I am already overwhelmed...

I am already overwhelmed by what I am studying. Photography has just begun, and within 50 years it is phenomenal! How can I learn all this? Meanwhile, I need to study "Western Civilization Part 2"! I am stuck. I need help. I need a new point of view!

What is my purpose? To get a good grade! But more than that, I want to understand the order of things. How did photography develop? Why is photography so pervasive? How can I consume such vast quantities of information?!! Like the photographer, I have to find a method to "fix" the image. I am absorbing all kinds of content, like the first daguerreotype, but the image will not stay! It fades from view as soon as I cram a new bit of info in. Well, I need to step back - I need to re-examine the methods that I use, just as the earliest photographers had to do.
Chapter One, "The Origins of Photography (to 1839)" points out that there was not just ONE method of creating photographs, nor any one photographer who invented the methods used. So, I too will have to experiment. There are more than one way to study things! Reading a text, underlining sentences, circling terms and phrases is one way. Re-reading and re-viewing is another way. And writing about it is a third!

So, how can I apply what I've learned so far about the origins of photography? Many people experimented with using a light-box (a camera lucida, or a camera obscura) to help them draw an image. But photography went one step further. It took the light-sensitive substance, and found a way to perfect it, so that it would hold an image. Just so, I need to find for myself what will allow me to HOLD the image and understanding of what I read!

Well, how did they do that? The Section "The Problem of Permanence: Wedgwood and Davy" tells us that Thomas Wedgwood followed the science of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), who "mandated repeated testing of hypotheses in the laboratory, a practice he helped to establish as the standard for the field." Wedgwood and his friend Humphry Davy, an apothecary’s apprentice, “sought to fix the image of an object’s shadow cast on paper or leather that had been made light-sensitive by immersion in a silver nitrate solution…”

The most momentous moment came when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce began, as early as 1816, “began to experiment with ways to produce an image through the action of light upon photosensitive materials.” Applying silver chloride solution to paper, he then exposed it to light. The problem was that the image would not last, and the light and dark tones were reversed (producing a “negative”). Other experiments, begun in 1822, involved using pewter plates coated with bitumen of Judea, which hardens when exposed to light. This produced an engraving plate, which with further processing could be printed. This is the process by which he created the 1826 direct positive image called “View from the Window of Gras”, considered the first permanent photograph. This process was called by him “heliography”, from a Greek word meaning sun writing.

Soon thereafter, Niépce was introduced to Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who, in a contract signed 12/14/1829, promised to give him an improved camera obscura. The fruits of their intended partnership, however, changed course when Niépce died in 1833. Daguerre continued the research, and in 1835 began concentrating on the latent image (one that has been “registered on the silver surface of a plate, but which was not yet visible”). By 1837, Daguerre discovered that a solution of table salt was just what he needed: it would “stop the light-sensitive material from continuing to react.” Daguerre renegotiated his contract with Isidore, the son of Niépce, and claimed the “right to call himself the inventor of the process.” The daguerreotype, “a copper sheet plated with silver”, and polished, was placed “with the silver side down over a closed box containing iodine> The iodine fumes fused with the silver to create silver iodide, which is light-sensitive. The plate was then fitted into a camera obscura adapted for it and exposed to light. Exposure times varied, but the earliest daguerreotypes took about four to five minutes…”.

Well, the rest, they say, is history! The astronomer and politician François Arago arranged for government support of Daguerre’s invention, and in January 7, 1839, Arago described Daguerre’s process to the French Academy of Science.

Yet this is not all. Two other scientists are credited with significant impact on the origins of photography. John Herschel in England had been experimenting with hyposulphite of soda as early as 1819 to dissolve silver salts. Upon hearing of the announcement of Daguerre’s discoveries, he began experimenting with photography, and by February 7, he had images to show the Royal Academy. This, mind you, was without even knowing the specifics of the daguerreotype process! His continued experiments resulted in the cyanotype, which used iron salts “that produced an image of deep Prussian blue and white.”

Herschel’s friend, William Henry Fox Talbot, had also been experimenting with photography. “Talbot had conceived fixing light-induced images as early as 1833, and had also had some success the following year, well before Daguerre achieved provable results.” In fact, Talbot wrote, he heard about Daguerre’s results “exactly at the moment that I was then engaged in drawing up an account of it, to be presented to the Royal Society…” Henry Talbot had discovered, just like Wedgwood and Davy, that a mixture of common salt was effective in both making images, and in stopping and fixing the effect of light on the silver nitrate solutions (which through the addition of sodium chloride was now a solution of silver chloride). Printing directly on paper, rather than with a camera obscura, Talbot referred to his process as “photogenic drawing”. In 1835 he had used this same process “to make a picture after exposing sensitized paper in a small camera.” It was at this time that he also thought of the possibility of using a photogenic drawing negative to make a positive printed image. However, his process was not perfected until 1941, which he then patented as a calotype. And it is the calotype, which makes use of a latent image on a negative, and from which many prints can be produced, that “would become the basis for modern photographic reproduction.”

Humm, I guess that’s enough work for today! I have probably read for 2 hours, and written for 2 hours, and now it’s time to move on…

1/17/06 7:43 AM