Today, photography has become a powerful means of communication and a mode of visual expression
that touches human life in many ways. For example, photography has
become popular as a means of crystallizing memories. Most of the
billions of photographs taken today are snapshots--casual records to document personal events such as vacations, birthdays, and weddings.
Photographs are used extensively by newspapers,
magazines, books, and television to convey information and advertise
products and services. Practical applications of photography are
found in nearly every human endeavor from astronomy to medical diagnosis
to industrial quality control. Photography extends human vision into
the realm of objects that are invisible because they are too small or
too distant, or events that occur too rapidly for the naked eye to
detect. A camera can be used in locations too dangerous for humans.
Photographs can also be objects of art that explore the human condition
and provide aesthetic pleasure. For millions of people, photography is a
satisfying hobby or a rewarding career.
Photography as Art
Today photography is widely recognized as a fine art.
Photographs are displayed in art museums, prized by collectors,
discussed by critics, and studied in art history courses. Because of the
special nature of photography, however, this was not always the case.
In the early days of photography some people considered the medium
something of a poor relation to the older, established visual arts, such
as drawing and painting. The arguments stemmed from the fact that a
camera is a mechanical instrument. Because the mechanical procedure of
taking a picture is automatic, detractors claimed that photography
required no coordination of hand and eye and none of the manual skills
essential to drawing and painting. They also argued that photography
required no creativity or imagination because the photographic subject
was "ready-made" and did not require manipulation or control by the
photographer.
A camera, no matter how many automatic features it may
have, is a lifeless piece of equipment until a person uses it. It then
becomes a uniquely responsive tool--an extension of the photographer's eye and mind. A photographer creates
a picture by a process of selection. Photographers looking through the
camera's viewfinder must decide what to include and what to exclude from
the scene. They select the distance from which to take the picture and
the precise angle that best suits their purpose. They select the instant
in which to trip the shutter. This decision may require hours of
patient waiting until the light is exactly right or it may be a
split-second decision, but the photographer's sense of timing is always
crucial. Photographers can expand or flatten perspective by the use
of certain lenses. They can freeze motion or record it as a blur,
depending on their choice of shutter speed. They can create an infinite
number of lighting effects with flashes or floodlights. They can alter
the tonal values or colors in a picture by their choice of film and
filters. These are only a few of the controls available to a
photographer when taking a picture. Later, in the darkroom, many
additional choices are available.
One of the best ways to view artistic photographs is to
visit museums. Today most art museums include photography exhibitions,
and many have a photography department and a permanent collection of
photographic prints. This is a relatively recent development. Another
great way to view photographs is to look at a quality magaznie like National Geograpics.
Control of Light
Camera Obscura The camera
obscura had been known since ancient times. It was first detailed in
writing by artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. Meaning literally
"darkened room," it was originally a room completely sealed from light
except for a very small hole in one wall. An image of the outside
world--houses, trees, and even people--could be projected, upside down
and reversed right-to-left, onto a wall or white screen placed opposite
the opening.
Later the camera obscura was reduced in size until it
became a small portable box. It was equipped with a lens and a mirror at
a 45-degree angle, which reflected the image upward and focused it on a
viewing screen. This was a great aid to artists in making sketches on
location, but there was not yet a way to capture directly and
permanently the camera obscura's images.
Making the Image Permanent
Scientists had known for some time that certain silver
compounds, then called silver salts and now named silver halides, would
turn black when exposed to light. In England, Thomas Wedgwood, son of
the famous potter, experimented with one of these silver halides, silver
nitrate, to produce silhouettes. The pictures, however, were not
permanent and turned black unless stored in the dark.
1.Niepce In the
early 19th century Joseph-Nicephore Niepce of France began to
experiment with a then novel graphic arts printing method called
lithography. His work led him to further experiments using bitumen, a
resinous substance, and oil of lavender. Niepce developed a process
whereby he could permanently capture the image of a camera obscura. In
1827 he made the world's first surviving photograph from the window of a
country home in France. It required an exposure, in bright sunlight, of
eight hours.
2.Daguerre Meanwhile,
Daguerre was experimenting with silver-iodide images. Hearing of
Niepce's work, he contacted him, and in 1829 they became partners.
During the next few years Daguerre, with Niepce's help, worked out the
process that came to be known as daguerreotypy. It was a complicated
procedure that demanded considerable skill. A silver-coated sheet of
copper was sensitized by treatment with iodine vapor, forming a coating
of light-sensitive silver iodide. The daguerreotype plate was exposed in
the camera and then developed in mercury fumes at temperatures of about
120 degrees F (50 degrees C). The exposed areas absorbed mercury atoms
and highlighted the image. Finally, the image was fixed by washing it in
hypo. The daguerreotype's silver image was capable of rendering
exquisitely fine detail. It was a single-image process, however--each
exposure produced only one picture, incapable of reproduction.
Furthermore, the process required exposures of up to several minutes
even in bright sunlight, thus constraining its subjects to absolute
motionlessness. In spite of this, the process immediately became
popular, particularly for portraiture. Daguerreotypy rapidly developed
into a thriving business in England and the United States. Superb
portraits were made by such daguerreotypists as Albert Sands Southworth
and Josiah Johnson Hawes in Boston. The French excelled in landscapes
and cityscapes. In 1840 a much faster lens was designed by the
Hungarian Jozsef Petzval and manufactured by Peter Voigtlander in
Austria. At about the same time a method was discovered that increased
considerably the light sensitivity of the daguerreotype plate. This
method involved a second fuming with chlorine or bromine before
exposure.
3.TalbotIn England William Henry Fox Talbot had
developed his own method of photography at about the same time that
Daguerre was inventing the daguerreotype. Talbot impregnated paper with
silver nitrate or silver chloride. When exposed in a camera, the
sensitized paper turned black where light struck it, creating a negative
image of the subject. This was made permanent by fixing with hypo. To
achieve a positive image, a contact print could be made by placing the
negative over a second piece of sensitized paper and exposing the
combination to bright light. Talbot's "photogenic drawings," as he
called them, lacked the daguerreotype's sharp detail and brilliance but
offered the great advantage that from one negative a large number of
positive prints could be made. His process, known as the calotype, and
later talbotype, process, was at first less popular than the
daguerreotype. Most later methods of photography, however, have evolved
from Talbot's work. His was the first negative-positive process.
4.ArcherIn 1851 F. Scott Archer of England made public his wet-collodion
process, in which he used a glass plate coated with collodion as a base
for light-sensitive silver halides. His procedure, requiring seven
steps, was only slightly less complicated than the daguerreotype
process, but it was considerably less expensive. It also produced a
negative that was much sharper than that of the calotype method. Soon
the wet-collodion process had supplanted both the older techniques as
the most widely used process of photography. A major inconvenience of
the wet-collodion method was the fact that the plate was light-sensitive
only as long as it remained wet; after it dried it lost its
sensitivity. Thus plates had to be used almost immediately after
preparation. Since these plates could not be prepared and stockpiled in
advance, a portable darkroom, in the form of a tent, wagon, or railway
car, for instance, had to accompany the camera wherever it went.
C. Reportage & Early Pioneers
Despite this drawback, intrepid photographers made
photographs in remote locations and under the most dangerous conditions,
creating images that are still considered masterpieces of the medium. Roger Fenton of England became a pioneer in war photography with his camp scenes from the Crimean War. Mathew Brady and his team of associates, including Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, and James Gibson,
achieved a magnificent documentation of the American Civil War . After
the war, Gardner, O'Sullivan, and William Henry Jackson photographed the
opening of the American West and provided a lasting record of its
awesome scenery.
In the mid-1850s the tintype, an inexpensive
imitation of the daguerreotype, was patented by the American Hamilton L.
Smith. It was, in fact, not made of tin, but of a very thin sheet of
iron specially treated and coated with a light-sensitive emulsion. The
tintype became very popular for personal portraits.
Stereoscopic photography also became extremely
popular during this period. A special stereo camera with two lenses was
used to take two simultaneous photographs of the subject from viewpoints
separated by about the same distance as a pair of human eyes. When the
resulting pictures were viewed through a special viewing device, they
merged to create a three-dimensional image. Stereoscopic images of
travel pictures, landscapes, important events, and comic pictorial short
stories were sold by the millions.
In 1871 a new era in photography began when an amateur English photographer, R.L. Maddox,
produced a successful dry plate that retained its light-sensitivity
after drying. Other inventors followed his lead, and soon fast, reliable
dry plates, much more convenient to use than the earlier wet plates,
became available at a reasonable cost.
The dry plate represented a turning point in photography.
With the availability of faster emulsions, photographers could make
exposures on the order of a fraction of a second, and for the first time
the camera was freed from a stand. A new breed of smaller, more
portable cameras proliferated, variously called hand cameras or
detective cameras. With fast-dry plates, and later with film,
photography could be practiced by amateurs without the need for
professional training or equipment. As shutter speeds became fast
enough to stop motion, a fascinating new world of vision unfolded.
Especially notable was the work of the Englishman Eadweard Muybridge, who pioneered work in the field of motion-picture
projection. He photographed sequences of human and animal motion that
fascinated artists, anatomists, and the general public alike.
D. The Kodak Era
In the 1880s the American George Eastman put flexible roll film
on the market, and in 1889 he introduced the first Kodak camera with
the slogan, "You push the button and we do the rest." Thus was launched
the era of mass-market photography. Meanwhile, gifted photographers
were exploring the new medium from a creative standpoint, attempting to
discover its potential and limitations and define photography as an art
form. At first it was only natural that photographers should take their
inspiration from painting. Oscar G. Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson,
for example, working in England, used various darkroom techniques,
tricks, and manipulations to produce staged photographs that frankly
imitated the sentimental, moralistic paintings of the era.
The English amateur Julia Margaret Cameron did not
take up photography until she was almost 50. Nevertheless, she imposed
her own personal style on the medium and produced a collection of
extraordinary portraits that were soft focused but impassioned. Another
English amateur, Peter Henry Emerson, developed a strong pictorial style
of his own and advanced detailed theories of photographic aesthetics
that had a considerable influence on late 19th-century art
photographers.
The American Alfred Stieglitz,
a distinguished photographer in his own right, began to promote
photography as a fine art in the pages of his illustrated quarterly
Camera Work, in his Photo-Secession group, and later in his 291
gallery.
E. A New Generation of Photographers
A new generation of photographers emerged who were
determined to turn away from the pictorial style and its soft-focus,
painterly effects to a more direct, unmanipulated, and sharply focused
approach. This new form was called "straight" photography, and its
practitioners believed it most truly expressed photography's unique
vision. One pioneer was Paul Strand, whose photographs reveal a deep
awareness of what he called "the spirit of place." The movement's most
famous figures were Edward Weston and his younger associate Ansel Adams
.
Fenton, Roger
(1819-69). English. Best known for his pictures of the Crimean War,
which constituted the first extensive photographic coverage of a war.
Fenton established his reputation through his high-quality still lifes
and landscapes. In 1853 he founded the (Royal) Photographic Society of
London. He was sent to the Crimea in 1855 as the British government's
official photographer.
Heartfield, John (1891-1968). German. Original name
Helmut Herzfelde. Initially a Dadaist, Heartfield was one of the
greatest masters of photomontage. Violent contrasts of scale and
perspective, ruthless cropping of heads and bodies, the substitution of
machine parts for vital organs, and other seeming illogical
juxtapositions had a shocking effect. During the German Third Reich,
Heartfield's anti-Fascist montages were among the strongest protests
made.
Hine, Lewis (1874-1940). American. A master of
composition and mood, Hine used his camera in the cause of social
reform. In 1908 he published a pictorial record of Ellis Island
immigrants. In 1911 he was hired by the National Child Labor Committee,
and he used his photographic documentation of child labor abuses to
bring about corrective legislation. Hine recorded the construction of
the Empire State Building in 1930. The photographs were published in
1932 in a book titled `Men at Work'.
Jackson, William Henry (1843-1942). American. One of
the best-known Western landscape and Indian portrait photographers in
the 19th century. From 1870 to 1878 he was the official photographer for
the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the
Territories. His photographs of Wyoming were instrumental in the
establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872.
F. Technical Development
Technical developments in photographic equipment
continued. Shortly before World War I, Oskar Barnack in Germany, working
as a technician for the E. Leitz company, invented a miniature
camera that used perforated strips of 35-mm film. It was first
introduced to the market in 1924 as the Leica. Many dismissed it as a
mere toy ill-equipped for serious work, but others were delighted by its
compact size and ability to make up to 36 exposures in rapid
succession.
Continual improvement over the years established the 35-mm
camera, especially in its single-lens reflex form, as the dominant
camera for both professionals and serious amateurs. In 1930 the highly
dangerous flashpowder was largely supplanted by flashbulbs.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, experiments with gas
discharge flash tubes led to the development of the electronic flash,
which could produce astonishing images made at exposures as brief as
1/10,000 second. Although they originally required expensive and
cumbersome equipment, electronic flash units became so miniaturized that
they could be built into a pocket camera.
Color had been the dream of photographers since the medium
of photography was invented. The foundation for color photography had
been established in 1859 by James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist
who demonstrated that all colors could be reduced to combinations of
three primary colors. Many attempts were made to apply this principle to
photography, but it was not until many decades later that inventors
were successful. In 1907 two Frenchmen, the
brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere, placed on the market their
autochrome glass plates. These plates were coated with starch grains
that were dyed red, green, and blue, over which was a second coating of
panchromatic emulsion. After 1930 the much sharper "integral tripack"
color films were introduced, which used dyes rather than grains.
Kodachrome in particular became famed for its
sharpness and rich colors. These new films were positive transparency
films, but soon color negative films were introduced. Today color
negative film constitutes the vast majority of film sold to amateur
photographers in the United States. Instant, or self-processing,
photography was invented by the American Edwin H. Land. He introduced the Polaroid Land camera in 1947, and a color version became available in 1963.
I. Photography in Communication
Since its invention in 1839, photography's unique powers
of visual description have been used to record, report, and inform.
People prefer to see things with their own eyes, but when this is
impossible the camera can often serve the same purpose almost as well.
It is not true that photographs never lie--they can be falsified and
manipulated. Nevertheless, a photograph can carry a strong measure of
authenticity and conviction.
As a nonverbal means of communication, photography can
surmount the barriers of language and communicate through universal
visual symbols. Photographs are well suited for use in the mass media.
Today they are reproduced by the billions, and they can be found
everywhere: in the pages of newspapers, magazines, books, catalogs, and
brochures; on display in billboards, shop windows, and posters;
broadcast over television; and organized into slide shows and film
strips.
In photography's early days some of its most eagerly sought
images were those brought back by explorers and travelers. These would
satisfy people's curiosity about distant places like China, Egypt, and
the American West. That same kind of curiosity exists today. People are
fascinated with photographs of the surface of the moon, the landscape of
Mars, and the appearance of other planets in the solar system.
Photographs in the mass-communication media have made the
faces of political leaders, popular entertainers, and other celebrities
familiar to the public. When a newsworthy event occurs photojournalists
are there to record it. Photojournalists sometimes spend months covering
a story. The result of such labor is often a powerful, revealing
picture essay that probes far beneath the surface of events.
Photography is also essential to the advertising industry.
In efforts to sell a product, attractive photographs of the item are
used. Photography is also widely used in education and training within
the academic world, industry, and the armed services.
Photographs are also often used in attempts to sway public
opinion. Governments, political parties, and special-interest groups
have long used the graphic representation and emotional impact of
photographs to further their causes. Such use may result in destructive
propaganda, such as that of the Nazis during the Third Reich.
Photography can also help to bring about desirable changes.
Photographs of the Yellowstone region were instrumental in Congress's
decision to establish that area as a national park, and photographs of
child laborers helped to bring about legislation protecting children
from exploitation.
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