguerreotypist to imprint his own style on the subject by the selection of
Robert Vance, who stocked a large inventory of scenic unusual viewpoints and the disposition of figures in the

views taken in Chile and Peru as well as in the West. By landscape. Sensitive to the requirements of artistic land-
1868, Watkins —^who had made his first views of Yosemite scape style, he at times printed-in the clouds fi-om separate
five years earlier and had worked on the Whitney Survey of negatives to satisfy critics who found the contrast between
the region in 1866, when he shot Cathedral Rock (pi. no. foreground and sky too great, but he also devised a more

148. Carleton E. Watkins. Cathedral Rock, 2,600 Feet, Yosemtte, No. 21, published by I. Taber, c. 1866. Albumen print.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Elisha Whittelsey Collection, Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1922.

132 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 a

149- Eadweard Muybridge. a Study of Clouds^ c. 1869. Albumen stereographs.

Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Cal.

authentically photographic —
method the sky shade — tion with the ever-changing formations observable in the
shutterlike device that blocked the amount of blue light atmosphere. Muybridge, whose deep interest in ephemeral
reaching the plate. As has been noted, cloud studies, sim- atmospheric effects was perhaps inspired by association
ilar to this group by Muybridge (pi. no. 14(f) , were made by with Bierstadt in 1872, also made a number of remarkable
photographers everywhere during this period, in part to pictures in 1875 of smoke and mist-tilled latent volcanoes in

redress the problem of an empty upper portion of the Guatemala (pi. no. iso).

image and in part because of the photographers' fascina- Timothy O'Sullivan, a former Civil War photographer

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE I?3

I50. Eadweard Muybridge. Volcano Quetzehenango, Guatemala^ 1875. Albumen print.

Department of Special Collections, Stanford Universit)' Library, Palo Alto, Cal.

who became part of Clarence King's 40th Parallel Survey (pi. no. IS4-) , is gi\'en scale and a touch of humanit}' by the
in 1867 (see Profile) , was exceptionally fitted b\' nature and inclusion of a small seated figure. John K. Hillers learned
experience on the battlefield for die organizational and photographic tccliniqucs from Bcaman, whom he eventu-
cxpressi\e demands of expedition photography. 0'Sulli\an all\' replaced; his view oi Marble Canvon, Shinnnio Altar
photographed the \olcanic formations of desolate areas, (pi. no. IS3) , a place that he characterized as "the gloomiest I

among them Pyramid Lake (pi. no. ///), with an accuracy' have ever been in —not a bird in it,"" displays imaginati\'e
the rocks were photographed in varying light conditions as well as technical skill. A similar capacity' to both docu-
that reflected King's absorption with geological theory. ment and infuse life into obdurate substances can be seen
His images surpass scientific documentation, howe\'cr, and in Hanjjijiji Rock, Foot of Echo Canvon, Utah (pi. no. 168),

create an unworldh' sense of die primexal, of an untamed taken b\' Andrew Joseph Russell, a former painter and
landscape of extraordinar\' beaut^^ Furthermore, by his Civil War photographer, while he was documenting the
choice of vantage point he was able to evoke the vastness construction of the Union Pacific Railroad.

and silence of this remote area in intrinsically photographic William Henry Jackson, employed tor eight years on
terms without resorting to the conxentions of landscape the western sun'ev headed b\' geologist Ferdinand V. Ha\'-
painting. The work of William Bell, O'Sullixan's replace- den, was in a prixilcged position to c\'oh'c from journey-
ment on the Wheeler Sun'ev of 1871-72, reveals a sensiti\it\' man photographer to camera artist of stature. That sun'ey
to the dramatic qualities inherent in inanimate substances; (pi. no. iss), begun in 1870 in the Uintas Mountains and
his Hieroglyphic Pass, Opposite Parowan (pi. no. nz) is also expanded in the foUowing years to embrace the Grand
unusual in its absence of atmosphere or sense of scale. Can\'on and the Yellowstone Rix'er, included artists San-
In i87i, an expctiition down the Colorado Ri\'cr, headed ford R. Clifford and Thomas Moran, whose landscape
by John Wesley Powell, included E. O. Bcaman, an eastern paintings helped shape Ha\'den's and Jackson's pictorial
landscape photographer, whose image of a magnificent expectations. The close relationship that developed be-
and lonely mountain pass. The Heart ofLodore, Green River tween Jackson and Moran enabled the photographer to

134 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 .

refine his \'ision, even to the point of setting up his camera enterprise in western images, but it is his work of the
in positions scouted b\' Moran, who is seen in Jackson's mid-'ros, inspired bv the land itself and b\ the artistic
\'iew of Hot Spmigs on the Gardiner River, Upper Basin (pi. example of Moran, diat is most compelling.
no. is6) At about the same time that western survey photogra-
Unlike the fate of the photographs made for France's ph\' was getting under wa\', photographers were also in-

Missions helio^raphiques, American sur\'e\' images were seen cluded on expeditions to Greenlanti, organized b\' Isaac

b\' a large public. In addition to satisfying the \'oracious Haves, and to Labrador, sponsored b\ the painter William
appetite of publishers for marketable landscape stereo- Bradford. John L. Dunmore and George Critcherson, of
graphs, thev also were presented in albums and as lantern Black's Boston studio, worked w itii the painter to photo-
slides to members of Congress and other influential people graph icebergs and glacial seas, providing plates for Brad-
to drum up support for funding ci\ilian scientific expedi- ford's publication The Arctic Regions as well as material for

tions and creating national parklands. For example, besicies his intenseh' colored Romantic seascapes. Besides record-

the sketches that Moran made ax-ailable to Scribner's Maga- ing the forms of icebergs, the incisixe reflections and sharp
zine (pi. no. IS7) in support of Ha\'den's campaign for a contours of Sailing Ships in an Ice Field (pi. no. is8) , for

Yellowstone National Park, Jackson printed up albums of example, suggest the sparkling sharpness of die polar cli-

Yellowstone Scenic Wonders to con\'ince the United States mate. Photographx' of the polar regions continued into
Congress of the distinctixe grandeur of the scenerx'.'^ In what has been called die heroic period of Polar exploration,
later years, Jackson established a successful commercial with expeditions led bv Amundsen, Mawson, Pear\', and

151. Timothy O'Sullivan. Tufa Domes, Pyramid Lake, 1867. Albumen print. National Archives, Washington, D.C.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE i?5

152. William Bell. Utah Series No. lo, Hieropilypbic Pass, 153. John K. Hillers. Marble Canyon, Shinumo Altar,
Opposite Parowan, Utah, 1872. Albumen print. Art, 1872. Albumen print. National Archives, Washington,
Prints and Photograph Division, New York Public D.C.
Librar)', Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

154. E. O. Beaman. The

Heart ofLodore, Green River,

1871. Albumen print.

National Archives,
Washington, D.C.

136 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

 3^" V
^SlZ

155. William Henry

Jackson. Members of the
Hayden Survey^ 1870.
Albumen print. National
Archives, Washington,
D.C.

Scott in the carlv vcars of the 20th ccntun', and it is not William Notman, the best-known commercial photogra-
surprising that some of tliese later images, among xhcmAn pher in Canada. Hencierson, a latecomer to photography
Iceberg in Midsummer, Antarctica (pi. no. isp) bv British and a well-to-do amateur, may ha\'e been influenced bv
photographer Herbert Ponting, made between 1910 and English landscape photograph\' with which he was famil-
191? while accompanying Scott to Antarctica, should recall iar through his membership in the Stereoscope Exchange
the treshness of \'ision tliat characterized die first \'iews of Club. But Spring Flood on the St. Lawrence (pi. no. 160) of
the western wilderness. 1865 also seems close in spirit to the idA'ilic oudook of the
hifluenced bv westward movements in die United States American Hudson Ri\'er artists.
and b\' the discoven' of gold in British Columbia, the Sun^eys had proxided an efiFecti\c structure for the doc-
Pro\ince of Canada flmded an expedition in 1858 to what is umentation of tlie West, but during the 1880s their fianc-

now Manitoba; although images made bv staff photog- tions, including photograph\', were taken o\'er b\' the newly
rapher Humphre\' Llo\'d Hime, a partner in a Toronto established United States Geological Sun'e\' and die Bureau
engineering firm, were concerned mainlv with inliabitants of Ethnolog\'. While areas of the West continued to attract
of the region, the few rather poor landscapes indicate the indi\idual photographers, most of the images made in

nature of the problems of expedition photograph\' at this frontier studios or in the field during the last quarter of the
early date. Hime noted that to make adequate topographi- centun' consisted of documentation of new settlers or of
cal pictures he required better equipment, pure water, and, nati\'e tribespeople and their customs, with landscape a b\'-

most important, more time for taking and processing than product of these concerns. Furthermore, as the nation
expedition leaders were willing to spend." Other Cana- moN'ed into high gear industrially, the natural landscape no
dian sur\'e\'s made in connection v\'ith railroad routes or longer was seen as a s\'mbol of transcendent national
border disputes also employed photographers, most of purpose.
whom produced documents diat are more interesting as Scenic \'iews made during the 1880s, after the gelatin
sociological information than as ex'ocations of the land- dry plate had begun to supplant collodion, embodied \'ar-

scape. ied attitudes toward nature. Man\' landscapists on both

Among the few Canadians to imbue scenic images with sides of the Atlantic were influenced b\' die ideas of Nat-
a sense of atmosphere were Alexander Henderson and uralism, an attitude that celebrated the ordinan' and un-

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 137

 156. William Henry Jackson. Hot Sprinpfs

on the Gardiner River, Upper Basin (Thomas

Moran Standinj;)^ 1871. One-half of an albumen
stereograph. International Museum of
Photography at George Eastman House,
Rochester, N.Y.

157. Thomas Moran. Bathnipi Pools, Diana's

Baths, 1872. Engra\'ing. Library' of Congress,
Washington, D.C.

138 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

158. John L. Dunmore and George Critcherson. Sailing Ships in an Ice Field, 1869. Albumen print.

International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 1.^9

spectacular both in landscape and social activity (see Chap- famed for its wilderness of glorious valleys and loftv per-
ter s). Some Americans, among them George Barker, pendicular rocks.
continued their romance with the magnificence of native
scenery, but a different sensibilirv is apparent in images The flowering of landscape and scenic views during the
such as Barker's Moonlijfht on the St. Johns River (pi. no. eras of the calot\'pe and collodion was partly the result of
i6i) —one suggestive of the end of an era rather than the the general urge in all industrialized societies to measure,
onset of a period of promise. Barker was nationally re- describe, and picture the physical substances of all things
nowned for views of Niagara Falls, in which rock and on earth and in the heavens. It was pardy a reaction to

water spray are invested with spectacular drama rather urbanization —an attempt to preserve nature's beauty. The
than with the noble clarity that had characterized earlier compelling power of many of these images also flows in a
images. Another landscapist of the period, Henrv Hamil- measure from the difficultv of the enterprise. Whether in
ton Bennett, proprietor of a commercial studio in Kil- the Alps, Himalayas, or Rockies, on the Colorado, Nile, or

boum, Wisconsin, domesticated the wilderness photograph Yangtze, the photographer had to be profoundly commit-
in his views of picnicking and boating parties on the ted to the quest for scenic images before embarking on an
Wisconsin Dells (pi. no. 162)^ an area that formerly had been arduous journey, with the result that manv images embody

159. Herbert Ponting. An Iceberp/ in Midsummer, Antaraica, 1910-13. Carbon print. Original Fine Arts Society Edition print from
the Antarctic Divisions Historical Print Collection, Universitv of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia.

140 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

i6o. Alexander Henderson. Spring Flood on the St. Lawrence, 1865. Albumen print.
National Gallen,' of Canada, Ottawa, Ralph Grecnhill CoUeaion.

this passion and resolve. After 1880, the ease and com'cn- publish either disco\'er\' until 1851, when they appeared in
iencc first of the gelatin dn' plate, and then of the roll-film his publication Nojtveaii Traite theonqne et pratique de
camera, made landscape photographers out of all who photqqrapbie sur papier etsur veire (Nav Treatise on the Tbe-
could afford film and camera, and led to an inundation of oiyand Praaice ofPhotofiraphy on Paper and Glass) b\' which ,

banal scenic images that often were, in Bourne's words, time Archer alread\' had made the first public disclosure of
"litde bits, pasted in a scrapbook."'+ a collodion method.
The instructor of manv artists and intellectuals eager to

learn photographv, including Du Camp, Fenton, Le Secq,

Profile: Gustave Le Gray
Marx'ille, and Ncgre, Le Grav was held in uniformlv high
Gustave Lc Gra\' combined die imagmati\'e curiosits' esteem b}' his contemporaries for his abilirs' to use light
and skill of both artist and scientist. While stiU a student in suggestively. He was invited to participate in important
the studio of the academic salon painter Paul Delaroche, he photographic projects, among them the Missions beliopiraph-
became aware of photograph\' but did not invohe himself iqnes, where he photographed b\' himself as well as with O.
in the new medium until the end of the 1840s. His inabilit\' Mestral, and in 1856 he was asked to pro\'ide a reportage on
to survive as a painter in the o\'ercrowded art field of Second the newh' established Imperial Arm\' camp at Chalons (pi.

Empire France kindled an enthusiasm for working with no. 199). Enshrouded in mist and surrounded bv silent,

the paper negati\e. A strong interest in the chemistr^' of cmpt\' terrain, the groups of soldiers in these images sug-
paint, applied now to the problems of the calots'pe, led gest an unworldly comocation, a \ision that accorded with
him to perfect in 1849 the dr\' waxed-paper process that the emperor's almost religious regard for this militan'
came to be utilized, at least briefly, by most of the major encampment. On his own, Le Gra\' made artistic calo-

figures in mid-igth-centun' French photographv. Although t\'pe photographs in the Barbizon tradition at Fontainbleau
Le Gra\' also had worked out a collodion process at the forest in 1849 and fixe \'ears later, in collodion, of the
same time, he was uninterested in glass at first and did not mo\'ement of clouds ajid sea at Sete (Cette) (pi. no. 116), and

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 141

 i6i. George Barker. Moonlight
on the St. Johns Rhvr, 1886.
Albumen print. Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.

162. Henry Hamilton

Bennett. Sugar Bowl with
Rowboat, Wisconsin Dells, c. 1889.
Albumen print. ® H.H. Bennett
Studio, Wisconsin Dells, Wis.

142 LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

at Dieppe where he recorded Napoleon IIFs na\al fleet. \ey teams that were being organized uncfer ci\ilian or mili-
These images, exhibited repeatedly, were highh' acclaimed, tan' leadership todocument wilderness areas west of die
in\'iting a first prize at the 1855 Exposition Univenellc. Mississippi. Departing from Ne\ada Cit\' with 9 x 12 inch
In \'iev\' of these successes, Le Gra\^s withdrawal fi-om and stereograph cameras, 125 glass plates, darkroom equip-
die photographic scene after 1858 may seem difficult to ment, and chemicals, for more than two years he explored
understand, but his situation rexeals some of the problems the strange and inhospitable regions along the 40th Parallel
confronting photographers in France in the igxh century. with a group headed b\' the eminent geologist Clarence
Lacking independent means, Le Gray was able to support King. Following a brief period with the Darien Surx'ev to
himself b\' commercial photograph\' — portraiture, techni- die Isthmus of Panama, where both the humid atmosphere
cal illustration, reproductions of artwork —and indulge his and the denseh' made photograph\' difficult,
foliated terrain
high standards through the generosit\' of a patron, the he found another position on a western sun'e\'. As Weston
Comte de Briges. Ho\\e\er, as the medium itself became Naef has pointed out,"^ photograph\' on the Geological
more competiti\x and commercial, and the count's patron- Sur\eys West of the looth Meridian, as the expedition
age ended, Le Gray foimd himself more interested in prob- commanded by Lieutenant George M. Wheeler of the
lems of light and pictorial organization than in making Army Corps of Engineers was called, "was not so much a
salable \iews that "were got up in a sr\'le that renders them scientific tool as it was a means of publicizing the Sun'ey's
a fit ornament for an\' drawing room."'' What his friend accomplishments in the hopes of persuading Congress to
Nadar characterized as poor business sense was more prob- fimd militan' rather than ci\'ilian expeditions in the fiiture."
ably Le Gra^'^s reluctance to accept pre\'ailing marketplace 0'Sulli\'an's purpose in joining this team was more
standards; in any event, he left famih^ and associates and likeh' personal than political in that he was allowed by
traveled to Italy, Malta, and final]\' Egypt, where he fin- Wheeler to be his own master, in charge of portions of the
ished his career as professor of design in a pol}teclinic expedition, and thus did not ha\e to take orders from
institute. geologists. In\'ol\'ed in the dramatic if not scientifically
The acclaim accorded Le Gra\' was for the exceptional defensible exploit of attempting to ascend the Colorado
qualit)' of his salt and albumen prints as well as for his Ri\'er through the Grand Caii\'on, Wheeler noted O'Sulli-
inno\ati\'e \'ision. His technical masten' of gold-chloride xan's professionalism in producing negati\'es in the face of
toning, which permitted the rexelation of details buried in all obstacles, incluciing a near drowning. FoOowing another
the deepest shadows, deri\'ed from a conception of print- brief period with King, O'Sullivan joined a Wheeler-led
ing as an integral aspect of an entire process by which the sune\' to the Southwest where he documented not only
photographer transforms nature into art. geological formations but members of the pueblo and
rock-dwelling tribes in the region of the Canyon de Chellc
(pi. no. 163). After 1875, 0'Sulli\an's problematical health
Profile: Timothy O^Sullivan
and the winding down of sune\' photograph\' put an end
Timoth\' 0'Sulli\'an came to landscape photograph\- to further in\'oh'ement with the western landscape. Fol-
after four years of experience photographing behind the lowing a brief period in i8~9 as photographer in the newly
lines and on the battlefields of the Ci\il War. A former established United States Geological Sur\e\', of which King
assistant in Mathew Brad\^'s New York studio, in 1861 he was first director, and a position with the Treasun' Depart-
had joined the group laiown as "Brad\''s Photographic ment in Washington, 0'Sulli\'an was forced by his tuber-

Corps," working with Alexander Gardner. Because Brad\' cular condition to resign; he dieci a \'ear later in Staten
refiiscd to credit the work of indi\'idual photographers, Island at age forrs'-two.
Gardner, taking 0'Sulli\an along, established his own 0'Sulli\'an approached western landscape with the doc-
VV^ashington firm to publish war \iews. War images taken umentarian's respect for the integrit\' of \isible c\idence
by O'Sullixan are wide-ranging in subject and direct in and the camera artist's understanding of how to isolate and
their message, including among them the weariness of in- frame decisi\'e forms and structures in nature. Beyond this,
action and continual waiting, and the horror of fields of he had the capacit\' to imest inert matter with a sense of
the dead (pi. no. 209). mysterious silence and timclessness; these qualities may be
After the war, 0'Sulli\an, faced with the dullness of e\en more arresting to the modern e\'e than the\' were to
commercial studio work, discovered an optimum use for his contemporaries, who regarded his ijiiages as accurate
his energies and experience as a photographer on the sur- records rather than cxocative statements.

LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE 14.?

The Western
Landseape —
Natural and
Fabricated

This selection of early views of the American West suggests the dual role that
the photograph played after the Civil War in the exploration and development
of this relatively unknown part of the continent. Taken between the years
1867 and 1878, these pictures are the work of five among the numerous
photographers who either accompanied geological survey teams, were
employed by railroad companies, or were professionals with established
studios in West Coast cities. Beyond their roles as documenters, all were
inspired by the spectacular scale and breadth of the pristine wilderness

landscape, by its strange rock formations, its steamy geysers, and its sparkling

waterfalls. Using the cumbersome wet-plate process, they sought out the

vantage points that might make it possible to recreate for Easterners a sense

of the immensity and primordial silence of the region.

A number of the same photographers were called upon to document the
building of rail lines, bridges, water sluices, and urban centers. Eadweard
Muybridge produced a panorama of the young and growing metropolis of
San Francisco, from which four of the thirteen mammoth (18 x 24 inch)

plates are reproduced, showing cable cars, churches, and public and
commercial buildings as well as dwellings laid out in a well-defined street
system. As the frontier moved westward and industrialization began to change
the character of the landscape, Americans increasingly turned to the

photograph as a means of both celebrating technology and of expressing

reverence for the landscape being threatened by its advance.

163.Timothy H. O'Svlltwah. Ancient Ruins in the Canyon de Chelle, Nm' Mexico, 1873. Albumen print.

International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

144 : THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE

THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE 145
164. Cabxeton E. Watkins. Magenta Flume, Nevada Co., California, c. 1871. Albumen print.
Baltimore Museum of Art; Purchase with exchange Hinds from the Edward Joseph Gallagher III Memorial Collection;
and Partial Gift; of George H. Dalsheimer, Baltimore.

OPEN FOR FOLDOUT:

165. Eadweard Muybridge. Panorama of San Francisco from California Street Hill, 1878.
Panorama in 13 plates (four plates reprinted here). Albumen prints. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

146 THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE

i66. Carleton E. Watkins. Multnomah Fall Cascade, Columbia River, 1867.
Albumen print. Gilman Paper Company, New York.

THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE : : 15I

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 i67. Frank J.

Haynes. Geyser,
Yellowstone, Wyoming,
c. 1885. Albumen *i

print. Daniel Wolf,

Inc., New York.

168. Andrew J.

Russell. Hanging
Rock, Foot of Echo
Canyon, Utah, 1867-68.
Albumen print.
Western Americana
Collection, Beinecke
Rare Book and
Manuscript Library,
Yale University,
New Haven, Conn.

152 THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE

 J- :iJb^-l - •.'.W5«. ,<- ! .tcl»E»«J

.r .-. -,';:-;
.
•,.5., .^.-
-,; "-<,;' .;!(..

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i69- William Henry Jackson. Grand Canyon of the Colorado, 1870S-80S.

Albumen print. Private collection.

THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE 153

 4.
DOCUMENTATION
OBJECTS
AND EVENTS
i83p-i8po

Let him who wishes to know what war is look at this series of illustrations.

— Olix>er Wendell Holmes, 1863'

154 : : OBJECTS AND EVENTS

NEARLY ALL CAMERA IMAGES that deal with what exists in it wound up by believing that what it saw a photograph
the world may be considered documents in some sense, of, was true."'
but the term documentation has come to refer to pictures The need for pictorial documentation had been rec-
taken with an intent to inform rather than to inspire or to ognized even before the invention of photography. In the
express personal feelings (though, of course, such images 1830S and '40s, publishers of periodicals in Europe
may answer these needs, too). The materialistic outlook sought to enliven informational texts with graphic illus-

of the industrialized peoples of the 19th century, their trations directed to a diversified mass audience. The
emphasis on the study of natural forces and social relation- Penny Magazine, an early starter in London, was followed
ships, and their quest for empire promoted the photo- by the Illustrated London News, L'lllustration in Paris,

graphic document as a relatively unproblematical means Illustrierte Zeitung in Leipzig, and, in the United States,
of expanding knowledge of the visible world. Depictions Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.
of topography and architecture (addressed in the previous To make good their promise to present a living and
chapter); of the physical transformation of city and country- moving panorama of the world's activities and events,
side; of wars, uprisings, revolutions, and natural disasters; of these journals began in the 1850s to use the photographic
sociological and medical conditions and oddities — all were document as a basis for graphic imagery. The need to
considered by intellectuals, scientists, artists, and the gener- translate photographs quickly into wood engravings to
al public to be eminently suitable themes for camera images. meet publication deadlines led to the practice of dividing
The photograph was regarded as an exemplary record up an illustration into sections and farming out the parts
because it was thought to provide an objective —that is, to a number of woodblock engravers, after which the
unaltered —view of solid fact and achievement. This faith pieces were reassembled into a unified block for printing.
in the capacity of light to inscribe truth on a sensitized In 1857, George N. Barnard invented a process whereby
plate, which lay behind the acceptance of camera docu- the collodion negative could be printed directiy onto the
mentation, was given its most persuasive verbal argument block, bypassing the artist's drawing and incidentally sub-
by the American Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose contri- stituting a more realistic facture, which the engraver then
butions to the popularization of stereography have been endeavored to represent. Until the 1890s, when the print-

mentioned earlier. Suggesting that the "perfect photo- ing industry began to use the process halftone plate, doc-
graph is absolutely inexhaustible,"^ because in theory umentation based on photographs reached the public in

everything that exists in nature will be present in the several forms — as original albumen, carbon, or Woodbury-
camera image (in itself a dubious statement). Holmes type prints (stereograph and other formats), as lantern
also felt that incidental truths, missed by participants in slides, or transformed by engravers and lithographers into
the actual event, would be captured by the photograph graphic illustrations for the publishing industry.
and, in fact, might turn out to be of greater significance. Photographic documentation might be commissioned
As "form divorced fi^om matter" but mirroring truth, by the government (primarily in France and the United
documentary photographs were believed to be such accu- States), by private companies and individuals, or by pub-
rate catalogs of fact that they were surrogates of reality. lishers. Albumen prints, more sharply defined and easier to
Specific temporal meanings might be obscure, contextual produce in large numbers than calotypes, were organized
relationships unexplained, but these images, which by a into presentation albums made up for selected individuals

miracle of technology had found their way into stereo- and governing bodies, while thousands upon thousands of
scopes and picture albums far removed in time and place stereographs reached mass audiences through the sale and
from the actual object or event, increasingly became the distribution activities of companies such as T. & E. Anthony
data to which the public turned for knowledge of complex in New York, the Langenheim brothers' American Stereo-
structures and occurrences. According to the American art scopic Company in Philadelphia, the London Stereoscopic
historian William M. Ivins, Jr., "The nineteenth century and Photographic Company, Gaudin in Paris, and Loescher
began by believing that what was reasonable was true, and and Petsch in Germany.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS i.';5

 underdeveloped nations. The directors of the first impor-
Camera Documentation:
tant exposition, at the Crystal Palace in London in 1851
Industrial Development
the Great Exhibition —were eager to document the event
"Objective" documentation by camera coincided with as well as to display camera equipment and pictures, but
the physical transformation of industrialized countries dur- the insufficiencies of Talbot's calots'pc process limited the
ing the mid-ipth century. The role played bv photography effort to a visual catalog of the exhibits, which was included
in the campaign to restore the architectural patrimony of in Report by the Juries.'^ However, shortly after the decision
France has been mentioned, but, in addition, images were was made to rebuild the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, collo-

commissioned to show the demolition and reconstruction dion technique made it possible to document the entire
of urban areas, the erection of bridges and monuments, reconstruction. Photographing weekly for about three
and the building of transportation facilities and roads. The years — 1851 to 1854—the noted painter-photographer Philip
industrial expositions and fairs that were mounted even' Henry Delamotte recorded the rebirth of the glass hall in
several years in Britain, France, and the United States dur- its new location (pi. no. 170) and the installation of the
ing this period both symbolized and displayed the physical exhibits. In itself, the iron structure of Sir Joseph Paxton's
changes made possible by new technologies and new mate- huge pavilion provided interesting shapes and forms, but
rials, which were contrasted with the exotic produrts of Delamotte's obvious delight in the building's airy geome-

170. Philip Henry Delamotte. The Open Colonnade, Garden Front, c. 1853.

Albumen print. Greater London History Library, London.

156 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

 lyi. Robert Howlett (?).

The "Great Eastern"

Beinjj Built in the Docks at
Millwall, November 30, 1857.
Albumen print.

J. Paul Getty Museum,

Los Angeles.

tr)' contributes to the pleasurable satisfaction these images building of the north-south line from Boulogne to Paris,
still afford, and indeed this first record is among the more Lyons, and eventually to the Mediterranean ports. These
interesting documentations of the many that were made of large-format prints, exemplified by Pont de la Mulatiere (pi.

the industrial fairs that followed. no. 172), were made up into "presentation albums," one of
From the 1850s on, the mechanical- image maker fre- which was given to Queen Victoria; they also were exhibi-
quendy was called upon to record other feats served up by ted at the major industrial expositions where they were ac-
the age of mechanization. The usefiilness of such records claimed for elegant clarity of vision and superb tonal range.
was demonstrated by the documentation (pi. no. 171) of Gallic respect for order and precision also characterizes an
Isambard Kingdom Brunei's British steamship Great Eas- image of engines in the roundhouse at Nevers (pi. no. 173) ,

tern^ an enormous coal-driven liner capable of carr)'ing taken between i860 and 1863 by the litde-known French
4,000 passengers. The vivid handling of light, form, and photographer A. Collard, whose work for the Departement
volume seen in views by Robert Howlett and Joseph de Fonts et Chaussees (Department of Bridges and Roads)
Cundall of this "leviathan" —made for the Illustrated Times resulted in impressive views that emphasized the geometric
of London and the London Stereoscope Company —was rationality of these structures.
praised because it embraced real rather than synthetic situ- Baldus, whose other commissions included the previ-
ations. Contrasting these works with artistically conceived ously mentioned reportage on the Rhone floods and a
and reenacted studio compositions that were being turned documentation of the building of the new Louvre Museum
out at about the same time (see Chapters) , critics suggested was entirely committed to the documentary mode. His
that the true measure of camera art was in the sensitive images established the paradigm documentary style of the
treatment of actuality'. era in that he brought to the need for informative visual
Soon after mid-century, photographers were called material a sure grasp of pictorial organization and a feeling
upon to record the building of rail routes in France and for the subdeties of light, producing works that transcend
the United States, both latecomers in this endeavor com- immediate ftinction to afford pleasure in their formal res-

pared with Britain. One such commission, initiated by the olution. When increasing commercialization —the need to
French magnate Baron James de Rothschild, went
rail to mass-produce albumen prints for indiscriminate buyers of
Edouard Denis Baldus, who in 1855 and 1859 followed the stereographs and tourist images —made this approach to

OBJECTS AND EVENTS 157

172. Edouard Denis Baldus. Pont de la Mulatiere, c. 1855. Albumen print.
InternationalMuseum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

documentation financially untenable, Baldus turned to re- commissions, explores the geometries of arc and rectangles
printing his negatives and reproducing his work in gravure to enhance the contrast between the traditional stone of
rather than alter the high standards he had set for himself. the past and the modem metal span. At times, fascination
His attitude may be compared with that of William with the design properties of construction materials became
England, a highly competent British photographer who so pronounced as to almost obscure the utilitarian purpose
traveled widely to provide his publisher with images for of the structure; in an 1884 image of the building of the
stereoscopes and albums. As John Szarkowsici has pointed Forth Bridge in Scotland by an unknown photographer
out,'' England's view of the Niagara Suspension Bridge (pi. no. 176), the angled beams take on an animated life

(pi. no. 174) has something for everyone — scener\', human of their own, swallowing up the small figures in the
interest, an engineering marvel, and the contrast between foreground.
old and new means of transportation. Nevertheless, though Photographs of industrial activity that included the

well-composed and satisfying as a document, it lacks the work force also were made, although often they were less

inspired tension that put Baldus's work onto another plane formally conceived. Taken for a xarietv of purposes — as a

of visual experience, perhaps because its aim was simply to record of engineering progress, as material for illustrators
provide the kinds of information the public wanted in the —man\' such records were not deemed important, with
clearest fashion. the result that in time thie names of the makers or the
The character of new engineering materials and con- particulars of their careers became lost. Yet these images,
struction methods that were altering the appearance of too, can exert a spell through a formal structure that con-
Europe at mid-century seems to have had a special appeal N'ertsmundane activit\', such as work, into evocative expe-
to photographers called upon
document bridges and
to rience. Few images in either Europe or the Americas were

railway construction. To select only one example, Two concerned with the actual conditions of work, an interest
Bruges (pi. no. its), i work by Louis Auguste Bisson whose that did not manifest itself photographically until late in the
portrait firm sought to expand with such documentar\' century (see Chapter 8)

158 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

173- A. CoLLARD. Roundhouse on the Bourbonnais Railway, Nevers, 1860-63. Albumen print.
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS I.S9

 174. William
England. Niagara
Suspension Brit^e,
1859. Albumen print.
Museum of Modem
Art, New York.

175. AUGUSTE
Rosalie and Louis
AuGUSTE BiSSON.
Two Bridqes, n.d.
Albumen print.
Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris.

160 : : OBJECTS AND EVENTS

 .

176. Unknown
Photographer
(probably Scottish).
Construction of the Forth
Brieve, c. 1884. Gelatin
silver print. Collection
Centre Canadien
d'Architecture/Canadian
Centre for Architecture,
Montreal.

The transformation of Paris from a medieval to a mod- decorous views of the streets and buildings of Paris (pi. no.

em city, ordered by Prefect of the Seine Baron Haussmann 24). In all major cities, the urban milieu offered photog-
(who took office in 1853), provided an exceptional oppor- raphers a chance to capture the contrast of old and new
tunity for urban camera documentation. Old buildings and also to document aspects of anonymous street life,

and neighborhoods scheduled for demolition were photo- producing views that after 1859 were much in demand by
graphed in collodion in the 1860s by Charles Marville (pi. the buyers of stereographs (see below)

no. 177) , a former illustrator, whose early work in the waxed- Another aspect of Victorian photographic activity con-

paper process appeared in manv of Blanquart-Evrard's cerned the appropriation of the physical remains of the
publications. These images display a poignant regard for past. Popular interest in archeology, initiated in the i8th
the character and texture of vanishing ways, indicating century with the finds at Troy, Pompeii, and Herculaneum,
again that documentary records might be invested with was fiirther stimulated by the acquisition of works un-
poetic dimension. Working on his own (after recovering earthed by 19th-century European scholars and diplomats
from the disappointing events of 1839, in which his own investigating ancient cultures in Egypt, Greece, and the
paper process was suppressed), Hippolyte Bayard made Near East, often while pursuing imperialistic interests.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS 161

177- Charxes Marville. Tearing Down the Avenue of the Opera, c. 1865. Albumen print. Musee Carnavalet, Paris.

Fortunately, Europeans did not heed Holmes's quintesscn- in scale afforded bv such pieces. The documentation of the
tially American view that the artifacts themselves might production of the Statue of Liberty in France, by Albert
be dispensed with as long as their images remained; in- Femique (pi. no. 180), and its installation in the United
stead, their goal was to disinter and relocate actual objects. States was just one of a number of such picturizations of
Though frequently wrenched from historical context and an activitv that was going on in other industrial countries,
incorrectly restored, these works confirmed a sense of con- too. One suspects that the amusing contrast between the
tinuous historv for Europeans experiencing the unsetding lively figures of the real workmen and the grandiose inertia
advance of industrialization. The excavation, transporta- of the idealized effigy, seen in this work and also in Alois
tion, and restoration of this cultural booty produced some Locherer's record of the construction and transport of the
visually stimulating camera images. Almost even' aspect of mammoth statue Bavaria (pi. no. 181) , constituted at least
industrial Europe's romance with the past, from the pil- part of the appeal of such images.
grimage to ancient lands (pi. rto. 178) , to the installation of
the object in a modern setting (pi. no. 179) was captured by
Camera Documentation: United States
the camera. And while by mid-century European museums
already had become the repositories of statuary and deco- Camera documentation of industrial progress in North
rative objectsfrom all over the ancient world, the growing America differed significandv from that of Europe, pri-

popular interest in archeology and its finds must be attri- marily because of America's lack of historical monuments
buted in some measure to the camera. and its attitude to photography in general. Drawn largely
Monumental contemporary works of statuar\' also pro- from the ranks of graphic artists, mid-century European
vided subjects for photographers intrigued by the contrast photographers were influenced bv attitudes instilled in

162 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

them about art in general, but in the "new world" sound sumed by interest in mechanical devices, few images that
academic training in the arts was limited. With few excep- take advantage of the forcefiil geometry of engineering
tions, Americans regarded photography as a business and structures were made. From the daguerreotype era to the
the camera as a tool with which to record information. end of the century', when Americans photographed bridges,
Neither poets nor reformers, many photographers in the railwavs, machinery, and buildings —emblems of the grow-
United States were unconcerned with subdeties, endeavor- ing industrialization of the nation — major concern
their

ing instead to present material objects in a clear-cut and was to be informative rather than inspirational. The choice
competent fashion without involvement in the artistic ef- of camera position in Brooklyn Bridge Under Construction
fects of light and shade or unusual compositional angles. (by an unknown photographer) (pi. no. 182) diminishes the
This said, it still is curious that in a countrv so con- scale and beauty of the pylons in order to direct attention

178. Henri B^chard.

Ascending the Great
Pyramid., c. 1878. Phototype
from L'Egypte et la Nubie,
1888. Charles Edwin
Wilbour Library of
Egyptology, Brooklyn
Museum.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS : : I63

 179- Philip Henry
Delamotte. Setting up the
Colossi ofRameses the Great, 185?.

Albumen print. Greater

London History Library.

180. Albert Fernique (?).

Construction of the Statue of

Liberty, Workshop Vien\ Paris,
c. 1880. Albumen print. Rare
Books and Manuscripts
Division, New York Public
Library, Astor, Lenox, and
Tilden Foundations.

164 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

 i8i. Alois Locherer. Transport
of the Bavaria (Torso), 1850.
Albumen print. Agfa-Gevaert
Foto-Historama, Cologne,
Germany.

to the small group of top-hattcd figures. Typical of the Gardner, Alfred A. Hart, William Henry Jackson, Andrew
many views of this project, the image falls short of embody- Joseph RusseU, and Charles R. Savage, recorded not only
ing the daring energ}' which the bridge itself still sym- actual construction but settlements along the way, unusual
bolizes. In comparison, Canadian William Notman's 1859 vegetation, geological formations, and Indian tribal life.

photograph of the framework and tubing of the Victoria The best-known of these images — a work by Russell of the
Bridge (pi. no. 183) creates an arresting visual pattern that joining of the cross-continental tracks at Promontory Point,
also is suggestive of the thrust and power of the structure. Utah Territory, in 1869 (pi. no. 184) — is in the mainstream
As F. Jack Hurley points out, 19th-century photographs of tradition of American documentation, with workers and
American industry concentrate on depicting the individu- dignitaries the focus of the celebratory occasion, but in
als responsible for "taming, dominating and bending to other works, typified by Russell's The Construction of the
their wills . . . the vast virginity of the continent'"" rather Railroad at Citadel Rock (pi. no. iSs) , landscape predomi-
than on the expressive possibilities inherent in structural nates—the understandable effect of an attitude that re-

and mechanical forms. garded the western wilderness with near- religious awe.
However, there are exceptions: in the years following Many of Russell's images emphasize curving rails and intri-

the Civil War, photographic documentation of the western cately constructed bridge spans, foreshadowing the hand-
rail routes — in particular the construction of track-beds ling of similar themes by William Rau, official photographer
and spans and the laying of rails — resulted in images of of the PennsyKania and Lehigh Valley railroads at the end
decided visual impact. Inspired by the grandeur of the of the century. The clean, formal organization of track-beds
wilderness, the photographers, among them Alexander and rails in Rau's images (pi. no. 186) suggests that indus-

OBJECTS AND EVENTS I6S

i82. Unknown Photographer. Brooklyn Bridge under Construction^ c. 1878.

Albumen print. New- York Historical Society, New York.

166 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

 a

trial might had emerged without trauma or exertion — had not prevented daguerreotypists from attempting to
view that was to gain ascendanc)' in visual expressions capture images of fires, floods, and storms —catastrophes
of machine culture in the 1920s. As was true of western over which people have little control but show strong
scenic photographs, railroad images were sold in stereo- interest in. George N. Barnard was able to make a daguer-
graph and large-format, used to make up presentation reotype during an actual conflagration that took place in
albums, shown in photographic exhibitions, and copied by Oswego, New York, in 1851 (pi. no. 188) . Even after glass

engravers for the illustrated press. plates took over, however, on-the-spot news photography
was difficult because the photographer had to arrive on the
Newsworthy Events scene armed with chemicals and equipment to sensitize the
plates before they could be exposed in the camera. Luck
and Instantaneous Views
obviously played a great role in mid- 19th-century documen-
Large-format documentary images required that hu- tation of such events, which frequendy were translated
man figures, when included, remain still during exposure, into engravings in the illustrated press.
as can be seen in the posed stance of the workers in the With the perfection during the 1850s of shorter focal-
Russell photograph. Recording events that were in a state length (4V2 to 5 inches) stereographic cameras, accompa-
of flux on this size plate would have resulted in blurring nied by the publication in 1856 of Sir David Brewster's
sections of the image, an efiict that 19th-century viewers manual on stereography, photography became capable of
regarded as a sign of imperfection. In fact, during the freezing certain kinds of action. "Instantaneous" views
1840S and '50s, in order to present occurrences in which made in stereograph format began to appear around 1858;
there was continuous, if not very rapid, action, it was among the earliest in America was a series taken of long
necessary to restage the scene, as was done for the daguer- stretches of lower Broadway, commissioned by the E. and
reotypes by Southworth andHawes taken in the operating H. T. Anthony Company, of which this street scene (pi.

room of Massachusetts General Hospital in 1848 (pi. no. no. 189) is a typical example. In Great Britain, William
1S7) . Nonetheless, the inadequacy of the earliest technology England and George Washington Wilson began to market

18?. William Notman.

Victoria Briilge, Framework
of Tube and Staging,
Looking in., May, 1859-

Albumen print. Notman

Photographic Archives,
McCord Museum, McGill
University, Montreal.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS 167

"instantaneous" images of crowded street scenes while trial nations involved themselves in imperialist ad\'entures
Adolphe Braun and Hippolyte Jouvin (pi. no. 190) were around the globe, the camera emerged as a most apt tool
involved with the same kind of imagery in France. In addi- for satisfying the thirst for sociological information that
tion to the stereograph cameras produced in all three coun- emerged. Between 1855 and about 1880, collodion/albumen
tries, small single-lens apparatuses designed to arrest action technology made it possible for resolute photographers,
began to appear (see A Short Technical History, Part /), both amateur and professional, to follow their countn^men
but despite these refinements, collodion technology still to Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Near East in order to
was burdensome, preventing action photography of the record, besides scenery, aspects of daily life and ethnic
sophistication and speed to which modem viewers are customs. Though under the impression that these docu-
accustomed. mentations were "objective" —that is, truthful records of
what exists—those behind the cameras were guided in

their selection and treatment of material both by a sense of

Documentation: Daily Life
being emissaries of a "higher civilization,"^ as John
and Ethnic Customs
Thomson called it, and by the desire for commercial suc-
Curiosity about the everyday lives of the world's peo- cess. Nevertheless, despite assumptions of superiority, the
ples predates the invention of photographv, but as indus- close observation of indigenous customs altered ethnocen-

184. Andrew J. Russell. Meetinfj of the Rails, Promontory Point, Utah, 1869.
Albumen print. Union Pacific Historical Museum, Omaha, Neb.

168 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

 185. Andrew J. Russell. The
Construction of the Railroad at Citadel
Rock, Green River, Wyoming, 1867-68.
Albumen print. Western Americana
Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
. -^ Manuscript Library, Yale University,
New Haven, Conn.
^^-^

186. WiLLL\M Rau. New Main Line at

Duncannon, 1906. Gelatin silver print.

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS 169

trie attitudes and in some cases even evoked admiration Carders (pi. rw. 191) has a mannered quality common to
for elements of so-called "backward" cultures among many such staged indoor scenes of the time, whereas the
photographers. out-of-doors settings that served as the locales for Captain
India imder British rule proNided the greatest opportu- Willoughby Wallace Hooper gave his images of lower-caste
nit\' to satisfy the desire for this kind of imagery on the part Hindu life and famine victims a more natural -looking

of occup\ing residents and folks back home. Among those aspect.

portra\ing nati\e life in the areas where Britons maintained Known or unknown, British photographers sent to
interests in the jute, tea, and teak industries were Felice oversee or to document colonial activities in other parts of
Beato (a naturalized British subject of Italian birth whose the empire on which "the sun never set" sent home views
biography has recently emerged), Samuel Bourne (whose of the native peoples of South Africa, Australia, and New
catalog listings included "Groups of Native Characters"), Zealand, as well as of India. The effects on Western viewers
and John Burke, who worked in the Punjab and in Kash- of scores of camera pictures of scantily clad, somerimes
mir before recording the course of the Second Afghan War. tattooed or painted humans of color from unindustrialized
The now little-known William Johnson, a founder of the parts of the world are difficult to determine. No doubt as

Bomba\- Photographic Societ\', published his views of a group these images stimulated 19th-century positivists in

Indian teachers, vendors, and workers periodically in 1856 their quest for anthropological informarion, but whether
in Tlie Indian Amateur's Photographic Album and then in they reinforced dominant stereotypes against nonwhitcs or
a single volume containing 61 photographs. Group of Cotton made viewers more conscious of individual differences

18-". AiBEKT Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes. Opermng Room, Massachuictts General Hospital,
Woman Patient, 1846-45. DaguerreotN-pc. Massachusetts General Hospital News Office, Boston,

170 OBJECTS AND EA'ENTS

s< . K. ^\x>cv3ir'- ?i»r«ww- JUSfe.

<v.t:^ ^is::aH.'i irioesc^ SAVSissSv X^l-

^ AJsK» tVEXT^v rt
among subjected peoples depended in part on the indi- itary men, laborers, vendors, and geisha (pi. no. 333) posed
vidual photographer's attitude and approach and in part in the studio holdihg emblems of their rank or trade.

on the context in which they were seen. Graceftilly composed against simple backgrounds and
In China, posed studio photographs simulating typical delicately hand-colored by Japanese artists, these works
occupations appeared on cartes-de-visite made in the port suggest the influence of the decorative ukiyo-e woodblock
cities during the 1850s, but actual views of street life did not depictions of daily life. Similar amalgams of sociological
reach the West until John Thomson issued Illustrations of information and artistic effect designed to attract travelers
China and Its People in 1873-74. The 200 photographs constitute thework of Baron Reteniz von Stillfiied, an
reproduced in heliotype with descriptive texts —the result Austrian who settled in Yokohama in 1871, bought Beato's
of nearly five years spent in Hong Kong, Formosa, and on studio, and produced, with a partner and Japanese assistants,

the mainland —include, besides portraits and scenery, an album entided Views and Costumes ofJapan (pi. no. 193).

images of people engaged in mundane activities, among The genre was fiarther refined by the Japanese photogra-
them Itinerant Tradesmen, Kiu Kiang Kiangsi (pi. no. 192). pher Kusakabe Kimbei, an assistant to von Stilltried who
This image may suggest a staged view, but its sharpness took over the latter's studio around 1885 (pi. no. 194).

and detail were meant to convince 19th-century viewers of Following the Meiji Restoration of the late 1860s, which
the reality of a scene happened upon by accident. introduced modern industrial ideas to Japan, photography
Views of everyday life in Japan (based on photographs) began to spread; by 1877 there were 100 photographers in

appeared in the Illustrated London News soon afi:er the Tokyo alone, working mainly for the wealthy.
country was opened to Western exploitation by Commo- Tribal peoples played similar roles for those intrigued by

dore Matthew C. Perry; on that occasion, a camera was exotic customs in the western hemisphere. In the United
given to the shogun. The peripatetic Felice Beato arrived States, railroad, survey, and fi-ontier photographers
in Japan about 1863, and five years later his Photojjraphic including Gardner, Jackson, and John K. Hillers (first offi-

Views of Japan with Historical and Descriptive Notes cial photographer for the Bureau of Ethnolog)') — docu-
appeared; one of its two volumes is devoted to "Native mented Indian life in the course of other work. To the
Types." Though similar in intent to Thomson's views of north, Humphrey Lloyd Hime included "native races" in
China, many of Beato's portrayals depict aristocrats, mil- his portfolio on the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan expe-

190. HiPPOLYTE JouviN. Porte St. Denis, Paris, c. i860. Albumen stereograph. Collection I\an Christ, Paris.

172 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

191. William Johnson. Group of Cotton Carders
from The Indian Amateur's Photof/raphu Album,
1856. Albumen print. India Office Library and
Records Department, British Library, London.

192. John Thomson. Itinerant Tradesman,

Kiu Kiang Kian^si, c. 1868. Albumen print.

Philadelphia Museum of Art; Purchase of

Stieglitz Restricted Fund.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS 17?

19?. Baron Reteniz von Stillfried. Rain Shower in the Studw, c. 1875. Albumen print.

International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

174 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

194 KusAKABE KiMBEi. New Year Drill ofJapanese Fire Brigade^ c. 1890. Albumen print.
International Museum of Photograph)' at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS 175

 195- Adam Clark

Vroman. Hopi Maiden,

c. 1902. Platinum print.
Private Collection.

176 OBJECTS AND EVENTS

196. Edward S. Curtis. The Vanishing
Race, c. 1904. Platinum print. San Francisco
Museum of Modem Art; extended loan of
Van Deren Coke.

197. Robert Flaherty. Portrait cf Mother

and Child, Ungava Peninsula, 1910-12.
Gelatin silver print. Public Archives of
Canada, Ottawa.

OBJECTS AND EVENTS 177

ditions in 1858. As the open lands and simple life of the atlas based on micro-daguerreotypes taken by Jean
West began to attract escapees from densely setded Bernard Foucault was issued by Alfred Donne, the chief
industrialized regions (and nations), straightforward doc- clinical physician of a Paris hospital, in 1845. With the
umentation of Indian life became tinged with idealizing development of the glass-plate negative, along with the
intentions. Individuals such as Adam Clark Vroman, a refinement of microscopes, lenses, and shutters, ever-
California bookseller who first accompanied a party of more-minute analyses of unseen and barely seen forms
ethnologists to the Southwest in 1895, used the camera to and structures became possible. An important contribu-
emphasize the dignity, industriousness, and charm of the tion in this advance was Human Physiology by Professor
Hopi and Zuni (pi. no. 19s) as well as to depict their customs John William Draper, whose portrait experiments were
and ceremonies. Besides donating images to the Bureau discussed in Chapter 2. Published in 1856 with woodcuts
of Ethnology archives, Vroman employed them in slide based on photographs, it was, according to Harper's New
lectures and publications. Ten or so years later, the photo- Monthly Majjazine, the first "attempt ... on an extensive
graphic logging of archaeological excavations was intro- scale to illustrate a book on exact science with the aid of
duced by the Harvard professor George Reisner. photography. "9 Not long afterward, the first text on the
In the same era, Edward S. Curtis, an ambitious com- use of photography in microscopic research was written
mercial photographer in Seattie, felt moved to record by a German physiologist, Joseph Gerlach, according to
vestiges of the culture of what he perceived as a "vanish- Alison Gernsheim (one of the first writers to investigate

ing race,"^ eventually creating a 20-volume survey of the the historical uses of the camera in medicine). A Photo-
customs, habitations, and dress of the Indians of North graphic Atlas of the Nervous System of the Human Frame
America. Supported initially by financial help from the was projected for publication in Munich in 1861.'°
investment banker J. P. Morgan, Curtis saw tribal life Used at first in England and Germany to provide
through a veil of cultural preconceptions that at times before-and-after records, camera images soon began to
led him to introduce into his documentation traditional illustrate medical texts on diverse problems, from skin
costumes and artifacts no longer in general use. Working lesions to glandular and skeletal aberrations. In 1858, the

at a time before standards for ethnological photography London Photographic Journal prophesied that every
had been formulated, Curtis treated this subject matter medical school soon would be fiirnished with a library of
aesthetically, soft:ening forms and obscuring detail to photographic illustrations of disease, and by 1861 the
emphasize his overall concept of the mythic nature of medical profession acknowledged that stereographs and
American Indian life. Often haunting in character (pi. no. the stereoscope had become "important adjuncts to the

196), these images of Native American life could be con- microscope for representing the appearance of different
sidered within the framework of Pictorialism rather than phases of disease.""
of documentation (see Chapter 7). Similarly, Portrait of In the study of mental instability, photography assumed
Mother and Child, Unjjava Peninsula (pi. no. 197), one of administrative, diagnostic, and therapeutic Sanctions. Dr
some 1,500 still photographs by the filmmaker Robert Hugh Welch Diamond's 1852 portraits taken in a mental
Flaherty (whose wife, Frances, often worked with him), asylum have been mentioned, but photography already had
combines sociological information with a heroicizing been used a year earlier as a component of a concept known
vision that celebrates the unspoiled essence of Inuit life. as "moral treatment"'^ —an intervention that sought to
provide confined mental patients with antidotes to bore-
dom and nonconstructive activity by showing them lantern
Scientific and Medical Documentation
slides. In what may have been the first use of photographic
The second half of the 19th century was also an era of rather than hand-painted slides, the Langenheim brothers
expanding use of photography in connection with scien- collaborated with the chief physician of the Philadelphia
tific documentation. The first daguerreotype micropho- Hospital for the Insane in this magic-lantern therapy.
tographs, by John Benjamin Dancer in the 1840s, reduced
a 20-inch document to 1/8 of an inch using a camera with
The Documentation
a microscope lens. Other early experiments in both calo-
type and daguerreotype produced micrographs of bones,
of Wars and Conflicts
teeth, butterfly wings, and seed pods that were harbingers War coverage did not really become feasible until the

of the coiUributions anticipated when the camera was collodion era. It was obvious from the first that the slow,

harnessed to the microscope. However, the daguerreo- one-of-a-kind dagucrreot)'pe was ill suited for war cov-
type was too unwieldy and the calotype too indistinct to erage, although some portraits of army personnel were
be of great service to science, even though a textbook and made by this method. The laborious procedures of the

178 OBJECTS AND EVENTS