The Race for Photography

It is difficult to imagine that the proto-photographers were unaware of each other’s work in view of the perception of Freemasonry that existed between scientists, intellectuals, and industrialists at this time, academies, societies, dinner clubs, coffee houses and other formal and informal gatherings, see earlier reference to Joseph Wright’s painting of the Orrery. Yet, it seems Fox-Talbot was taken unawares by the unexpected announcement of his French rival Daguerre’s30_{, Daguerreotype process}

(Lomas, 2004). The proclamation was made by François Arago a minister in the French Government, at a joint meeting of the French Academy of Sciences and the

29 _{Johann Zahn was the seventeenth-century German author of Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus}

Sive Telescopium (Zahn, 1685). He is also credited with first camera obscura that was small and portable enough to be practical for photography in 1685 (Burns, 1999).

30 _{Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (French) 18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was an artist}

and photographer, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography, in partnership with Nicéphore Niépce who died before the process was made public on 7 January 1839

A Brief History of Photography

Académie des Beaux-Arts on the 9th _{January 1839.}31

Larry Schaaf described Arago’s announcement as a “brutal shock.” Fox-Talbot was frustrated by the French announcement and by his own dilatoriness, particularly as he had perfected a viable photographic process as early as 1835. Due to commitments as a member of parliament for Cheltenham between 1832 and 1835, and with the distraction of these and other commitments, he had paid little attention to his

photographic experimentation since his enthusiastic endeavours following the return from the defining Lake Como interlude. In the years up to 1839 Fox-Talbot had published nearly thirty scientific papers and two books, the last between 1838 and 1839. He did not return to his photographic experiments until late in 1838. Until then work on his photogenic drawing process had not been a priority (Schaaf, 1992).

Fox-Talbot had been made aware of Daguerre’s invention prior to the official announcement; a letter came from Paris on 9th _{January 1839 advising that Daguerre}

had frozen the images of the Camera Obscura. There were no other details of the process. Concerned that Daguerre’s process may have been identical to his, Talbot prepared a paper to be presented to the Royal Society, but because of the time of year, and poor levels of daylight, he was unable to prepare any new images to accompany the presentation. However, Michael Faraday displayed images that

31 _{Sir John Herschel is anecdotally credited with coining the term Photography in 1839, but}

there are those who believe the first use of the word was by the Brazilian proto-photographer, Hércules Florence in 1834.

A Brief History of Photography

Talbot had given to him in 1835, at a meeting of the Royal Institution on 25th _January

1839. Fox-Talbot presented his paper on 31st _{January 1839, “Account of the Art of}

Photogenic Drawing of the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to delineate themselves without the aid of the Artist’s pencil” to the Royal Society (Fox- Talbot, 1844a).

At the time of the announcement, Talbot’s process was still in a crude state, exposure times were very long and the images he produced were prone to fade. But he had demonstrated that his process was quite distinct from that of the Daguerreotype. Fox- Talbot had successfully created negatives using both direct contact and the Camera obscura and from these, he had made positive prints. In so doing he created the negative/positive process, which had the capability of producing multiple positives from one negative. During the next four years, he improved the Photogenic Drawing

process eventually renaming it as Calotype Photogenic Drawing, otherwise the Calotype

or to his friends, the Talbotype. In response to the urges of his mother and close friend Dr David Brewster, Fox- Talbot patented the refined process, a move that was to create more problems than it solved (Schaaf, 1992).

Not only had Fox-Talbot been deprived of the accolade of the inventor of the first photographic process by Daguerre, he ironically deprived his close friend and associate John Herschel, of the opportunity to announce his photographic process. Herschel had also been working on a photographic process similar to Fox-Talbot’s and was about to announce his findings to the Royal Society when Fox-Talbot

A Brief History of Photography

In a further act of generosity, Herschel provided Fox-Talbot with the answer to the one problem Talbot had failed to fully solve, how to fix the chemical image

permanently to prevent it from eventually fading. Herschel had discovered that both the negatives and the prints could be permanently fixed by washing with Sodium Thiosulphate, otherwise known as `Hypo’. Hypo worked by removing any

unwanted residues of light sensitive silver from the paper surface, the emulsion. Fox- Talbot, who was using Potassium Bromide to slow the fading of his images, was initially reluctant to adopt the use of Herschel’s modification, only relenting after he realised that `Hypo’ eliminated the fading problem and significantly improved the longevity of his negatives and prints.

Although the Daguerreotype process produced images of superior sharpness and tonal clarity, when compare to the Fox-Talbot’s images, the Daguerreotype process was not without problems. It was not reproducible, could only be viewed from a narrow-angle and the image was laterally reversed. Fox-Talbot’s process was a negative based system from which multiple positive copies could be readily made. In an effort to publicise and promote the Calotype as an alternative to the extremely popular and successful Daguerreotype, in 1843, Fox-Talbot provided the finance for his former valet, Nicolaas Henneman, to establish a commercial photographic business in Reading. The business specialised in the mass production of photographic prints in competition with the more common lithographic and

engraved prints for inclusion in books and other printed material. It was at this time that Fox-Talbot published details of his process in, The Pencil of Nature a series of six books illustrated with original Calotypes, and published between 1844 and 1846

A Brief History of Photography

(Fox-Talbot, 1844 Matthew & Harrison, 2004).

In the next fifty years photography develop into a multifarious medium, serving a wide variety of needs; ranging from commerce and science to the phantasmagoria of popular entertainment. At this point that I shall declare that I intend to avoid

becoming embroiled in the discourse relating to photography as an art medium unless it is to clarify my arguments in other areas. My concern is with the evolution of photography as both a mimetic and a mnemonic technology, into snapshot photography.

In the next section, I shall consider the emergence of snapshot photography as an identifiable genre within the wider canon of photography and the rise in the

popularity of personal photography, the birth of the snapshot and the establishment of a Kodak Culture. I shall also consider why the taking snapshots became an

The Birth of Snapshot Photography

6

T

HE

B

IRTH OF

S

NAPSHOT

P

HOTOGRAPHY

In this chapter, I explore the emergence of snapshot photography and its establishment as a distinct genre and a ubiquitous, ingrained social practice.