The Origins of Photography

Louis Daguerre

The Invention of Photography

Chemical / Optical

“collecting place” “locked treasure room”

Mozi Chinese Philosopher, 5th Century BC

Abelardo Morell View of Central Park Looking North, 2008

Abelardo Morell View of Landscape Outside Florence in Room with Bookcase, 2009

Abelardo Morell Times Square in Hotel Room, 2010

Illustration of Camera Obscura, 1544

Camera Obscura

Thomas Sandby, Nottingham, Unknown date

Thomas Wedgwood approx. 1800 Paper treated with silver nitrate

Joseph Nicephore Niepce

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Joseph Nicephore Niepce-View from his window at La Gras. 1826

Joseph Nicephore Niepce, View from his window at La Gras, 1826

Joseph Nicephore Niepce-View from his window at La Gras. 1827

Louis Daguerre

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, People Visiting a Romanesque Run, 1826

Daguerre and Niepce became partners in 1829

“Daguerreotype”

Louis Daguerre, L’Atelier de l’artiste, 1837

Louis Daguerre Boulevard du Temple, Paris (Reproduction) 1838

August 19, 1839

Photography is introduced to the world as a “gift to humanity” and a

“force for social progress”

Daguerreotype

•  Announced August 19, 1839

•  First practical photo process

•  Direct positive image •  One of a kind- NO

reproduction •  Sharp Detail •  Small •  Reflective Surface

Hippolyte Bayard Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man, 1840

From 1839 on, 24 persons claimed to have invented photography

Henry Fox Talbot Inventor of the Calotype

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Haystack, 1844

“After having devoted much labor and attention to the perfecting of this invention, and having now brought it, as I think, to a point in which it deserved the notice of the scientific world,- that exactly at the moment that I was then engaged in drawing up an account of it, to be presented to the Royal Society, the same invention should be announced in France” –William Henry Fox Talbot

Calotype •  Announced around

1841 by Henry Fox Talbot

•  Produced paper NEGATIVE image, so copies were possible.

•  Precursor to negative film

•  Not as sharp as Daguerreotype, so not as popular

Nature’s Process

“…all language must fall short of conveying any just idea of the truth…but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented.” -Edgar Allan Poe

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Theodore Maurisset La Daguerreotypomanie 1840

The Invention of Photography

Chemical / Optical